Skoe99: The Biggest Accidental Glitch In Geometry Dash History 

i've seen some people angry at my use of the word 'cheating' or 'hacking' in the title and video, calling it slanderous due to that. i would like to explain why i phrased it this way, as i did not mean for it to be slanderous at all. i will be changing the title to be more aware of this regardless, because i understand the concern, but i'd like to explain myself as well. i am not using 'cheating' or 'hacking' as an implication that he did it intentionally, or in a way that is malicious by origin. by no means do i think he did it intentionally at all. im using it to describe when a player has an objective extreme advantage over others in an unfair manner. the way in which he verified the third variant, even if unintentional, would be considered cheated and hacked. this is only a negative connotation if you think it is malicious by origin. even though this is the case, i have made sure to emphasise that he did not do it maliciously. that is why the 'cheater' in the title is in quotation marks. that is why the thumbnail points out that he did it accidentally. that is why, by the end of the video, i emphasise the fact that people felt bad for him, and that he should not be given any negativity for what happened. none of us (myself, blanket addict, syzzi, etc.) were biased against skoe. we knew he did not mean to do it. the conversations in which the possibility of him hacking or other things were not direct accusations; they were theoretical scenarios we were coming up with to try and understand what was happening. the story was about trying to uncover what actually happened, and which scenario is true. in the end, skoe was never actually a cheater in the first place. that is what the actual meaning of the story is if you watch it all. and since it has been brought up, id like to make it clear that i know skoe commited credit card fraud and scammed people with mega hack (this is not an accusation, there is concrete proof of this). i thought that this would be an extremely out of context and strange situation to include in a video which is completely unrelated to it. im sorry if it seems like im making out skoe to be a good person by the end; this is just the story i wanted to tell.

I feel super bad for skoe, imagine learning one day that every major achievement youve had in gd was accidentally hacked and meant basically nothing...

This is such a fantastic video. Super interesting topic. Thanks for sharing

I have a problem with the way "bugged" and "hacked"/"cheated" are used interchangeably in this video. It's represented like a callout video on a prolific hacker, when really it was a poor victim of an obscure bug. The verification was not "hacked" - it was simply "bugged." Intent matters.

As a computer programmer, this is something I THINK might be happening: It's probably an issue with vsync. Let me explain. Most screen recorders such as obs record at either 30 or 60 fps and the way they work is they essentially capture your screen at 60 fps (pretty much as if you used vsync) and if you want the recording to be 30 fps, they just skip every other frame. This is done so that the video doesn't have any vertical tears (this is what vsync is for btw). GD is a mess when it comes to the way its coded, I can imagine. I don't know how GD is coded, but let's add up 2 things: Rob being a solo developer and likely his code isn't the most organized thing, and somebody making a mod for his game, megahack, that can interfere with pretty much everything in game, even to the extend of changing the fps the game is supposed to run at, all the time. It's probably something along the lines of OBS recording the screen at 60 fps (vsync), and because GD is spaghetti code and doesn't mind being run at 60 fps (it's meant to do that anyway, at least it was in 2.1) it just allows it to happen (but only what matters for the recording, so doesn't change the inner physics of the game at 360 fps vs 60 fps, because that doesn't matter as far as OBS is concerned) and megahack isn't coded to counteract on that so just allows it. It has to be a combination of GD being spaghetti and OBS wanting vsync. About the discord screenshare thing, wasn't the video supposed to say that when he screenshared he would be consistent instead of when he watched a screenshare? Either way discord could maybe somehow interfere with that as well, as could watching any video (which mostly play at 30 fps or 60 fps) which plays on a piece of software that isn't made specifically to play videos (so google chrome doesn't count, but discord or idk, something like league of legends client might somehow disrupt that). Overall, it is inconclusive, it needs more testing, the question though is: is it actually all that worth it to go through all the effort? Hope my message is at least a bit understandable haha

this video deserves a far more interesting title, and after watching it really doesn't seem accurate to call Skoe a cheater, either. this is about the bug, this bizarre intractable bug that makes all this happen is so intriguing, i really hope this blows up so people can see it.

I am somewhere in this video

Can I just say that blanket addict is the absolute goat for trying to find the root cause of the problem rather than just saying they cheated and putting an end to it. They remind me of how scientists always push for a why until they hit a brick wall and cant go any further, such dedication to working out the bug is admirable for sure.

