The Biggest Cheating Scandal in Minecraft Speedrunning History 

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Imagine Dream's reaction when he found out the guy who exposed him was ALSO cheating lol

The fact that he was caught cheating now instead of 2 years ago makes me wonder how many other cheated runs are out there.

I feel bad for Nice twice. Though he never cheated, the fact his brother was exposed as a cheater must be far from pleasant for him.

"Players don't cheat to get a faster time. They cheat to get a time, faster." - Karl Jobst

now it makes a lot of sense why he was the first to realize dream was cheating, because logically someone whos been using the exact same method for a long time would notice someone else doing it as well.

NiceTwice is genuinely a great guy, and I feel so bad for him as the sort of intermediary between his brother and his community. This is obviously hard on him, and i think we should all send NiceTwice some love :)

didn’t think the weekly thing would go all Vsauce on me with the “why do people cheat?”

The fact that he included Hans niemann while talking about cheating is hilarious to me

i think the main reason MincrAvenger knew dream cheated bcoz he noticed his drop rates are as lucky as his

It’s insane that dream admitted to cheating and then deleted the twitlonger and his fans still denied he could’ve cheated

“Any minecraft speedrunner will tell you it’s not about fun.” Too true. We are too addicted to stop, please save us all.

Ive seen alot of people question why alot of really good players with the skill to be able to get wr's end up cheating for it. To put it simply, at least from my own experiences with cheating in the past, most of the time when players of high skill levels cheat, its because the games not going in there favor. They know they can do it, and simply just cant for whatever reason. So they end up cheating in some form to kinda speed up that grind of getting it. Alot of top players also get away with it easier cause of the respect they have in the community and trust they have, but they also know the game more than say, someone who just started running. They know whats possible and what isnt, and can get away with faking runs cause they know what can actually be achieved reasonably. Im guilty of that exact thing myself. i had alot of singleplayer MC worlds where ive used ingame commands through LAN, and would reload the world after using different commands to hide the fact i ever used lan in the first place, and bragged to friends about my progress. little different from speedrunning but still the same idea im trying to get at. i know i can sit here and do it on my own, but at the time it took way to long for my patience, and simply just wanted to get the that point to begin with. Karl Jobst has an amazing video covering this exact topic on why top runners cheat thats deff worth a watch if you want more info.

As Mr Jobst says; Cheaters don't cheat to get a faster time, they cheat to get a time faster. 24:40

was not expecting a deep dive into human psychology, but it was a fitting addition to this very significant cheating scandal.

The fact that I'm not even into chess and still know Hans shows just how profilic and famous cheating can be. And also I loved the talk about why cheaters cheat. It's fascinating.

Also poor nicetwice, respect for the apology vid

I did that psychology study in college. Got extra credit in one of my classes and made like $10, even though I only got 6 questions done haha

As someone who splices stuff together really good I am offended at that bad splice with the mouse. I'm an editor, you would notice that 100% of the time, I swear he just didn't know how to fix it or he was just lazy.

Whats crazy is that this is the closest anybody has been to cheating and getting away with it. Just imagine how many more cheaters there could of been that havent been caught.

I think you missed something BIG when talking about his motivations: the feeling of power. Especially when he'd gained all this notoriety he had power. He knew he could fake a run and make it believable, if not completely undetectable. So he kept it up. Once he got mod, it was even worse.

Honestly couldn’t believe it when i first heard about Eric’s cheating scandal. He was one of my favourite runners, my motivation. The fact that he cheated all this time made me lose respect for him :(

Sad that such a respected member could’ve been going behind our back so much. Much love for Nicetwice and hope he endures through. Also, watched Minecravenger’s response video, hope he can find a better path for himself in the future.

a video of zylenox's countless end enters and blind travels and 8:27 would be cool. he is the best player right now Edit: well now he got the new WR so there kinda has to be now lol

I guess Eric cheating helps us know he was serious about Dream cheating, since he obviously knows what he's talking about

I think another part of it is the personal achievement of it. almost treating speedrunning like a science, TAS's show how fast a run could literally be done, and in a heavily rng dependent run like minecraft, most runner's get fed up and just want a pure skill check of the same thing happening everytime. As an achievement of saying "I did a set seed as fast as I possibly could with the best amount of luck. here's the TAS, but here's the believable human limit". It seems more like to me, similar to dream, they got fed up with the rng and wanted to test themselves on good runs consistently, rather than resetting all the time, once they got the clout, attention, and everything else was when it snowballed, but that seems to me how it initially started.

