Every game has cheaters. However, there are varying levels of acceptability. It’s fine to motherlode on The Sims, as it’s a single-player game and you can play it however you want. It’s not fine to use aimbot in a multiplayer shooter, because you’re ruining other people’s fun. The worst of all, however, is cheating in a competitive environment, whether that be at an esports tournament or on a speedrunning leaderboard. That’s exactly what Roblox speedrunner Quinten, who goes by ‘kannotlogin’ on Reddit, encountered.
It all started with Ultimate Easy Obby, a collaboration between Roblox and Guinness World Records. Ultimate Easy Obby is, essentially, single-player Fall Guys. You have to navigate a bunch of colorful physics puzzles as quickly as possible, avoiding obstacles and not tumbling off the precarious edge of the course. Quinten spent a week challenging for the top spot on the leaderboard and getting his name into that big book that every kid always used to get for Christmas each year. What was with that, by the way?
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know Roblox had a speedrunning scene. But then, it’s one of the best multiplayer games ever, with countless varied experiences coexisting within its framework. However, this speedrun wasn’t without its flaws. And those flaws were cheaters desperate to claim glory by any means possible.
After posting an impressive 05:48:96 time on the leaderboard, sitting right at the top, Quinten was satisfied. He’d spent all week optimizing his run, shaving off millisecond after millisecond in order to be crowned champion. However, days before the challenge was due to close, three accounts posted times of 05:42. Completing this course six seconds quicker felt impossible, so Quinten started sleuthing.
His investigation involved checking timestamp badges on the users’ accounts, finding expired items in their inventories, and proving that the accounts were missing a ‘digital receipt’ – i.e. an item that you received for completing the course. Without that, it was proof that they’d run some kind of script to teleport to the end rather than crossing the finish line fairly.
Quinten also submitted a frame-by-frame analysis of his best run, carefully analyzing where he could have shaved off any time. He found that the cheaters’ times were mathematically impossible, even with a perfect, tool-assisted run.
After sending all this to Guinness World Records, all he could do was wait. Thankfully, they considered his proof valid, voided the three times ahead of him, and awarded him the world record that was rightfully his.
It’s a shame that Quinten was forced to put this much effort into verifying his run and proving that the late entrants had cheated, but justice prevailed in the end. It goes to show, if you’re trying to get into the book of Guinness World Records, you best practice your speedruns instead of resorting to scripts. That, or crush 70 watermelons with your head in under a minute.