This year's edition of Summer Games Done Quick was once again a massive success, mainly due to the generous hearts of donors and the immense skill of the speedrunners in attendance - both physically and remotely. But one of these speedrunners wasn't even honest at all.
metal gear rising
IGN reports that a purported world-record run of Metal Gear
Rising's Blade Wolf DLC has been removed from the official YouTube channel of Summer Games Done Quick, because it was confirmed to have been pre-recorded and not played in real time. The speedrunner in question, Mekarazium, fully admitted to the wrongdoing.
What's perhaps even worse is that Mekarazium didn't even remotely want to perform his Metal Gear Rising speedrun the right way. This was due to him being a remote participant, because SGDQ 2022 was a hybrid event. Several video game speedrunners were present at the in-person event in Minneapolis, while a few others performed via livestream.
In Mekarazium's admittance of the cheating, it was revealed that he planned the deceit a full month before SGDQ. This was derived from a document sent by the speedrunner himself straight to the event's staff. He took a pre-recorded run of the gameplay, then pretended to play it on stream.
Her is the official statement from Summer Games Done Quick regarding the incident, posted on the speedrun subreddit:
"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 runw as removed by GDQ."
As part of the punishment from the act, it wasn't just Mekazarium's Metal Gear Rising run that was removed - all prior runs he made with other games have been deleted as well. And the final nail in the coffin is that he's been banned from the event for life.
Cheaters never prosper.
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Still A Massive Success
Despite the travesty of a fake speedrun ruining the fun, SGDQ's entire event was still a profound success. A lot of speedrunning feats were accomplished there (legitimately, we might add), and they're pretty impressive. Among these was a roughly 34-minute run of Elden Ring by speedruner HYP3RSOMNIAC, which is insane considering how notoriously difficult that game is.
summer games done quick 2022
A few other incredible speedrunning feats include a 9-minute, 48-second run of FAITH: Chapter III (Vynn); a sub-30-minute run of Phasmophobia (Brossentia, NPC, FlannelKat, and Peace Egg); and a 1:26:12 run of Halo Infinite including all missions, but done without a tank gun (WaifuRuns), to name several.
All in all, Summer Games Done Quick managed to raise over $3 million for the Doctors Without Borders charity. The event has been closely working with the nonprofit organization for years, with them constantly raising the same amount of money each year on average.
