Dota 2 hackers arrested in China for creating, selling cheats

Chinese police have arrested four Dota 2 hacker creators in the country.

According to a post Shenzhen’s cyber police have published on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, four individuals have been arrested for making Dota 2 cheat plug-ins and profiting from them.

Four hackers, two of whom have jobs at one of China’s universities, and the other two actively studying while majoring in computer sciences, have earned almost 1 million Yuan, or around $140,000 USD, selling the hacks they developed.

The charges that await the developers of the cheats could put them in prison for up to five years each. It’s not only the illegal activity of cheating that they’re being charged for, but additional chargers also come from the way that these cheats were sold. Of course, as these cheats were illegal from the outset, the profits they made from the sales weren’t properly subjected to tax. This means that the hackers are also being charged with tax evasion.

In the Weibo post, police added that their aim is to ensure Chinese players participate in fair games, so any sort of illegal tools that contribute to unfairness won’t be overlooked. They asked players to avoid such tools and to instead learn the game properly for themselves, as it’s the process of learning and playing that matters more than the result at the end of a game.

The police also posted a video showing the four hackers getting arrested and a policeman commenting on the situation. Their identities weren’t publicly shared and the faces in the video were blurred, but Chinese police are clearly sending a message to scare everyone away from participating in illegal activities around gaming.

Chinese Dota 2 players commenting on the Weibo post were showing gratitude towards the police and praised their aim to ensure a safe and fair environment in-game.

This isn’t the first time Chinese police have arrested game hackers. In late April, they arrested 15 individuals who were suspected of developing cheating programs for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and setting up a marketplace for those cheats, in the process earning over $5 million.