It makes sense that this bug went unnoticed for so long. It *had* to take an extremely specific context (beating frame perfect challenges), specific setup (be it the mouse or the screenshare), and this community to finally be investigated. Other players might have been experiencing this constantly but never noticed because they weren't playing precise enough gameplay, or would've just kept it to themselves thinking it was not worth considering. Since it's an issue GD-specific, it might be the way the app interacts with software or hardware that is causing this. Other computers/input devices/operating systems should probably be tested further.

That bug is so fucking freaky, for all we know there are thousands of players who unknowingly have this bug actively limiting their performance at the game

To this day my most popular video abuses this same bug. Being a victim of it was brutal lmao. Also excellent video please make more!!!!!!

This is an insanely good video for a channel of this size, very few gd videos keep me hooked until the end in the modern day. Nice work!

this needs way more attention. i saw it all the way through and couldn't help but feel bad for skoe

i have a decently short attention span, and i actually watched this all the way through. this was very fun to watch, very well edited, and a pretty cool topic. good job on this! :)

On my previous pc I experienced this bug with obs. Back then I had no idea why regular levels felt significantly easier off recording. I somehow figured out it didn't happen in windowed mode so I switched to it. On my current pc it thankfully doesn't happen and I'm able to play on fullscreen. Great video

Amazing editing, especially 0:31 gave me chills

This is genuinely so depressing Imagine figuring out how your entire life was just a lie *just a bug*

I never expected gd to have a digital equivalent of wearing down an snes controller making mario kart easier

Great video! I remember when this was verified, and next thing I know he “accidentally cheated” . I had no idea what it meant and was super curious. Glad to have it explained in such an insane video!

the code for this game is genuinely so cooked i remember playing on a gdps and i would get CONSTANT LAG SPIKES until i started a discord screenshare which for some reason fixed the problem.

This is so incredibly interesting. I remember when TTV was on the list, and then when it got taken off. I supposed it was hacked, but I didn't know it went this deep A alignment bug with so many layers of complexity, it just is so interesting. Great video.

9:50 It’s important to note that the taiko timings are much easier when they’re evenly spaced. TTV jumps look and sound evenly spaced, but the gaps vary slightly in size

When i saw TTV was not on the list anymore i was clueless of what happened. People said TTV suddenly was much easier but i never understood how. I watched the video until the end and now the information has came together. W vid.

I always tried to find a video covering the third variant, only the fact that it was removed, but now there is one, good stuff

i have a friend of mine who had the same bug and it was due to the obs codec, if u use the x264 codec it causes the bug to occur but it only happens with x264, not with nvenc or any other codec, maybe discord also uses x264 and that was why it maked molten be more consistent when watching a screen share, at least thats what it makes the most sence for me. edit: now that i think about it when i watch a screenshare or start a screenshare myself sometimes i get lagspikes (also it caused the bug to occur on my laptop that only had x264 codec), and the only way of fixing the lagspikes is by changing the discord processor affinity to the 2 of the end on the task manager, maybe that has something to do with x264 because (if im not wrong) it uses the cpu to render the video/screenshare, i did a little bit of testing and the bug didnt occur when i had a nvidia gpu that had the nvenc codec (i was using it with obs), maybe the bug doesnt happen when you have the nvidia codec or any codec that isnt x264. hope it helps!

I have never been so interested watching a video essay over a video game controversy. This is such a good video, good work man.

Holy shit this video is so good. Keep up the good work you deserve so much more than 3k subs. Instantly subscribing

This is one of the best documentary style videos I have EVER watched, not just on the topic of geometry dash but in general, I don't normally comment on videos, but I really do look forward to what you create in the future, because the editing, story telling and everything, absolutely peak content creation. I had genuine chills from this video and moments had confused me and thrown me for a loop. I cannot wait to see future videos.

Great video. I am hmwelccomed, the person with the WR at ttv with the bug. I'm the guy that Tatujo mentioned at 14:25 that got 92%. In fact, I might still have all my record videos privated on my original channel. But well, this doesn't matter, I'm glad you made a full analyzing video explaining about the situation on the right way. Congrats! 👏

i genuinally feel bad for skoe like he put effort in and beat it because of a bug. I deal with the same type of stuff kinda, just irl. It's the same thing as you studying for hours for tests and failing all of them, which I deal with a lot.

