The Biggest CHEATER in Geometry Dash History Was Just EXPOSED

[@Abyssoft]

Check out my Patreon where there's a one month FREE trial for tier 2! www.patreon.com/abyssoft

[@Akuretaki_Nikolay]

nice gg

[@Periwinkleaccount]

Something that you should’ve corrected is that most frame perfect counter videos count on 60FPS, rather than 360, so there aren’t any timings in avernus that have less than a 300th of a second, because of this: 60FPS is slower, and 360FPS is 6x the framerate of 60FPS, so at least one of those extra frames will probably be one that you can click on. 360FPS are generally much too hard put in actual levels. Also, the practice checkpoints are vanilla, but make it so that completing a level in practice won’t count as a valid completion. All Zbot does is allow for recording and replaying macros. Very good for something that doesn’t play GD though, since there weren’t any other mistakes. Sorry if this seems a bit rude, though.

[@WhatisAPaladin]

@@Periwinkleaccount super rude.

[@Periwinkleaccount]

@@WhatisAPaladin well, I really didn’t mean to.

[@tinuolaandre5632]

Me getting 67% on stereo madness ye I can beat a demon 😎

[@Zoink]

This video is so high quality. Thank you for covering and i’m so happy i could help you a bit

[@Abyssoft]

Thanks for walking me through all the intricate parts of the game, wasn't possible without you.

[@JXChannel]

oink

[@alephzero1984]

funny how you actually outdone a fucking cheater this entire time

[@hardhat9003]

oink

[@alephzero1984]

oink

[@swiborg]

As the person that was SpaceUK’s best friend throughout all this, I can say that this video covers it very well, I am very disappointed that this happened and that I trusted everything without applying logic, however I am glad it came to light at the end regardless of how rough it is. Again, very great job on the video :)

[@ASMCourtney]

Well, as someone who isn't in the community, but does understand how much it can damage it... I hope space is doing ok, people cheat all the time in all walks of life and with various levels of severity. We all want to get ahead and we all have our reasons.

[@jellywillreturn]

From your point of view, did his behavior substantially change after the scandal broke? Had he said or done anything to indicate guilt or remorse for his choices? Apologies if this is too personal a question l, I only mean to get context as to what happened after the events in the video.

[@swiborg]

@@jellywillreturn i don’t know how to explain it because he did show immense regret and is willing to improve and attempt to fix the situation, however hes always been good hearted despite his addiction and this didnt change

[@jellywillreturn]

@@swiborg I certainly hope he's able to turn himself around, and get out of his self-destructive habits.

[@Grand58687]

@@ASMCourtney nah man fuck space

[@nintendowarrior11]

I did NOT have Abyssoft making a geometry dash video on my bingo card for this year

[@Abyssoft]

Anything else you need to fill the card?

[@nintendowarrior11]

@@Abyssoft a video on Crash Team Racing Any% No Major Glitches would personally make my bingo card complete

[@funwithoutpants]

​@@Abyssoft Death Road To Canada?

[@paydaygh9388]

Now you know how the Guitar Hero/Clone Hero community felt about Schmooey 😂😭

[@nintendowarrior11]

@@paydaygh9388 GD 🤝 CH Abyssoft covering cheaters

[@TrickGMD]

Cool video! Thanks for covering this and thanks for the shoutout in the desc!

[@Aurantius_]

🐐

[@flovd77]

Trick, did space ever give you the ad revenue like he said he would?

[@Arvl.]

Ph hi trick

[@gmdFrame]

Gmd trick

[@FloydMaxwell]

"You might be thinking this doesn't look hard." Right. I'm thinking it looks SUPER HARD, lol

[@Abyssoft]

I really tried to stress how hard this game is at the top level, lots of people that have heard of it get the impression that a one button game can't be difficult, but that's far from the case with GD.

[@DJ1482.]

