These DOOM Cheaters Were Caught Red Handed

helloyou absolute legends in the mid 90s doom single-handedly assured in a brand new genre of gaming competition it essentially gave birth to the artform we now know as speedrunning there were two main ingredients that doing provided that led to this explosion in popularity of trying to beat games as quickly as possible the first was the end screen that seemed to encourage this type of competition not only did it show the time in which he completed each level but it included a part time that John Romero himself set as a milestone to overcome the concept of trying to beat someone else's time might seem pretty standard today but this was pretty revolutionary at the time and was definitely an idea that was outside of the box the other important piece of the speedrunning puzzle was the ability to record and easily share demo files these files are a fraction of the size of a video file so they could be sent quickly over the sluggish dial-up connections most players possessed at the time these demos perfectly replicate the original run and are essentially as good as a straight video recording demos are still the standard method of documenting speedruns today which is definitely not in line with the general trend of speedrunning nowadays almost all popular speedrunning games will showcase live streamed attempts and live video footage of both the game and the runner given that the majority of doom speedruns lack the live reactions and live gameplay people have come to expect people have asked the question how do we know someone is actually playing in these demos with the rise of tool assisted speedruns people have become more and more suspicious of new records the documentation of specific examples of cheaters has grown people's awareness of the possibility of cheating it's practically a universal law that where there is competition there is cheating the attempt to gain an unfair advantage in order to win eventually manifests in every community at some point our goal is to hopefully identify it when it emerges Doom is of course no exception and today we will look at some examples of runners that have tried and failed to pass faked runs as legitimate through these examples we will learn a bit about how runners may cheat but more importantly we will learn how do you feed runners can spawn these cheaters and uncover the truth I hope you enjoy before we start I must include a disclaimer that this video is not about hating on anyone or stirring up drama this is purely for educational and entertainment purposes only I will avoid using full names or specific game attacks for this reason to begin we are going to go all the way back to 1996 around this time there was one pretty major milestone that players were eagerly awaiting the completion of this was a full game no death and no save play through of doom 2 on the nightmare difficulty this is a tremendously difficult challenge and one that still had not been beaten more than a year after due him to his release some players even deemed this challenge impossible simply too hard to complete so it was a pretty big deal when the player Stefan released the first ever demo of this run being completed in May of 1996 the full run was 1 hour 5 minutes and 20 seconds in length upon release players were blown away by the achievement but throughout the year opinions on the run began to shift there was something strange about the demo something odd about the way Stefan moved his control of doom guy seemed to slow to methodical to unnatural a stark contrast from the way doom runs are normally carried out by the end of 1996 it was universally accepted that the Run was tool-assisted as other players became more experienced shady suspicious play became all the more obvious the truth is that Stefan had been playing in slow motion the telltale signs were plastered everywhere he seamlessly avoided barrage after barrage of EM fireballs without a second thought or any hesitation his slow movement didn't seem to make sense and with the movement this slow you'd almost certainly be killed very quickly by monsters especially on the nightmare difficulty given that monsters respawn meaning that the faster you go the less monsters you ultimately have to deal with yet Stefan breezed through levels effortlessly his luck was abnormally high throughout the run indicating that not only was he using slow motion but was also abusing these save and reload function something that is strictly forbidden in this category it might seem like it would be pretty easy to record a run in slow motion and simply speed up the demo but it's actually pretty damn hard to make it look realistic 20 experience player it is obnoxiously obvious when someone is playing in slow motion the movements and reaction times are so vastly different from normal play contrast Stefan's slow patient movement with the first legitimate full nightmare run by the legend Thomas Pilger achieved in October of 1998 this is the style of gameplay that you'd expect to see it took Thomas more than a year of hard work to build up the skills and strategies to accomplish this groundbreaking run and he managed to complete it in 49 minutes and 49 seconds a truly remarkable feat that he's still considered extremely difficult to this day Stefan's nightmare run wasn't the only obviously tool-assisted demo and he had a slew of other demos that show the same hallmarks of cheating as experienced among players grew so did their ability to identify and understand foul play stefan was the first high profile player to have all of his demos removed from the database another high-profile player that had all of their demos stripped from the database for using slow motion was Andy and it was actually a programmer and was pretty well known for creating his own doom tools the kind of tools that enabled him to play and record in slow motion his demos were a lot more sophisticated and believable than Stefan's but again to the experienced players it's extremely obvious the jagged quick turns are a sure sign of slow motion abuse it's actually pretty jarring to watch if you've seen doom speedruns before though to a new viewer the manic style of play might fly under the radar on a technical level it's actually pretty hard to prove that someone used slow motion to record their demo and these cases are usually governed by the collective experience of the community splicing or save state abuse on the other hand has seen much more concrete examples of cheaters being exposed there was a pretty recent example that occurred in 2018 this case was slightly more egregious because it involved money on the doom world forums the administrator link we saw posted a demo on with a prize of $100 going to the winner the rules were to complete math 18 on doom 2 as fast as possible with a combined total 4 kills items and secrets adding up to at least 100 percent a couple of pretty big names entered including King dime a full game specialist and looper who have discussed in previous videos needless to say the competition was pretty stacked another player player M was also in the mix and the runners went back and forth lowering the time and optimizing the strategy lupa set