It seems very inappropriate to call it "cheating." Thats not the way any layman would word it, nor would they call it hacking. Its less of a big deal in the actual video, but the thumbnail and title is especially inappropriate.

this video is insanely high quality and i really enjoyed watching it. good shit man, ill keep an eye out for your future content

I was always so confused about ttv and how there was a bug that made it basically 60hz somehow. Great video :D

The background music and line delivery really add to the atmosphere. Great video

I feel really bad for him. He just didn’t know

The words “hacked” and “illegitimate” are used incorrectly. It’s a bug, call it that. Everything that was done was done within the rules of the game, it’s just the game has a bug. This isn’t true currently but it will be true once the bug is figured out, once people figure out how this bug works they can replicate it with their copies as well, that just means the levels weren’t as challenging as previously thought, it’s not “illegitimate” or “hacked” it’s just a bug that the devs would need to fix

Really well put together video, I believe you’ll have 10k if you continue to deliver such good content for a few months

27:07 i would also feel bad for him if he wouldn't start scamming people and selling megahack copies with stolen money

i love the simplistic intimidation that the third varient had. it sucks that bug happened but it was definitely an interesting period of the game. great video

This video was very well made, keep up the good work!

This is probably the best gd video I've ever seen. It was really entertaining and interesting and I subbed instantly. I wanna see more gd videos like this. Keep up the work my man🔥

super good video!!!! u did itt :3 I'm so happy for u Alex ^^

Fantastic video, the topic is really interesting and you do a great job explaining it. Also, props to you for changing the wording of the title and the thumbnail instead of being stubborn and leaving as it was. I personally didn't see it, but saw other comments and your pinned message talking about it, and I think it shows great integrity. I definitely agree with everyone in the comments saying that Skoe shouldn't be labeled as a cheater. A cheater is someone who cheats on purpose, Skoe only cheated accidentally. It's like being able to say something stupid without actually being stupid (this is not a slight at you, it's just the best example I could think of). All in all, great video, and good on you for having integrity and changing the title and thumbnail, I definitely look forward to seeing what else you put out!

Incredible video; summarizes so well an investigation that was so chaotic with new question marks popping up almost every day. It surprises me how quickly it felt like ttv was forgotten; maybe it's because it always *felt* like something was up just because of how ridiculous the level is, even if there was no evidence that the verification was anything but legitimate, but as someone who's been a part of the wider gaming community for basically my entire life, I think this is genuinely the most insane thing I've seen. For me, investigating this bug was both fun just because of the novelty of it and infuriating because of how it felt like we were never getting anywhere. I hope more people, both in the gd community and in the gaming community at large, learn about this situation from this video; I'd love it if someone could find an actual explanation for this bug at some point, even if it seems unlikely with 2.2 being out and the new physics presumably getting rid of the bug.

Never thought this would be such an interesting topic, great video 👍

great vid, this and ur cbf vid are the type of technical content this game's starving for as of rn, imo u've alr proven urself as a notable channel and one i love :)

This is the biggest oopsie daisy I think the gd community has ever seen

this video was amazing, and really interesting too. i don't keep up with the challenge community very much so i hadn't heard about this before. can't wait to see what you make next!

i regret not watching this sooner, wow!!! watched every second start to finish, amazing work :)

That must be crushing. I can’t imagine how having all that work ripped away must have felt. o7 to all involved

Haven't played the game for a little while but this popped up in my recommendations and ended up being very interesting. Good job :)

BRO i remember being friends with molten at the time and watching this situation go down. im really glad this strange situation was finally brought to light. what an interesting period of time to witness. I have a feeling it may straight up be a hardware interaction. also the priority tasking when it comes to computers could be an important factor as well. in short you computer treats opened programs as something that needs to be running if not minimized. so it's probably somewhere in the code for GD but it allows geometry dash to be fps limited with another program open. as for the mouse, it depends on what type he was using.

I love this type of video, incredible work. The closest thing I’ve experienced to this is septagon’s video about the hardest conceivable level in gd, which is a video I return to often because it’s so interesting to me. I sure do love a good hyperspecific documentary about a niche in geometry dash which is already a niche itself in gaming which is already a niche itself in recreational activities. What is life?

This video was crazy to watch, I've never ever seen anything like this... Amazing video, honestly.

Geometry Dash players try not to demonize people who did nothing wrong challenge - Difficulty: Impossible

this is actually super interesting, thanks for making this video

This feels like one of those bugs that happene because of 30 different things interacting in weird ways...

really great, well made video. keep it up man!

