World record Pokemon speedrunner banned for suspected cheating
The Pokemon CompanyA Pokemon speedrunner who cracked a seemingly impossible world record on Pokemon Red has been banned following cheating allegations.
Pokemon speedrunning is a more serious business than you might think with subcultural prestige and even cash on the line. New exploits are constantly emerging and shaking up the scene.
There’s a hugely active fan community for the hobby that lives for the promise of seeing their favorite creators inch out a world record by a matter of seconds. They also aren’t shy about donating thousands to charity for the sake of seeing a speedrunner cave to memes.
With so many people invested in the scene, it requires a dedicated moderation team to keep everything above board. As relayed by GamesRadar+, on January 1, 2024, The Pokemon Speedrun mods released a damning report that disqualifies the previous world record holder of Pokemon Red’s ‘Any% Glitchless’ category for cheating on their run.
Gamefreak/The Pokemon CompanyBack in 2023 when notorious speedrunner Pokeguy set a world record for clearing the ‘Any% Glitchless’ Pokemon Red category with a time of 1:44:03, people assumed that nobody could possibly top it. So, when a newcomer by the name of Jadiwi cracked it in a matter of months, they drew some suspicion.
The suspicion was apparently well founded as the investigation found “sufficient evidence to accuse Jadiwi of cheating and to remove Jadiwi effective immediately from all PSR [Pokemon Speedrun] leaderboards, leaderboard moderation duties, and ban him from submitting further attempts to the leaderboards”.
According to the report, Jadiwi actually confessed to splicing together his multiple world record-breaking runs on various save states via the emulation software they used to run the games. This allowed them to repeat sections that they performed in nonoptimal ways.
The motivation for Jadiwi’s cheating appears to be a set of cash bounties that fans had placed on certain records for clearing Pokemon games. Jadiwi held multiple world records on games in the series and the bounties available could be worth up to $6,000 USD. They are of course ineligible for those prizes now that their runs have been nullified.
The Pokemon Speedrun moderation team also used the report to apologize for their lapse in judgment regarding Jadiwi’s earlier runs. “We are reevaluating our policies for verifying the legitimacy of runs submitted to the leaderboard, and we will be vigilant to not let this happen again in future,” they explained.
So for now, Pokeguy’s legendary speedrun of Pokemon Red is still the officially recognized time to beat. There’s no telling if anyone will ever be able to without resorting to more nefarious means.
