INVESTIGATION
DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE & FIELD NOTES
Site-written notes about code found on starcraft.blizzard.com, the captured console transmission, and how this dossier's evidence was collected. Quoted code and settings are verbatim captures; commentary is site-written.
>Investigation status
These original fragments rotated on the server — each request returned a random subset of 1–4 — before the old /partial-capture address stopped returning fragments on 2026-09-04. They remain in the transmission archive; the new /internal-node-trace address serves Transmission 02.
Technical evidence
>Transmission 02 evidence
Captured: (September 4 PT). Source: /internal-node-trace.
The code sends a request header, information sent with a request, named X-Requested-With.
fetch("/internal-node-trace",{headers:{"X-Requested-With":"XMLHttpRequest"}}){
"glitch01": { "max_times_to_occur": -1, "min_time_between_effects_ms_": 3000, "max_time_between_effects_ms_": 5000, "min_effect_duration_ms_": 150, "max_effect_duration_ms_": 800 },
"glitch02": { "max_times_to_occur": -1, "min_time_between_effects_ms_": 4000, "max_time_between_effects_ms_": 8000, "min_effect_duration_ms_": 400, "max_effect_duration_ms_": 1000 },
"glitch03": { "max_times_to_occur": -1, "min_time_between_effects_ms_": 3000, "max_time_between_effects_ms_": 8000, "min_effect_duration_ms_": 200, "max_effect_duration_ms_": 750 },
"glitch04": { "max_times_to_occur": -1, "min_time_between_effects_ms_": 6000, "max_time_between_effects_ms_": 6000, "min_effect_duration_ms_": 200, "max_effect_duration_ms_": 350 },
"glitch05": { "max_times_to_occur": -1, "min_time_between_effects_ms_": 5000, "max_time_between_effects_ms_": 5000, "min_effect_duration_ms_": 200, "max_effect_duration_ms_": 400 }
}Technical Findings
/PARTIAL-CAPTURE — SEPT 4 CAPTURE
2026-09-04 ~23:07 UTC · HTTP 200 · 15/15 requests:
{"status":404,"message":"CONNECTION BREACHED","data":{}}Full account, header comparison, and confidence caveats: Severed Uplink →
NAMED "ARG" IN THE CODE
Verbatim from the bundle (a JavaScript file):
function a(){if(window.__argNetworkTracker)return window.__argNetworkTracker;var t={inFlight:0,lastActivityAt:Date.now()},The original transmission's network-activity tracker was literally called __argNetworkTracker. That is historical code evidence; the current transmission "02" trigger is documented in the appendix.
_P4 SELECTOR — SEPT 3 CAPTURE
2026-09-03 · JavaScript excerpt:
var t=document.querySelector("._p4-btn-wrap:not(._p4-failure)")TRANSMISSION "02" IS RECOVERED
Read the Transmission 02 capture>Archived Sept 3 // Why the Site Flickered
These settings are from the September 3 capture. These two entries and their timings are not the current five entries shown above. The homepage HTML contained them in a hidden display:none div:
<div id="glitch-config" style="display:none"> <script type="application/json" data-glitch-config>
{
"glitch01": {
"max_times_to_occur": -1,
"min_time_between_effects_ms_": 500,
"max_time_between_effects_ms_": 1500,
"min_effect_duration_ms_": 350,
"max_effect_duration_ms_": 1000
},
"glitch03": {
"max_times_to_occur": -1,
"min_time_between_effects_ms_": 4000,
"max_time_between_effects_ms_": 8000,
"min_effect_duration_ms_": 200,
"max_effect_duration_ms_": 500
}
}In the September 3 bundle, the animation code was in webpack chunk 114, a separately loaded JavaScript file (js/chunks/34a32c8f15087b5f6dc9.js), and included a _glitch-rgb keyframe.
The earlier source used glitch01's 0.5–1.5s schedule, with no glitch02 config yet and no _p4 element found.
>Sept 3 — How Transmission 01 appeared
Code sequence found in the September 3 homepage bundle (js/scr/pages/home/index.70d6f43e0c86dc6a6557.js):
a(),fetch("/partial-capture",{cache:"no-store",headers:{"X-Requested-With":"XMLHttpRequest"}})If the response is status: 200 and data.transmission === "01":
- The code separately loads chunk 114 and starts the glitch effects.
- It records an analytics event labeled
cta_name: "unk_error". - It waits until 1200ms have passed since the last network activity, with a 12-second timeout.
- It runs
console.clear(). - It prints each message one second apart, in red:
console.log("%c%s","color: red;",p). Tables useconsole.table.
This describes the former Transmission 01 path. The current Transmission 02 trigger is documented above.
>Sept 3 — How the evidence was collected
Downloaded the homepage source with curl and found the hidden data-glitch-config JSON.
Inspected the page's JavaScript (556KB, minified) and found console.log("%c%s","color: red;",...), which prints red console text.
Followed the request in the code — that JavaScript file called /partial-capture with the XHR request header and checked for transmission === "01".
Downloaded the separately loaded JavaScript file — webpack's chunk map showed chunk 114's hash. The file contained the glitch animation code and the _p4 selector.
Decoded the binary — each 8-bit byte of the first message converts to one ASCII character: the "USER FLAGGED" sequence.
Requested the old address repeatedly — the responses showed fragments rotating on the server; the September 3 investigation recorded the fragments seen across ~15 requests.
Tested different request headers — requests with the required header served fragments, while requests without it or with other values returned CONNECTION BREACHED. On September 4, 15 requests in both modes returned CONNECTION BREACHED.
Fig A. Captured console output
Screenshot captured 2026-09-03 · starcraft.blizzard.com · no Wayback snapshot
What to Watch
Signals that the ARG has advanced:
- ✓OCCURRED — transmission "02" recovered from /internal-node-trace, Sept 5 UTC (Sept 4 PDT). A later transmission number or changed message is the next signal.
- ■Confirm the live behavior of
_p4elements. Their creation is now present in the bundle; browser execution remains a separate observation. - ✓OCCURRED —
glitch02is present; the current homepage config containsglitch01throughglitch05. - ✓New fragments enter the rotation — OCCURRED ~Sept 3–4, 2026 (second medical-vitals fragment, patient F. C██ — see Fragment 5B)
- ✓The old rotation goes silent — OCCURRED 2026-09-04 (details: Severed Uplink; does not describe the new channel)
- ■The rotation resumes —
/partial-captureserves fragments again instead ofCONNECTION BREACHED - ■BlizzCon announcements