{"id":25522,"date":"2024-01-15T18:57:35","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T09:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=25522"},"modified":"2024-01-15T19:13:56","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T10:13:56","slug":"20240115-25522","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/20240115-25522\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Pokemon Red World Record Speedrun cheating scandal \u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the end of last year, the speedrun world record was broken in the \u201cAny% Glitchless\u201d category for Pok\u00e9mon Red<\/strong> on the Gameboy Advance. However, this attempt by player Jadiwi was subsequently scrubbed from the leaderboard and disqualified from prize money gains after close examination revealed that cheating was involved. This incident has led moderators to reassess their verification policies for world record speedruns.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even today, speedrunners are still trying to beat each other in racing through the first generation of Pok\u00e9mon games while achieving specific goals. In the category \u201cAny% Glitchless<\/a>,\u201d speedrunners focus on getting to the end of game as fast as possible without worrying about their percentage of completion (Any%). However, taking advantage of in-game bugs is forbidden (\u201cGlitchless\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On January 26, 2023, the Any% Glitchless world record was surpassed for the first time in 2 years. In a legitimate run, a speedrunner named pokeguy broke the record<\/a> with a time of 1 hour 44 minutes 3 seconds. The Pok\u00e9mon Speedrun community voiced the opinion that 1 hour 43 minutes would be the absolute shortest record possible by a human being, due to random factors that can easily affect the time as well as the degree of luck involved.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"pokeguy
pokeguy achieving the world record in Pokemon Red Any% Glitchless. With Jadiwi disqualified, pokeguy is still the world record holder (Image Credit: pokeguy on YouTube<\/a>). <\/font><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

However, the world record was seemingly broken again on December 26, 2023, by Pok\u00e9mon series speedrunner Jadiwi, who completed an Any% Glitchless run in 1 hour 43 minutes and 52 seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant that Jadiwi was on track to receive a maximum total of $8500 USD in bounties (prize money) put up by the Pok\u00e9mon speedrunning community. For breaking the world record in the Pok\u00e9mon Red \u201cAny% Glitchless\u201d category, $5000 USD in prize money is up for grabs, with a further bounty of $2,500 USD payable to whoever the world record holder is on February 1, 2024. Furthermore, a $1000 USD bounty was to be awarded if someone achieved a completion time in the 1 hour 43 minute bracket by December 31, 2023. The rule for all three bounties was that the run must be performed live on a streaming platform. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Comparison of Jadiwi\u2019s June and September 2023 attempts, showing how quickly he managed to reduce his completion time.\u00a0<\/font><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The short period of time and relatively low number of attempts in which Jadiwi managed to attain the world record caught the attention of the moderating team. Jadiwi started broadcasting his Any% Glitchless attempts on March 26 and was able to continuously improve upon his personal bests, going from 2:12:54 on March 26 to 1:47:39 in June after only 119 attempts. Conversely, world record holder pokeguy racked up around 2800 runs in a 6-month period prior to breaking the record and was also making attempts prior to this.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When examining Jadiwi\u2019s December 26 world record attempt, Pokemon Speedruns Moderation Team noticed numerous red flags that suggested the speedrunner was cheating. Firstly, evidence emerged to show that Jadiwi\u2019s world record run was pre-recorded, which would disqualify him from the prize money. The first sign of this was that he did not respond to a message from a moderator in the Twitch chat asking him to reset his emulator to prove that the world record run was not prerecorded. Jadiwi later claimed that he did not see the message in time.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Jadiwi also posted now-deleted VODs of offline attempts at breaking the record to his alternative Youtube channel. The layouts of these videos were also used to help moderators determine that the world record attempt was pre-recorded.(Image Credit: the Pok\u00e9mon Speedruns Moderation Team\u2019s Jadwini Report<\/a> on Google Docs)<\/font>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The moderators discovered that differences in Jadiwi\u2019s \u201cSum of Best Segments\u201d score between his 10th<\/sup> Twitch stream run and his 11th<\/sup> run (the World Record) didn\u2019t make sense. There was a gap of only 50 minutes between these two streams, with top speedrunners agreeing that it would be impossible for him to decrease his Sum of Best Segments score from 1:41:24 to 1:40:54 in this time. In response, Jadiwi claimed that he was doing runs on a different computer on December 25 and 26 because he was at his parents\u2019 house, and had accidentally used an out-of-date splits file. However, this discrepancy led the moderators to realize that the world record beating run actually took place prior to his relocation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, the moderators noticed a slight difference in Jadiwi\u2019s stream layout. The LiveSplit layout was exactly the same in the first 10 runs, but for the 11th<\/sup> world record run, it moved a couple of pixels. This would not be suspicious on its own, but stood out in light of the other evidence against the speedrunner, adding to the evidence that the world record run was pre-recorded.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Animation created by the moderating team that illustrates how Jadiwi\u2019s streaming layout changed by a few pixels on the world record run (Image Credit: the Pok\u00e9mon Speedruns Moderation Team\u2019s Jadiwi Report<\/a> on Google Docs).<\/font><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jadiwi subsequently confessed to cheating in this world record run as well as others. In his confession<\/a>, Jadiwi states that he started out making legitimate speedrun attempts. He reveals that his decision to start cheating came from a decline in motivation after thousands of unsuccessful attempts. All Jadiwi\u2019s speedrun records have since been removed and he has been banned from Speedrun.com and the Pok\u00e9mon speedrunners\u2019 community Discord server.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their report<\/a>, the moderating team apologized for allowing the situation to go on for as long as it did, acknowledging that they should have gone public with their suspicions and demanded a higher standard of proof from Jadiwi earlier on. They stated that \u201cWe are reevaluating our policies for verifying the legitimacy of runs submitted to the leaderboard, and we will be vigilant to not let this happen again in future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by. Verity Townsend<\/a> based on the original Japanese article<\/a> <\/a>(original article\u2019s publication date: 2024-01-11 18:29 JST) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We examine exactly how speedrunner Jadiwi cheated in his world record run of Pokemon Red and how the moderators uncovered this deception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":25546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[18,33,70],"class_list":["post-25522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-global-news","tag-nintendo","tag-pokemon-series"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\nBehind the Pokemon Red World Record Speedrun cheating scandal \u00a0\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We examine exactly how speedrunner Jadiwi cheated in his world record run of Pok\u00e9mon Red and how the moderators uncovered this deception\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/20240115-25522\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Behind the Pokemon Red World Record Speedrun cheating scandal \u00a0\u00a0 - 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