The organizers behind charity speed running event Games Done Quick have banned a participant who faked a record breaking Metal Gear Rising: Revengance DLC run.
Russian player Mekarazium appeared to have set a new world record after blitzing through the title’s Blade Wolf DLC during the latest edition of Summer Games Done Quick, but later admitted they used a pre-recorded video of the game as opposed to playing in real-time.
As highlighted by PCGamesN, Mekarazium eventually came clean in a message to the GDQ enforcement team, explaining the run was initially supposed to be a real-time playthrough but that they changed their mind at the last second.
“I’ve done an actual bad thing and I shouldn’t have done this on the event. I don’t want this to be one of the reasons online runs will forever cut for everyone else. I acted selfishly and I haven’t put more time thinking about others,” they wrote.
“The only reason I’ve decided to put a segmented run is because the NG+ Hard run went way better than we’ve practised throughout the month prior, and I’ve needed something to top this off.”
Mekarazium closed the message by reiterating that they’re “truly” sorry for misleading everybody involved with GDQ, including viewers — who were presented with the record breaking run as a reward for breaching one of Summer Game Done Quick 2022’s donation thresholds.
Addressing the situation in a statement sent to PCGamesN, GDQ organisers described the speedrunner’s actions as “absolutely unacceptable” and confirmed Mekarazium will not be permitted to participate in future events.
“Yesterday, we were made aware that Mekarazium played a segmented video for his DLC run at Summer Games Done Quick 2022. Mekarazium has since admitted to this, both to some members of the community as well as directly to GDQ staff. He contacted our staff with a document detailing that he had planned this for over a month, demonstrating this was planned and intentional. This was made possible because of the remote nature of this particular run in the marathon,” said the GDQ team.
“This is absolutely unacceptable and attempts to undermine the integrity of the speedrunning community that we love and support. The exact result they desired was unclear from the document, but it is clear that they believed we would not be willing to speak out about their behavior. However, we believe it is in the community’s best interests to know why this run was removed by GDQ. We have removed Mekarazium’s runs from our YouTube archive, and will not permit him to run in the future.”