Wow! This scandal sure was big! Even the BIGGEST one! Thank you The Bi-monthly Thanks for this video bringing me such useful information on the BIGGEST cheating scandal in minecraft speedrunning history

I think that cheating itself is a very fascinating thing because humans have naturally evolved / been conditioned to solve hard problems with trickery and cleverness instead of pure grinding ("think smart not hard"). It's usually considered a good thing to achieve goals using the path of least resistance / the most clever way. Cheating can only really be a thing in trust/honesty based competitions where not every way to solve the problem / achieve what you want is a fair way. I personally believe that there might be something problematic with competition itself because competition corrupts people, just like unrestrained power does. Ofc I'm not arguing against playful competitions like in a video game, but it can teach us an important lesson about the risks/harms of serious competition and subsequently capitalism and it's inherently competitive nature.

Thank you. This has taught me to be more skeptical about Minecraft speed runs. I didn’t realize it was that easy to fake or that you could alter things like perching.

I just love that you used Resonance Gabsson remix as a background music to the vid in one part, that music is so cool

love myself a weekly thing video, especially now that i'm a part of this community, twt has become my recap on the latest episode of "Wait, wtf happened in MCSR?" irrelevant but also weekly thing video on my birthday lets gooo edit: thank for birthday wishes :D

I was not expecting to actually learn something about the psychology of cheating. You should do a whole video on just that.

Great video! I can tell a lot of research went into this. This cheating scandal was one of the most complicated ones and you covered it really well!

21:47 "Any Minecraft speedrunner will tell you speedrunning is not about having fun." So true. So so true.

The fudge factor is definitely something to consider when looking at cheaters. It occurred to me that some of the ways he cheated were less to get around skill and more to get around randomness. The randomness can feel unfair and frustrating and resetting can be the most tedious part of speed running. I can see someone justifying that kind of cheating as okay, almost like they feel it is actually making it fair and skill based. I am not saying it is okay, I can just imagine that line of thought.

For context: I was a src leaderboard mod for something else than mcsr... and I never did anything as a moderator on these boards If I may correct you about the perches (11:44) the dragon spawned on y:128 and didnt get in the range of 30 blocks to the first node and flew to the second node too early. really good video

"cheaters have existed in almost every competitive setting" shows Hans "chess speaks for itself" Neimann

Not a Mindcraft gamer... but find these analysis/journalism videos addicting. Enjoyed your clear commentary and explanation to laymen like myself.

6:46 nice transition into the here-current topic at hand, I like it

every time one of these videos drop I stop everything and watch the whole thing. hands down my favorite channel

Quoting Dan Ariely in this, and IIRC, a specific study that was found to be fake... Seems that it's -turtles- cheaters all the way down with this story.

theres no way this only has 5.8k views at the time of watching this this quality and time put into this deserves so much more credit. Great video bro

ive been watching this channel for a while and i gotta say this is probably your best video yet. its very clear and interesting throughout the whole vid. keep up the good work

Why is his name the weekly thing when he uploads daily

Great video! This case study makes cheating so much more confusing and worth understanding. We all cheat, and it's possible to understand why Eric cheated, but still damn hard to come to terms with. Its funny, the psychology of cheating just a little so as not to compromise ones morality ended up throwing all of his genuine skill out at once. By cheating just a little, Eric threw the baby out with the bathwater. Tragic

Did not expect to see Hans Niemann there lol

I genuinely appreciate the research and care you give each subject every time.

