Diablo Speedrun World Record Proven Fake After 13 Years
TL;DR:
A long-standing Diablo speedrun world record has been debunked using a reverse-engineered map generation tool, revealing it was manipulated beyond allowable exploits. The discovery has inspired a new category of "seeded" runs with preselected advantageous maps.
Full Article:
In a shocking revelation, a team of Diablo speedrun enthusiasts has definitively proven that a three-minute any% world record, held since 2009, was faked. The effort involved reverse-engineering Diablo's map generation system, which boasts over 2.2 billion possible legitimate outputs.
The offending speedrun was uploaded to Speed Demos Archive in March 2009 by Maciej "groobo" Maselewski. It featured an incredibly "lucky" sorcerer run with an unrealistically fast finish time of 3:12. While segmented any% runs allow certain exploits and save/redo mechanics, the Diablo mapgen team alleges that groobo's manipulation extended far beyond these bounds.
"Many levels had the upstairs and downstairs right next to each other, which seemed extremely unusual," commented speedrun expert Allan "dwangoAC" Cecil. "We set out to investigate the possibility of replicating this."
The Diablo mapgen tool, developed primarily by Matthew Petroff on Github, allowed the team to examine the entire dungeon below Tristram, including item, exit, and quest distribution, based on a given game seed. Each seed represents a procedurally generated layout of the game, with 2.2 billion legitimate variations, each assigned to a second on the system clock.
Despite groobo's claims that his run was based solely on luck and skill, the mapgen tool revealed that the highly advantageous conditions he encountered could only be found outside Diablo's valid date range. While the game can be hacked to operate outside these seeds, it's unclear how groobo achieved his specific run in 2009.
Groobo defended his run, claiming it was a segmented run that was never presented as anything else. However, this explanation does not account for the extreme improbability of the dungeon layout or other irregularities, such as the ease with which he defeated Diablo and mismatched details suggesting spliced footage.
The debunked 3:12 run has been removed from Speed Demos Archive, but its footage remains available on YouTube. The Guinness Book of World Records, which still lists it as the "fastest completion of an RPG videogame," has yet to respond to the findings.
"This alleged cheating severely impacted speedrunning in this category," said dwangoAC. "No one attempted to challenge it, thinking it was unachievable."
On the positive side, the Diablo mapgen tool has sparked interest in a new category of "seeded" runs, where players select advantageous layouts from the 2.2 billion legitimate seeds. This has opened up new possibilities for competitive speedrunning within Diablo's constraints.