How wild. It's so weird that this happened. I feel bad for skoe. I hope that, whatever he's doing, he's doing well.

This is the perfect GD video. It's such a breath of fresh air from typical GD brain rot content or copy paste documentaries. It's genuinely interesting and actually as complicated as you make it seem. And the best part is it's something that’s genuinely significant to the GD community instead of talking about an old impossible levels verification. Well done! Edit: Also congrats to everyone who put effort into actually dissecting this problem.

This is a known issue with some GPUs and mixed refresh rate setups. If you have video playing on a 60hz monitor (youtube, obs preview, discord screenshare etc), it'll mess up whatever's running on the higher refresh rate monitor. It affects games other than GD too, you can feel it in FPS games because moving your mouse doesn't feel as smooth even if the fps is high.

I think the most likely cause is that his mouse was causing some sort of delay on his pc, and only in gd because most games in general dont work like gd in terms of inputs. Of course, I could be wrong about this, and it could be something entirely else. Either way, this video is great and keep up the good work!

About discord screensharing, when i screenshare on discord, i notice the discord priority would automatically change from normal to high in task manager but i don't think this would be the cause of that bug at all though it just doesn't seem to have any correlation in any way

This video is so good and I like that finally someone what happened to TTV and skoe99 why he quit why was it removed the video is amazing keep up and dam do I fell bad for skoe all his big and hardworking achivments were demolished by a single bug he didnt know he had

i really liked this video. Usually I can't watch a GD video without getting bored but this one was really interesting. Definitely earned a sub!

Great video this was an insanely enthralling mystery from a side of the GD community I know nothing about

blanket addict mvp of the video, one of the most interesting gd vids i have ever watched, up there with samis sc vid and stormflies element 111 rg vid, i hope this gets you the attention you deserve mr alex

This situation was frustrating to me because I immediately knew it was hacked but couldn't prove how. Just the fact he could do TTV but couldn't do Final Destination made no sense and something was obviously off from the start. Amazing video though, very thorough and explains the situation in an easy to understand way!

Such an amazing video, was hocked till the end

Honestly this is the most interesting video I’ve ever seen about geometry dash. Fantastic video.

man i quit gd like a week before ttv was verified and came back to it like 3 months after they removed it from the list

i dont even care about gd anymore, but as someone who was active in the cl at this time its pretty cool to look back on

i have never played this game but this is actually the sickest "history of a cheated record" type video i have ever seen. so unpredictable

Never knew how this actually worked above just aligning all jumps to 60fps, cool video

The discord scenerio is especially interesting since it brings potential for baud rate and insanely obscure multi step interactions between recieving lots of data packets and that messing with gd

this is actually one of the most emotional gd videos ive ever watched LOL this topic is really interesting n this videos great i hope skoe molten mm9k and everyone is doing well man 💀💀

Hearing Tokyo in the background, I must say your music taste is superb

OH MY GOD THIS VIDEO IS LIKE AMAZING?? One of the most entertaining videos I've ever seen about GD, the topic is so interesting, you told the story in such a good way and the editing is exactly what the video needed. I've been knowing you since the tutorial you made for megahack replay and it's crazy for me to now be entertained for half an hour just watching you tell a story Also talking about the topic, I remember when I came back to the game like 2 years ago watching the verification of this and didn't really understanding it (the fps values, how did Cursed and Trick beat it...), especially the removal of the level some months later. What happened is surreal, it must have felt really really misterious at the time. Feel really sorry for Skoe too, this probably felt terrible.

Well it feels like something I is establishing an imput buffer, it was mentioned that it can shift by a frame did that fall evenly between moving a frame earlier or later, other questions was it found to happen on multiple different operating systems.my actual next thing to check would be that although the people still had the bug with different mice were the people who had the bug using the same driver on their computer to interpret mouse inputs. The fact the input locking was verified to only happen on GD makes this being the culprit sound unlikely too me but it's still what I would check next.

I think I know why this has happened... I have a low end computer, so lots of things lag it, if I am in a Discord screenshare and play gd, my game will lag significantly. I think this all happens because of the slight lag caused by two tabs using fps for each other's purpose. With a lower frame rate you become more consistent, and two apps being used at the same time lowers your frame rate making jumps more consistent. I have a reason to believe that computer mice lower your frame rate as well. In the video Molten and mm9000 had always had a second app being used, like Discord and obs. Hopefully this is helpful!! :)

i loved this video so much, really made..but i feel so bad for skoe,that mustve sucked. thats a sub!