5:47 Wow, use of an FTL track in a Minecraft video?! That really brought a smile to my face. Interesting video!

Interesting video. I find the psychology of all of this fascinating, and of course, very relatable. Your conclusions do seem to be rather on point.

Is this the person that exposed dream of cheating???

i kinda feel bad for nice twice, even as a twin myself i can't help but feel a little suspicious of him just bc his brother cheated, even if there's a pretty solid chance he never did or ever will cheat.

btw, that experiment u talked abt relating to college students doing math questions and getting money. I read that in a psychology book that's so cool how you link towards him 🔥

personally I'd never cheat in a minecraft speedrun because what if The Weekly Thing psychoanalyzes me

Such a well made video! I feel like i saw this from you months ago

showing hans neiman footage when talking about cheaters made me chuckle

On his q and a stream when asked if he expects his brother to still trust him, his answer in short was "you shouldn't trust anyone". Which is technically correct, but a very cold answer. When asked if he could go back in time would he cheat again, he said yes he would. Let's also not forget that he lied to his twin brother for years, and even after he got caught. Nicetwice asked multiple times if he cheated in more than the first run he got caught with, he promised him he didn't. These sound like pretty awful things but in my opinion he doesn't really understand why what he did was so wrong. He thinks it was smart of him to cheat, because he saved time with it (yes he said that) and he would do it again if he went back in time. He seems to have no guilt about it. Which is not normal. Hope he can grow as a person.

Hey, great video, one note: His name is Dan Ariely, and that name is not pronounced Dan O'Reilly. It's pronounced like Ariel from the little mermaid, just with a y at the end.

He just realized dream was cheating because he cheated the same way

i subscribe more to the karl jobst theory on speedrunning cheaters applies more to this case. Especially because this person preferred ssg runs I think it was as simple as him hating rng and preferring more “skill based” speedrun challenges (while still liking Minecraft’s core gameplay). He didnt take speedrunning so seriously that he was gunning to take it up as a full time career but it still meant a lot to him and he felt good getting good times. And since he wasn’t looking to get into it as a full time career he probably didn’t want to devote the fulltime hours he would need to do to get a run that matches the peak of his full potential in any given period. So when part of his route is wasting a ton of his time to certain rng checks, he codes them out. In a way that (he believes) is realistic and is within the realm of possibility on any given run, but still gives him close to the best case scenario significantly more often than normal. Like I think if he knew the way he hacked the game allowed him to get a perch faster than possible he would’ve tried to fix it. Bc he was probably just trying to engineer the perfect rng so he could focus on getting the god run based purely off his own “skill”. Idk maybe there’s information i dont have or didnt notice that proves otherwise but saying it’s about power or whatever is more explaining why somebody wants to perform well at something. Not why they want to cheat specifically to perform well at that thing.

Wow I remember when this channel had 20k subs and now you’ve got 150k good job

did not see the hans niemann reference coming lmfaoo

He now is the monthly thing

thanks for always bringing quality speedrunning news my way guys! It really helps me get a better sense of where the community is at

i love the mass effect audio in the bg!!!

This deserves so much more recognition.

I think that the idea that Eric cheated because it's a game and he thought it was fun but he didn't like the randomness of the run so he limited the randomness. Then he did it for way longer than he first thought and it became habit Like... its a game

I really wanna read more about the research discussed at 22:15 but it isn't sourced in the description like he said it would be :(

I love the theoretical conclusion on the reason on why he cheated at the end. Amazing video!

Or maybe the real reason that he cheated is because the intense randomness present in MC speedrunning is not a mechanic that feels very good to play into, and he's just frustrated that not every category is some variant of the PogLoot category. Like "Why doesn't everyone just modify their game to make a few things feel less frustrating? Why did running the 'vanilla' version of the game have to be the version that grew popular? It just wastes a lot of our time."

