An Open Letter to Dream, and some questions for you
3 years ago
United States
mrgirl
He/Him, They/Them
3 years ago

I'm sad and angry about Dream getting away with cheating because his audience is mostly kids. I made an emotional video about it that you can watch here if you're interested: https://maxkarson.com/an-open-letter-to-dream

I also have a few questions for the community:

  1. If RNG manipulation is only detectable across multiple streams that provide a large dataset, what is being done to prevent this in other Minecraft 1.16 runs?

  2. If 1 in 7.5 trillion = proof of cheating (and it does), then why is Dream not banned? Is he simply too big to fail? Or is it again because his fans are kids, and would not support the ban because they don't understand the math?

  3. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to deal with the broader problem of being able to slightly manipulate RNG? I mean, anyone who knows basic statistics can calculate what you could reasonably get away with (tripling ender pearl drop rate was obviously way too much) and then tweak things in their favor?

  4. My own suggestion: make it a legal category. Dream was cheating for a reason--restarting the game over and over makes for boring content and boring runs. What if there was a speedrunning mod/edition that gave better drop rates so speedrunners could focus on skill?

-Max

unfearhq likes this
United Kingdom

He was cheating at a time before new hypermodern strats came into fashion, that greatly reduce the reliance on good trades. The run is also more skill-based now, in my opinion. (It very much was skill-based before that anyway, to be clear, as well as very luck-based - but now I think there's a higher skill ceiling, eg. knowing good bastion routes.)

Shmalex, EllaTAS and 3 others like this
United States
mrgirl
He/Him, They/Them
3 years ago

And you don't think there's a way to slightly manipulate the RNG on how/where bastions are generated? Or are you saying it wouldn't be helpful enough to matter?

I mean the whole point of cheating here is to have to do fewer runs in order to get one that's viable, right?

Basque Country
  1. i just know that RNG is basicaly calculated with probabilities of getting enderpeals in the trading, cause i think fo every trade the change of an enderpeal is of 5% or somethigbn like that, and then the blazes as well

  2. if you mean in the sense of banning literaly the full count, i dont think if is done, but i think no, and i imagine there is no a full reason to ban the full count for an invalid run in the mods prespective; in the sense of "a comunity ban a man for being cheater", well there are diferent opinions, but there is a lot of people that just watch for fun and can be new people, or realy think that he does not cheat... kids? idk, probably i guess? lol

  3. actualy, i guess for top runs you have to show a lot of prove to make sure you dont cheat, but idk, indo the game i dont think there is a lot of ways to prove it, apart of basicaly the stadistics

  4. uhm, strange to manage and maybe not completly fair for everyone, but yeah maybe could be nice a new category with rng modification allowed to make sure about a lot of things and go to the best idk, but i see hard getting added; anyways, for sure go to the category extensions for that

also, i dont see why an open letter at full is needed, but okey lol

Los Angeles, CA, USA

Wat the frick guys he did not cheat you CAPPERS. How possibly could he cheat in a speedrun

AND DONT SAY HE AMPLIFIES THE DROP RATES BECAUSE HE DOESNT

Is there like anyone who thinks he is INNOCENT??!?

TC6, LUMLTPM, and Raponto like this
Los Angeles, CA, USA

What solid evidence u have against him?

Nottinghamshire, England

Everyone please shut the absolute fuck up its the past focus on the present ffs

Astronomiez, JustThano1, and TC6 like this
Nottinghamshire, England

Everyone please shut the absolute fuck up its the past focus on the present ffs

Aberdeen, Scotland

"Wat the frick guys he did not cheat you CAPPERS. How possibly could he cheat in a speedrun

AND DONT SAY HE AMPLIFIES THE DROP RATES BECAUSE HE DOESNT

Is there like anyone who thinks he is INNOCENT??!?"

He cheated. End of fucking story.

Shmalex likes this
United States
mrgirl
He/Him, They/Them
3 years ago

Haha I don't get all the people commenting and saying they don't want to talk about this... no one is making you reply.

Anyway it is a mathematical certainty that he cheated--that is the evidence. It's not "the past." He is still lying about it, actively, and will be until he tells the truth. For an analogy, Dream's odds were the same as the odds of me flipping a quarter and getting heads 42 times in a row. Would you believe me if I did that and then said it was a normal quarter?

My question though, is for Minecraft and other games that require RNG that can apparently be manipulated, what is the community doing to prevent that?

If Dream had ONLY submitted his record run, he'd never have been caught, as the dataset would be too small to prove he cheated.

Shmalex likes this
United States

Please don't use the SRC forums to advertise your own content.

Additionally, while I understand and respect your interest in engaging in civil discourse about the Dream scandal, you need to recognise that this is a months-old event that has been very exhausting for folks in and out of the speedrunning community. The official, final rebuttal was posted 20+ days ago and folks have been trying to move on since. You're welcome to try and discuss this, but understand that people might, reasonably, be upset with you for bringing it up again.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
X31X39, Shmalex and 5 others like this
Los Angeles, CA, USA

Stop ACCUSING HIM YOU A-HOLES

P.S: i dont like cussing. don't make me

Nottinghamshire, England

Omg can a mod please lock this thread like seriously im tired of seeing this bullshit

Los Angeles, CA, USA

i know that there is like 1 in Trillion chance of all that being true, and the mathematics make 0 sense in his favor, but sometimes you just get lucky. very lucky He's like probably 1 in like 100 million people with that luck, but that's no reason to target him. Just because you can't do what he does doesn't make hime fake. And the mathematical probabilities are not fully solid pieces of evidence. Solid evidence is something you have more evidence to back up, which you, however, do not possess.

PS sorry if was being rude in my previous comments, because it was not intentional and was not made to target anyone or anything :)

Edited by the author 3 years ago
qwerty_6969 likes this
Indiana, USA

I agree with this. People are going at him personally.

Singapore

He’s not one in a hundred million. Without the upper bound, what happened to him was a fucking 10 sigma event.

Mods please lock this I can’t take this level of mental diarrhoea.

Shmalex and JustThano1 like this
United States
mrgirl
He/Him, They/Them
3 years ago

Hey I'm not trying to convince anyone he cheated, I ain't the mod here. I'm trying to ask what we're doing about it.

I'm also not trying to promote my content. You would not be interested in my content as it has zero relevance to Minecraft.

Singapore

We don’t need to do anything about it, Dream has zero relevance to anyone in the speedrun community except people who just can’t let it go. People cheat in speedruns across all sorts of games all the time - dream is just one of them. We’re not treating him any differently.

Shmalex likes this
United States
mrgirl
He/Him, They/Them
3 years ago

Do you feel like this is just part of the deal, that people will always be cheating in undetectable ways?

Bulgaria

@mrgirl there always will be cheaters and there will always be cheaters that know what they are doing and are very careful not to get caught. But with how many mods and verifiers there are they will most likely eventually get detected

Shmalex likes this
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