A Pokémon trainer, famous for his speed records on Pokémon Red, was banned following allegations of cheating.
Pokémon speedrunning is a more serious business than you might think, with subcultural prestige and even money at stake. New tricks are constantly emerging and shaking up the scene.
There is a very active community of fans for this hobby, living in the hope of seeing their favorite creators break a world record world of a few seconds. They also don’t hesitate to donate thousands of dollars to charity for the pleasure of seeing a speedrunner give in to memes.
With so many people invested in the scene, a dedicated moderation team is needed to keep everything in order. As reported by GamesRadar+, on January 1, 2024, Pokemon Speedrun moderators released a damning report that disqualified the previous world record holder from Pokémon Red’s ‘Any% Glitchless’ category for cheating during his run.
In 2023, when famous speedrunner Pokeguy set a world record for completing Pokémon Red’s ‘Any% Glitchless’ category in 1:44:03, people assumed that no one could surpass him. So when a newcomer named Jadiwi broke this record in a matter of months, it aroused suspicion.
The suspicions proved true, as the investigation found “sufficient evidence to accuse Jadiwi of cheating and to immediately remove him from all PSR [Pokemon Speedrun] leaderboards, leaderboard moderation features, and ban him from submitting other attempts at the rankings” .
According to the report, Jadiwi actually admitted to patching their multiple world record runs across different save states through the emulation software they used to play the games. This allowed them to repeat sections they had performed suboptimally.
Jadiwi’s motivation for cheating appears to be a set of cash bounties that fans had placed on certain records for completing Pokémon games. Jadiwi held several world records on games in the series and the available bounties could be worth up to $6,000. They are of course ineligible for these awards now that their runs have been canceled.
wtf pic.twitter.com/VRzld57w8i
— Pokeguy (@pokeguy84) January 25, 2023
The Pokemon Speedrun moderation team also used the report to apologize for their lack of judgment regarding Jadiwi’s previous runs. “We are re-evaluating our policies to verify the legitimacy of runs submitted for ranking, and we will be vigilant to ensure that this does not happen in the future,” they explained.
So for now, Pokeguy’s legendary speedrun on Pokémon Red remains the officially recognized time to beat. It’s unclear if anyone will ever be able to do this without resorting to more nefarious means.
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