I wouldn’t be surprised if this bug was related to something with gd itself. it’s coded pretty horribly and it’d probably take a lot of digging (if possible) and obviously rigorous testing. i remember being in a dlhq call when ttv got removed from the challenge list and i got told about most of the things, such as the bug and click precision test, but watching this video said everything that was needed. fantastic work :)

This is definitely a stretch, but maybe the computer's machine cycles could be contributing to this problem? In many old videogames, very weird glitches can happen due to machine cycles changing in amount or length. I know this is almost definitely not the cause, but I can't think of many things that could cause this weird bug

I just saw the entire video, fantastic topic, amazing summarization (is that how you say it?) and great video overall, you earned that subscription without even needing to ask in the video!

There's a possibility that when some applications are open that it slows the input speed by a little bit so your computer can run smoother

If you guys had already checked if these peolle experience the same bugs on other mouses too, you should definitely check for drivers installed. The way they handle inputs might synchronize with 60FPS.

might be a pc thing, all the circumstances could be traced back to the pc not being strong enough to handle watching a screenshare or obs, and maybe skoe just had an old pc, doesnt really explain why its mouse only but it might be something

My immediate thoughts on this bug came to the os. I don't play GD so I don't know whether you can play it on an alternate os like MacOS or Linux based systems. But I could imagine that the os or a specific driver is doing something weird when a game is running and reset the inputs to 60 fps. And that this may contribute to the fact, that some experience it and some do not...

The bug could be because the device is focusing more on the discord or obs more than gd meaning it could have turned down the fps to compensate

One idea is that this could be because of RAM. Considering when recording with OBS or watching a screenshare usually takes up some RAM on a computer, maybe there is something to do with that. Maybe skoe's computer isn't the best with RAM, or it could be that he had some other things open other than GD. When I play Geometry Dash, I usually only share my screen on discord or watch a screenshare for a short while because the game feels much smoother for me when it's the only thing showing movement on my screen.

i have experienced something similar to this, i have a 240 monitor and used 240 fps and tps bypass in 2.1, but when i started playing a video (could be RU-vid, tietch, or even the obs thing that shows you what you are recording) my game qould suddenly feel locked to 60fps like the video was lowering my monitors framerate, this mightve been a placebo but it happened everytime.

Very good! I made a video about TTV 2 years ago and I don't think that his consistency was a result of game issue. I thought he so good at beating timings. Even Skoe said to me that the clicks just passed and he feels difficult only in certain timings. I didn't make a big deal out of it

I'm glad this video also explains how fps work, really detailed and simple to understand.

this is likely hook-related. discord and obs screenshares work by "hooking" into the process which makes the game run some extra code to capture the screen. the fact it affects gd when fullscreen also clues me in, as fullscreen is the only mode where screen capture utilities don't use window capture methods (functions, routines, etc. reusable pieces of code). if they were to play in windowed or borderless fullscreen i doubt this bug would occur.

imagine you beat an old impossible level and then this happens

My theory is that when you have something that records a desktop live then it locks the fps somehow on the mouse and uses it onto the other programs making the level easier, this might be completely wrong or kind of correct

That really sucks for Skoe, making so much progress only for a bug to tear it all down. Props to the GD community and Blanket Addict for trying to get to the bottom of it.

good work these vids are crazy good

In all three cases, some sort of desktop video capture software was being used, either by OBS or Discord. Also, one had OBS unminimized, meaning the capture was actively being replayed, I think Discord has at least a small monitor of what's being captured when you're screen sharing, and there's also the chance that Skoe99 also had his capture of his gameplay open in OBS. I might ask for the CPU and GPU models these players are using, as well as their OBS capture settings (and look up what Discord uses). This could have to do with one of a few things: 1) This may be influenced by the type of encoding they're using for the capture (hardware accelerated or software) 2) If it is hardware accelerated, are they all using the same "brand" of GPU (AMD, Nvidia, Intel), as each brand has it's own accelerator 3) This could also have to do with having the captured output being actively represented on your desktop as well, through some weird glitch regarding how that data is managed by OBS/Discord

Perfect use of celeste music! I love that game and its OST ♥