Minecraft YouTuber Dream posts full response to speedrun cheating claims
YouTube: DreamMinecraft YouTuber Dream has now posted a full, in-depth response to the accusations that he cheated to achieve his Minecraft speedrun, even drafting in a PhD-level statistics expert to disprove the claims.
On December 12, YouTuber GeoSquare made a video alleging that Dream’s 1.16 speedrun record had been achieved by cheating, calling it “too unlikely to verify.”
GeoSquare is also a moderator of speedrun records, and his 14 minute video titled “Did Dream Fake His Speedruns – Official Moderator Analysis” has racked up over 2.6 million views in under two weeks.
Dream hit back on Twitter, calling the accusations “total BS” and labeling the video clickbait. In the description of the video, GeoSquare stated: “this video is NOT my content. Please please DO NOT interact with my channel after watching this, this is just a PSA from the mod team.”
YouTube: DreamDream promised a full response, and has now followed through on that promise. On December 23, his rebuttal clocked in at 24 minutes long, and provides a full analysis of the ‘luck’ that was alleged to have been “too unlikely” to have been done fairly.
The response is broken into four sections: Professional statistical analysis, public access files, corrections to false information, and new information.
The conclusion from the astrophysicist – hired by Dream – was that there is “no statistically significant evidence that Dream was modifying the probabilities.”
Dream provides a link to a 19-page report written by the expert, which summarises that Dream’s odds were “are consistent with
random chance.” – not 1 in 7.5 trillion, as the mods of the speedrunning website had claimed.
In short, the report finds two main flaws with the initial accusations of cheating:
- It does not account for stopping bartering after a successful trade
- It incorrectly applies some bias corrections.
The author of the report is not identified by name, because they were hired through the online science consulting company Photoexcitation, which keeps the identity of the authors private. It claims the author’s name is not relevant to the objectivity of the results.
Concluding his video, Dream says, “I don’t care at all about my speedrun, I care more about defending my character than defending a dumb leaderboard position.
“I have an amazing community and an amazing group of fans, and I don’t need to officially speedrun. I do it because I like it. I get less views on my record videos than I do on my normal videos,” he finishes.
In less than 24 hours, Dream’s response has shot to the number one spot on YouTube’s trending page for gaming and is already about to crack the 1 million views mark. This despite it being uploaded on his second channel, DreamXD, rather than his main 14.5 million subscriber channel.