The Hacker Who Hunts Video Game Speedrunning Cheaters

The nighttime earlier Cecil's Defcon talk, Maselewski wrote successful a last email to WIRED that helium believes those alleging that helium cheated are utilizing faulty tools with an incomplete representation of Diablo's complexities. “Dwango is retired to archer a story. Did I cheat? No,” Maselewski writes. “But what is existent oregon not does not substance astatine this point, due to the fact that the wonderment of exploration has already overstayed its invited for a tiny radical of people, and the publication has already been written.”

When WIRED reached retired to the Guinness Book of World Records to inquire if it would instrumentality down Maselewski's record, a spokesperson responded noncommittally that “we worth immoderate feedback connected our grounds titles and are committed to maintaining the highest standards of accuracy.” An head for Speed Demos Archive oregon SDA, different speedrun record-keeping website wherever Maselewski holds a akin Diablo record, seemed to beryllium much persuaded by Cecil's evidence. That administrator, who goes by the grip “ktwo” and asked that WIRED not see their existent name, says that SDA hasn't officially reached a verdict and is inactive waiting to perceive Maselewski's explanation.

Things are not looking bully for groobo, however. “To beryllium clear, we person made a preliminary decision, based connected the disposable information,” ktwo writes “The unit agrees that the investigation raises questions astir the validity of the tally that request to beryllium addressed, oregon other the tally volition beryllium unpublished from SDA. The admin squad is presently discussing these questions with the runner. Once that treatment has concluded, a last determination volition beryllium made.”

Cecil's engagement in investigating gaming records began successful 2017, erstwhile the speedrunner Eric “Omnigamer” Koziel, who was penning a publication astir speedrunning, began re-examining a grounds acceptable by Todd Rogers for the Atari 2600 racing crippled Dragster. Rogers' grounds time, 5.51 seconds, had persisted for a singular 35 years. But erstwhile Koziel reverse engineered Dragster's codification to effort to recognize however Rogers had achieved that time, helium recovered that tricks Rogers said he'd used—such arsenic starting the crippled successful 2nd gear—wouldn't person provided the vantage Rogers claimed.

“The extremity was ne'er to constituent to idiosyncratic and say, ‘Hey, they're cheating,’” says Koziel. “It was to effort to find the truth.”

Cecil, who knew Koziel from the speedrun community, offered to assistance make a tool-assisted speedrun they could replay via TASbot connected a existent Atari 2600 to amusement that, adjacent connected that archetypal hardware, Rogers' grounds was impossible. They recovered that TASbot's theoretically cleanable show was 5.57 seconds, slower than Rogers' alleged time. Despite Rogers’ objections, his three-and-a-half-decade-old grounds was erased from the annals of the gaming records keeper Twin Galaxies—along with each his different records connected the site—and Guinness stripped his satellite grounds for “longest-standing video crippled record.”

"Although I disagree with their decision, I indispensable applaud them for their beardown stance connected the substance of cheating," Rogers wrote successful a lengthy nationalist Facebook post responding to the Twin Galaxies decision.