Me realizing the weekly thing is actually the monthly thing

The problem with speedrunning (in any game) is that you will simply never truly know if someone is legit or just cheating, and if there are this many cheaters getting caught, just imagine how many aren't getting caught and are getting record times

i love the summoning salt type of background music in this video

It's funny how many cheaters turn on each other as soon as they think somebody else is cheating like watch a kitchen cheaters video and how many of them get mad because they think the admin is actually cheating and they will actually report the admin for cheating even though they are cheating

Dude wtf I watch chess and I felt so proud of knowing about Hans Niemann

i can vouch for the competitive thing with siblings, i play ultrakill but was never confident i could get P-ranks but he kept telling me i should do it and now i've P-ranked everything in the game and Im waiting for the release of P-2 to P-rank that as well

I’ve never watched a sponsor segment all the way through until today, and it was entirely because of the Tank counter. gj

This person probably easily called Dream out because of all the cheating he's done.

Can we just appreciate the sheer quality of videos twt produces, you guys always make topics so interesting and immersive

10:07 sad cubs fan noise

i liked the use of the mass effect galaxy map theme

There is a universal rule I follow to try to uncover cheaters. The goal is to look at a person's motives and why they play the game at all. Understanding the foundational reasons someone does what they do can help you to uncover those who have been, or are more likely to be dishonest. Some people do it for fame and money, others purely play for the fun of the game. A good example of this would be Dream vs Etho. Dream needs no introduction, he's a good example of someone who played for the recognition and fame. Not to mention his Ego. While in complete contrast, Etho purely plays for the fun of the game. It's why he left Mindcrack after all, the contract and business side of things was something he had no interest in. There are tons more examples of people I'm fairly confident in never cheating, Pix, Marco, Illumina, Technoblade, but that M4xx guy I tell ya! Watch out! He has some dark secrets! /s

What surprises me the most is that after he noticed that Dream cheated no one thought about checking Eric's runs. Like, hundreds of thousands of people haven't noticed a thing but he did and manually wrote down every pearl and gold... That's not something people just do after speedruns

I'm a pretty experienced minecraft player, but I'm familiar enough with speed running to know how much rng effects play. Enough for me to not even bother making speed run attempts. I imagine the thought going through their heads was, "I'm not faking my skill. I'm just altering the rng enough to have shot". I myself am not going to start 2000 minecraft worlds and maybe, MAYBE, 1 will be lucky enough to have a shot at a world record. Oh and i cheated at bejeweled. The screen blacks out when you pause, so i would take screen shots, then pause and figure out the next few moves. I got it going until humans just can't make the moves fast enough. Not that I'd ever tell people that it was an un-cheated run, I just wanted to outsmart the designers.

As a famous trackmania player once said, "Good players don't cheat to get good times. They cheat to get good times faster." In other words, they don't want to spend the time to get better.

I haven't followed the minecraft speedrunning scene for a while now, and I'm shocked about this video coming out of nowhere for me lmao. I followed Eric during the lockdown and I liked a lot his streams, I would never expected him (edit) cheating for sure. Haha this hurts

Let's step it back for a second and understand that stealing money is a whole lot worse than cheating at Minecraft.

This is a bit of a take, but a bit from personal experience. Another reason someone might cheat is because of the "danger" or risk of it. This causes adrenaline which is one hell of a drug, and some people find addicting. Sometimes just simply taking that risk, and succeeding, is enough. (This can also be linked to things like gambling.) Anyways just a thought.

bro is this a reupload or smth? i could swear i saw an exposing video on minecravenger before

"And they were twin brothers" "And they were wonbmates!"

I have cheated in many multiplayer games in the past, for me it was actually the difference in skill. Watching hundreds of better players play the game at a high level that no matter how hard i tried i could never achieve pushed me to want to cheat to gain a bit of advantage. And much like you said it feels like you're unstoppable in those moments, in certain hardcore toxic games it was a nice break to finally being the one on top. But its not a good thing to cheat, getting banned from your favorite games and losing friendships over it is not worth the risk.

