Pre-recorded footage used in bonus speedrun
The Games Done Quick (GDQ) team has announced that it has rescinded a World Record run that took place during last week’s Summer Games Done Quick 2022 event. The run, which featured hack ‘n’ slash actioner Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance, has been nullified after the SGDQ runner admitted to using footage spliced together from previous offline attempts.
While most of the event’s speedruns were showcased on-site, a small handful were held in an online capacity for logistical reasons. A Russian speedrunner tackled Revengeance‘ “Blade Wolf” DLC as part of a viewer donation bonus incentive, and proceeded to achieve a world-best clear time in the process. However, the player has since confessed to having faked the feat by simply playing an edited, pre-recorded video on stream.
“The Blade Wolf DLC run incentive people paid for is a pre-recorded, segmented run,” confessed the runner to GDQ enforcement team after the event. “I haven’t mentioned it anywhere, neither during the submission process or the email I sent to the committee. It was supposed to be a real-time run, but I’ve changed my mind at the last second after switching the saves.”
“I’ve done an actual bad thing, and I shouldn’t have done this on the event… I acted selfishly and I haven’t put more time thinking about others. I am sorry for doing the thing I’ve done. Truly.”
The GDQ team has since removed the run from its YouTube archive and banned the player from participating in future GDQ events. Despite the honest confession, GDQ seems to believe that it was understood by the player that the subterfuge would not be publically outed by the GDQ team. This, obviously, has not been the case.
“This is absolutely unacceptable and attempts to undermine the integrity of the speedrunning community that we love and support,” wrote the team in a statement to PCGamesN. “The exact result they desired was unclear from the document, but it is clear that they believed we would not be willing to speak out about their behavior. However, we believe it is in the community’s best interests to know why this run was removed by GDQ. We have removed [the player’s runs] from our YouTube archive, and will not permit him to run in the future.”
Summer Games Done Quick 2022, returning to the Double Tree Hilton in Bloomington MA for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic forced the events offline, saw some of the fastest and finest players in the world gather together to smash through a huge catalog of new and classic video games. When the curtain fell on Saturday, the event had raised an incredible $3.01 million USD for charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. You can check out (almost) every run from the event on the official GDQ YouTube channel.
The next online GDQ event, Flame Fatales, will take place between August 21-27.
