In a final email to WIRED, on the eve of Cecil’s Defcon speech, Macielewski wrote that he believes those who allege he cheated are using flawed tools with an incomplete picture. Diablo“Dwango is trying to tell a story. Did I cheat? No,” Maserewski wrote. “But at this point it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, because the wonder of exploration has already worn off for a few people, and the script has already been written.”
WIRED Guinness World Records When asked if Macielewski’s records would be removed, a spokesperson gave a vague response: “We value feedback on record titles and strive to maintain the highest standards of accuracy.” An administrator for the Speed Demo Archive (SDA), another speedrun archival website where Macielewski keeps similar records, said: Diablo The administrator, who appears to be more convinced by Cecil’s account, goes by the handle “ktwo” and asked WIRED not to use his real name, saying the SDA hasn’t reached a formal decision and is still waiting for Macelewski’s explanation.
But things aren’t looking good for groobo. “To be clear, we have made a tentative decision based on the information available,” ktwo wrote. “Staff agrees that the analysis raises questions about the run’s validity that need to be addressed, and if they are not, the run would not be released by SDA. Our management team is currently discussing these questions with the runner, and a final decision will be made once the discussion is complete.”
Cecil’s involvement Research into gaming records began in 2017, when speedrunner Eric “Omnigamer” Koziel, who was writing a book on speedrunning, began re-examining records set by Todd Rogers on the Atari 2600 racing game. DragsterRogers’ record of 5.51 seconds stood an astonishing 35 years, but when Koziel reverse-engineered the dragster’s code to try to figure out how Rogers achieved that record, he found that the tricks Rogers claimed to have used (such as starting the game in second gear) did not give him the advantage he claimed.
“The goal is never to point a finger at someone and say, ‘That person is cheating,'” Koziel said. “It’s to try to find the truth.”
Cecil, who knew Koziel from the speedrunning community, offered to help develop a tool-assisted speedrun that could be played on a real Atari 2600 using TASbot, to show that Rogers’ record was impossible even on the original hardware. They found that TASbot’s theoretically perfect performance was 5.57 seconds, slower than Rogers’ claimed time. Despite Rogers’ objections, his 35-year-old record was removed from the record book at gaming record-keeping site Twin Galaxies, along with all of his other records on the site, and Guinness stripped him of his world record for “longest-held video game record.”
“While I don’t agree with their decision, I must applaud them for taking a strong stance on the issue of cheating,” Rogers said in a lengthy public Facebook post in response to the Twin Galaxies’ decision.