Currently doing an exposition writing in uni where one of the requirements is to not just summarize and regurgitate information from scholars, but to apply thinking. Present your own idea or theme, and have the information support that idea and point in it's direction. That's exactly what you did here. Despite the fact that I had heard this story already, this video still seemed new. Like I was learning brand new information. And that's because you didn't just summarize and regurgitate the cheating scandal, you actually put your own interesting twist on it by analyzing his decisions under the lens of psychology and trying to break down the *reason* why he cheated, as opposed to just stating how he cheated etc. I can't even call it a twist, as a twist would imply this was a smaller focus of the video. It's more like the video was focused around the psychology, and you just used the already preexisting information to support your ideas. You also brought in completely unrelated information (unrelated to his cheating methods, I mean) as evidence to support your analysis as well. Honestly this video was really well done. You managed to come in several months late and still present a video that feels fresh and brand new, and not just sound like you're repeating points of an over-reported-on topic. Definitely gonna be taking this kind of independent thinking and creativity to help with my uni course fs.

Funny to see how the exponential nature of decreasing chance in slight item/event frequency adjustments busts nearly every cheater

I am so sorry everyone, I wanted a world record so bad, but I didn’t have the mechanics or time to get it done. I didn’t want to admit to it until now because I thought I still had a chance to get this falsely verified. The speedrunning community was correct on the assessment of my run, it was in fact spliced, on the last frame of world creation. This is the same for my 31:16 and 49:46. Pic 1 is from now deleted “Mods please examine this” and pic 2 is from the thing I sent crackedMagnet. I have only done about 50 legitimate resets in my life. I feel so bad and I am done with this chapter of my life. Thank you crackedMagnet for your incredible expertise with technology and the mods for the responsibility of maintaining the legitimacy of the leaderboards. Once again, I am so, so sorry. Later.

I still don’t know how to cheat in tic tac toe

Didn't expect the psychological analysis in your video but I think it is a nice addition

How can someone even manipulate the dolphin spawns or the enderdragen purge. It is insane to me how they even manage to do that in the first place. A normal viewer would never even think this sort of thing is possible. Good video. Very educational to me.

I would still consider the Dream cheating scandal to be bigger, mainly because I'm a fan and literally everyone else hates him, not an easy world we live in

It pisses me off that even now after coming clean about all the set seed cheating he's still trying to put over that he somehow never cheated in RSG aside from that one 2020 splice. Like no way, dude. No. Way. (Edited to add my reasoning: There's simply no plausible incentive to draw that kind of distinction between "I will cheat this category" but "I will not cheat this other category.") I think he did cheat 1.16 RSG. Aside from some questionable decision-making that was noticed in his sub-10 1.16 run last year, he also had a run in early 2021 that was I think second place at the time (and one of the very first runs ever to beat Couriway's 14:36 world record that stood for almost 3 months). Both of these runs are far faster than his skill level generally and put him in the company of players who are simply better than him. (As shown in many, many tournaments where RNG elements are controlled; I'm not just guessing off of how he plays in leaderboard-eligible runs.) It's an RNG game; this can happen of course and has many times. But it did happen to him twice. He is an admitted and very prolific cheater. And NiceTwice, who has a similar skill level to his brother, didn't ever achieve those kinds of times. Personally I think he's still trying to hold on to the idea that something he did is legit, that he really has the kind of skill that those times suggest. As for motivation, you're probably right. But the thing that sets apart casual "fudge factor" cheaters for me to people like Minecravenger is the level of effort and dedication he put into it. This isn't glancing at a classmate's paper in 7th grade because you forgot to study and panicked (to name one of the two instances of cheating from my own life). This took a considerable amount of work. Even splicing is going pretty far above and beyond the normal process of playing runs, let alone the code modification stuff. And he was doing it from the very, very start. This is someone who very highly desired to have outward results that he (likely) wouldn't have been able to achieve otherwise. Something he wanted enough that he was willing to go considerably out of his way and considerably beyond norms of ethical behavior to attain it.

Interestingly the expert quoted about cheating, Dan Ariely, has also been exposed as faking of his research, AKA, "cheating".

I don’t even go here but I love watching Minecraft cheating exposés. Something about them just hits different