a new benchmark of 37 seconds and he was pretty confident that this would not be beaten without the invention of a better strategy in his own words Lew Park grinded his ass off to get 37 so when player M came back with a 36 loopers immediate reaction was one of excitement as he had no doubt a new strategy had been created but to his surprise when he checked the demo the exact same route was used only with perfected movement player M was a pretty solid player but in loopers mind his achievement of 36 seconds was a little above his pay grade so he investigated the demo file in greater detail one of the advantages of doom demos is the fact that you can actually view the exact inputs that were used for every single frame if we take a look at four shockblast run of eight seconds on hanger we can see what he was doing at every moment the inputs are abbreviated and the value for each input is given M f50 stands for it moved forward with a value of 50 SL 40 means strafe left with a value of 40 these tools are useful for a few things one of them being to see exactly how long each run was to the frame which is why in this hanger run we can see that it was eight point nine seven seconds long but another important use is the ability to closely examine demos in order to spot anomalies that may uncover a foul play there were a couple of moments in the run that were definitely suspicious if not flat-out impossible in a real run lupa sent his findings to the doom world admin who made a post in the contest topic he stated Emmit your latest run exits on literally the last possible tech of getting 36 and there are several unusual input patterns in your demo in the attached photos he shows the anomalies in this picture we can see that he went from SR 42 SR 50 then a frame later had 0 inputs which is what WT means only to go back to SR 50 a frame later for those unfamiliar with SR 50 it is a difficult value to reach that requires multiple inputs simultaneously to achieve so it seems infeasible that a players fingers would be able to lift off the keyboard perfectly and be placed back down perfectly in a single frame this weird pattern of one frame gaps in inputs happened a couple of times throughout Em's run and they just so happen to take place just before areas that require high lock em plate ignorant in his response leading to link we saw stating if you cannot offer an explanation for how you the person pressing the keys could have done this then I can only conclude you cheated by re-recording the demo and resuming control at that particular point because you want to win the money mmm did end up confessing to the cheating and voluntarily left the community expressing regret demo analysis like this can also spot play that is too perfect or unrealistic in order to pass a fate demo off as real you have to have a very deep understanding of what is or isn't possible at that point it may even be easier to actually achieve the time given that you'd need to already have the expertise to know what to do now we will look at a player that had one of the funniest responses to being outed as a cheater one of the fun side competitions players like to compete in on the doom World forums is called iron men players play through various map sets to see who can make it the farthest without dying over the years there was one player that seems to completely dominate winning the vast majority of competitions player K appeared to be an Iron Man master and seemed to be able to beat incredibly difficult Maps even without having played them before over time suspicions grew that came maybe cheating and after some deep analysis it was none other than zero master who first came forward and made the claim of foul he outlined obvious use of slow motion during difficult fights as well as evidence of re-recording when something bad happens in a run players can rewind to the demo to before the mishap occurred and restart from that earlier point but this becomes pretty obvious when the luck throughout the entire run is abnormally high and it becomes statistically unreasonable for anyone to believe sections hadn't been played several times if they are especially sloppy as was the case with the previous example player M this can cause out of place inputs where the players forget what they were pressing at that point so when they restart the demo different keys are pressed looper also came forward in the topic and provided evidence for the use of rear according pointing out holes in the inputs just like we had seen before as well as evidence of slow motion use Kay's response was actually pretty typical full confirm to Cheetahs he attacked zero masters character and accused him of being jealous this is especially hilarious given that zero master is one of the most accomplished doom players of all time so it makes no sense at all for him to be jealous of any other player he dodged the actual grievances that were laid out and didn't attempt to explain the anomalies at all stating you human me greatly with your arrogance and contempt a flood of accusations born from the poison of envy and smite of disrespect I won't address the individual gameplay scenario as you've highlighted as the foundation of your argument arises from jealousy he continued thank you for revealing your true colors seething with jealousy and enveloped by arrogance you've lost what respect I had for you if you've come to your senses you will offer an apology take a good look in the mirror before you make such a disgusting accusation against a fellow team player who has not caused strife and discord but shows humility and respect with a carefree attitude his post contains several overused tropes including I don't care what anyone else thinks I have nothing to gain I have more important things to do I don't have the time etc etc these have all been seen many times before it really seems like there is some kind of template cheaters draw from when making these response posts it is uncanny has specific phrases and lines find their way into every cheaters vocabulary in any case this was the last post player K ever made and he completely disappeared from the community doom houses the oldest speedrunning community in existence period the collective experience and expertise is enormous if you are going to try and pass off a cheated run as real you are in for a massive battle certainly it would be seemingly impossible for a lesser player to do so as you need very deep knowledge in order to understand what is or isn't normal at the top levels players can examine every single input every single frame to determine if there are any tampering making the task even more difficult thanks for watching u legends I hope you are having a fantastic day and I will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 2,574,031

Rating: 4.9094806 out of 5

Keywords: speedrun, karl jobst, speedrunning, doom speedrun, ultimate doom, id software, world record progression, john carmack, john romero, classic gaming, retro speedrun, doom cheats, video game cheaters, cheaters caught, doom, doom eternal, doom history, speedrun documentary, doom classic, karl jobst doom

Id: Jv0ZRTlIXR0

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2019