There are hundreds of ways to cheat at speedrunning – this streamer found his own to do so.
Speedrunning is a lot more than just finishing a game as fast as possible. It is its own way of gaming with its own community, ruleset and value system – and through events like GDQ (Games Done Quick) it's also a fantastic way to collect donations for charities and other good causes.
The one aspect that unites all types of speedrunning is the clear rule that cheating is prohibited. There may be different interpretations as to what counts as cheating (for example, there are runs that deliberately use glitches in the game, while others explicitly refrain from doing so), however just playing back a previously made recording of the game is considered cheating in any case.
Yet it happens regularly anyway, and players use different methods to cheat their way to a world record. This is why the speedrunning community is ever-skeptical and keeps a wary eye on every new run. And this is exactly what recently proved fatal for a streamer.
A Tournament With A Predetermined Winner
Twitch streamer Diego claimed he wanted to do some good for his viewers and the speedrun community of the Jump'n'Run classic Donkey Kong Country 2. So he launched his own little DKC2 Speedrun Tournament.
The winner's prize? $100 donated by his own viewers and most importantly, the glory of victory.
That's why, only days after the announcement, several smaller "let's players" came forward to figure out together who will be first at helping Diddy and Dixie on the quest to find their friend Donkey. The participants did not meet in person for this tournament, however. Instead, they all streamed a run of the game from their home setups – which was unusual but also essential for Diego's plan.
While it was in no way an attempt to break the DKC2 world record, the participants still wanted to find out who would be fastest among them. They gave it their all to beat level after level as fast as possible.
A Perfect Run
What quickly became clear: Diego, who was both organizer and player of the tournament, was on a roll. He made no mistakes – every tricky jump, every rope swing, every barrel thrown at a kremling. He succeeded at them all with flying colors.
The community was as anxious as Diego seemed, focusing on the game. The streamer gritted his teeth when Dixie Kong was nearly hit by a deadly bee, threw his whole body in the direction he let Diddy roll to and winced as soon as the virtual monkey got hit by a boss – all in a short period of time.
The community was sure that Diego would win his own tournament by a wide margin if he'd make no bigger mistakes. And as soon as he encountered the finals boss, his victory seemed to be guaranteed.
And indeed: Diego managed to defeat the crocodile boss with his two monkeys without any problems.
Absolute Monkey Business
When all of Diego's tension and excitement was released, he jumped from his chair, threw his controller on the table and performed a victory dance – a little dance in which Dixie seemed to join in. Because long after Diego put down his controller, Dixie Kong set off on another jump – something that was impossible, under normal circumstances.
The viewers noticed it immediately and called Diego out for cheating – which prompted him to ban every viewer who did so. The other participants also found out about this through the users in their chats – but Diego showed no sign of understanding.
He tried to explain that the delay between gameplay and the broadcast via YouTube made it look like the monkey girl was jumping when he wasn't holding his controller – but nobody believed this.
Instead, even more evidence emerged that made the whole thing look like fraud.
Videoplayer And Splicing
Firstly, viewers noticed that during the whole run there was no delay between Diego's gameplay and his camera feed. Quiet the opposite – it was perfectly matched. His supposed attempt to show the monitor also failed, cause even if the streamer only filmed his monitor for a splitsecond, one clear frame was enough to identify the videoplayer used to play a previously recorded run and pass it off as live footage of him playing.
But his cheating didn't stop there. Some keen-eyed viewers, who analyzed the footage afterward discovered clear signs of splicing.
"Splicing" is a method many cheaters use to fake speedruns. Different runs are recorded and the best parts of each are edited together (spliced) to create a singular run that appears perfect and seamless.
Many speedrunners noticed that the animated heads, seen in the hubworld of DKC2, closed their mouths way faster in Diego's footage than possible – which was a clear indicator that he spliced his run.
The Community Never Forgets
Despite the overwhelming evidence, Diego didn't back down and still insisted that he hadn't cheated. He even went so far as to blocking long-time followers of his stream and broke off contact with the other participants of the tournament.
It's difficult to say whether or not the other participants are still interested in this at all. But it is clear that the speedrunning community will not forget about this.