Speedrunning has been a time-honored custom of online game enjoyers for years, with some information being held not only for months or years, however even many years. One explicit legendary Diablo run, although, has been the topic of scrutiny, an intense investigation, and now a thorough debunking.
In 2009, Maciej “Groobo” Maselewski recorded an Any% segmented run, because the Sorcerer, made up of 27 segments. The ultimate time, at three minutes and 12 seconds, appeared on Pace Demos Archive, the place no issues have been raised, and was subsequently printed on February 26, 2009. It might garner two Guinness World Record entries, and Diablo speedrun makes an attempt would proceed to decline because the run appeared nigh-impossible to problem.
Because the years went on, although, scepticism arose. In 2024, speedrunner Funkmastermp approached Allan “dwangoAC” Cecil to create a Device-Assisted Speedrun, or TAS, of Diablo. Longtime Video games Accomplished Fast viewers will acknowledge dwangoAC as group chief for TASBot, the enjoyable mascot that would seem throughout TAS blocks at GDQ’s charity occasions.
The group received to work, and as detailed in a lengthy writeup by dwangoAC and other team members, began to uncover inconsistencies as they tried to replicate Groobo’s run.
“We simply had a lot of curiosity and resentment that drove us to dig even deeper,” group member Staphen advised Ars Technica in a report detailing their investigation.
As a result of Diablo makes use of seeds to generate maps, it ought to theoretically have been doable to replicate Groobo’s run. To find the seed Groobo used, the TAS group built a custom map tool that would reverse-engineer sport seeds and decide the map, merchandise, and quest potentialities therein. Then, a scanner instrument constructed on prime of it may sift by way of all of the seeds and seek for dungeons that may go well with speedrunners.
The group searched throughout roughly 2.2 billion RNG seeds, making an attempt to recreate Groobo’s run, and could not discover one which imitated all of the seemingly excellent era. It appeared to point out this wasn’t made up of segments from a single file or run, however from completely different runs.
The deeper they dug, the extra oddities popped up; unusual model markers in the primary menu, inconsistent inventories, quests, and extra.
In a ultimate conclusion, the group stated its discoveries show Groobo used “illegitimate means to produce the outcomes proven within the run,” together with combining gameplay from completely different runs, modifying reminiscence, and utilizing “gameplay-removing video splices.”
“Total, the group’s evaluation conclusively reveals the run was not doable as Groobo described with out disqualifying modifications,” the group stated. “The run ought to subsequently be instantly retracted from all leaderboards.”
The writeup goes on to element a response from Groobo, who advised Wired: “My run is a segmented/spliced run. It at all times has been and it was by no means handed off as anything, nor was it half of any competitors or leaderboards. The speeddemosarchive web page states that outright.”
The investigation group introduced its evaluation to Pace Demos Archive, which then mentioned the findings independently with Groobo. On September 10, 2024, SDA posted an replace saying the removing of all Diablo runs by Groobo. The Diablo speedrunning group, in the meantime, kicked again into gear and began setting new information.
At a presentation, as reported by Ars Technica, dwangoAC stated he pursued the investigation as a result of “it did hurt.”
“Groobo’s alleged dishonest in 2009 fully stopped curiosity in speedrunning this class,” Cecil stated. “Nobody tried, nobody may.”
Eric is a freelance author for IGN.