With all the talk over Billy Mitchel, Jawdiwi’s, and Queenpwnzalot cheating recently I wanted to talk about the sheer toxicity these people can create. Is cheating, hacking, modding, or changing a game in some way bad? If you are doing it on your own or in single player games without any competition or contest then I think that is okay because you are only hurting yourself rather than anyone else, but the minute you are going online to play with others or as part of a competition that is crossing a line and I struggle to see how anyone can say that is a good thing. Take games like Among Us, Call of Duty, and Fall Guys all three have large audiences, but most won’t even bother playing anymore because hackers cheating at the game when a majority of players just want a fair round. I firmly believe hackers just want to skip actually getting good at a game and try and cheat their way to it and see the irritation, anger, and lack of fun they cause other players as a trophy they can brag to other hackers. I actually can’t play online games anymore due to games with legitimate players only looking for a good time eventually coming to an end thanks to these guys who can’t be bothered to give a fair win and in my opinion if you are willing to cheat people you don’t know online in a game what are you willing to do to people in real life to people you do know? There may not be consequences in the online space, but you can’t cheat people and get away with it.

The Billy Mitchel situation is well known he did cheat his scores and submitted them in a competition then lied about it. He did so to increase his popularity and financial position. The competition was only for authentic and approved Donkey Kong arcade cabinets, but it is widely believed that he used an emulator by the name of MAME. Emulators can change certain things about a game in this case the opening cutscene is choppy, the ability to move diagonally, and in some cases faster gameplay. Which on the original Donkey Kong only had four directions and a jump button thus the things MAME allows can be an advantage compared to other players. When questioned on any of this he tries to sue or hide his involvement. Many wrongly say he was the first to score a perfect score on these games. This is especially terrible towards Ginnis World Records and to be honest they are the worst source for gaming records and you are better off looking this up yourself. Even they were wrong to reinstate his scores due to a settlement lawsuit. Twin Galaxies also settled and his scores are only on their site when you access the ‘historical archive’ on their site. In my opinion it should be renamed to cheaters archive and is only named as such for legal reasons.

Jadiwi used a spliced Speedrun to try and cheat their way to specific bounties and clear a game in a given time. A splice is when someone does multiple runs and takes their best times for different parts then submitting it as a singular run. Bounties are money given for times in this case $6000 for a glitchless run of Pokemon Red done in 52 minutes. The thing about this is that all speedruns submitted to speedrun.com need to be verified and while Jadiwi got away with it before there was shade towards this run so moderators looked at this and the other runs and found several inconsistencies. Pokemon rarely has a speedrun cheater in fact this was the first major cheater in over a decade and understandably in that no one wants to accuse someone of cheating just for some things looking off, but when everything from NPC behavior to IVs of their Pokemon is off or a small chance entirely even healing her team at weird times that cost the run a few seconds so she wouldn’t attract attention to themselves and avoid getting a record run. They almost took $6000 from a more deserving runner who submitted the same month. Furthermore, the reason her splices were hard to detect was because she knows video editing to a certain degree and picked certain moments where it would be hard to detect to splice in better runs.

Queens cheating is still being covered, but in all honesty makes me question Asmolgold I know he isn’t an expert, but it should not be hard to figure out. Queen was attempting a blind run of a boss fight in Monster Hunter World. A couple of things caught my eye about it she was able to correctly dodge and pinpoint enemy attacks so she could see you could say specific sound ques for attacks, but how does she know the exact distance needed to dodge. Anyone doing a blind run usually takes a lot of damage during fights due to under correcting or overcorrecting positioning or goes for strategies that are a sure way to win in this case: lock on to ensure hits which she never uses or move out of range which she doesn’t just goes to a spot where the move won’t hit her. Furthermore, she is seen fixing her camera to face the boss this shouldn’t be necessary as if you are blind it doesn’t matter where the camera is. In fact people who have done blind runs sometime knock their camera and the entire run goes by staring at the ceiling the reason they don’t fix it is they don’t know it is. What makes it worse is she tried to cheat a second run of the same boss fight to prove something only to insult this community more.

Jobst, Karl. “This FAKE Blindfold Speedrun Fooled Everyone…” Youtube, uploaded by Karl Jobst, 29, February 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTLfU4ysKHg&t=1174s

Jobst, Karl. “Streamer Fakes Blindfold Speedrun For Clout” Youtube, uploaded by Karl Jobst,
19, February 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugT5eLpuwMo

Jobst, Karl. “Billy Mitchell Lost His Lawsuit” Youtube, uploaded by Karl Jobst, 16, January 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7mE1LkkOGg&t=53s

Abyssoft. “Caught Red-Handed: Streamer FAKES A Blindfolded Speedrun” Youtube, uploaded by Abyssoft, 29 February, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OlxQb0jT-w&t=16s

PulseEffects. “Biggest CHEATER in Pokemon Speedrun History Was Just Caught.” Youtube, uploaded by PulseEffects, 11, January 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px5fOalltXw&t=51s