@@Abyssoft oh this game is no joke your right. The 5th hardest level Kyouki took the verifier 500k attempts

[@disturbedo7901]

@@Abyssoft Agree. And i need to say, your video is amazing!! ;D

[@crasherking20]

​@DJ1482. then again demisiao did want to be the sole creator and verifier, and they weren't necessarily a top player so this is understandable

[@funchipin4960]

i have put more hours than i would like to imagine into this game and have still only beaten 2 hard demons... thats saying something

[@DJ1482.]

I could not be happier that you covered this situation. As someone who's been a part of the gd community since early 2017, this is by far the biggest scandal I've ever seen. It's so disappointing to see all of these top players lose motivation because of the fact that they can't keep up with someone not playing fair. Even as a high level player, not top player, but someone who grinds list demons and ranks top 200, this also affects my pov on the community in the fact that we can't trust anyone anymore. Thank you so much for covering this :)

[@spelv1104]

was here during the cyclic and andromeda days, it was insane just like this

[@Noko341]

@@spelv1104 duuude that shit was in sane i remember like it was yesterday

[@cheapgorillas]

This is the biggest cheating scandal by far, but as a player who joined in 08/16, TeamHax was a bigger incident. It killed most (if not all) old accounts.

[@spelv1104]

@@cheapgorillas all the teamhax comments man

[@cheapgorillas]

@@spelv1104 you know that was real

[@bird_obsession]

Just a correction: Zbot isn’t what allows you to place checkpoints in levels. That’s a base-game feature called Practice Mode. Without it, most levels would be several times harder, if not impossible. ZBot does indeed create macros, though.

[@ls190v2]

How do you know about that?

[@bird_obsession]

@@ls190v2 Because I play the game lol

[@ls190v2]

@@bird_obsession, I hope you know only through research and not use.

[@bird_obsession]

@@ls190v2 Alright, first off, I don’t use zbot. I do know how it works, though. Second off, Zbot is not intended to be used as a cheating tool. Its use is in creating showcases (Think along the lines of TAS). That’s why it has the watermark in the first place. Almost every Extreme Demon and Impossible Level showcase on KZbin uses zbot.

[@ls190v2]

Well, @@bird_obsession, it seems my suspicions were pretty accusatory. Sorry about that.

[@hjewkes]

Thats wild that the ZBot creator added an anti cheat mechanism and nobody noticed it. You’d figure people would all be looking out for the smaller text

[@Spidapida006]

The anti cheat mechanism wasn't made public until that incident, it was most likely only known by the Demon List team

[@IzzyIsntReal]

The creator kept it fairly under wraps for situations exactly like this. If it were all out in the open, someone would simply find a way to make the program not affect the end screen text. Also, SpaceUK is so much of a sociopathic manipulative loser that people didn’t even consider the possibility of him being a cheater for the longest time.

[@markobighead3173]

​@@IzzyIsntReal Jesus, the amount of autism needed (well, to have a masturbatory obsession with people playing video games really fast) to declare someone a sociopath with such rage because they faked a video game high score is off the charts. Learn what words mean and get some help.

[@pikatrainer3835]

Very clever move if you ask me!

[@EzrahRance-te9vt]

Isn't that just TAS?

[@SeptaGon7]

extremely good video, im surprised to see so much nuance and accuracy of the situation from someone who doesnt do gd content, and how you include pretty much all the context needed, id go as far to say this is better than a lot of vids on the situation even from players in the community lmao, so yeah great work on this

[@ramble21]

hi septagon

[@ewetwentythree]

Most videos on this situation felt like they were pumped out in 5 seconds to capitalize off the news

[@octopuswindow]

@@ewetwentythree i agree

[@ewetwentythree]

@@octopuswindow not just with this situation too, just in general whenever something big or interesting happens

[@eclipse0174]

​@@ewetwentythree I think the best ones were Aeon's and Vortrox's

[@_Dearex_]

I really like the inclusion of such subtle differences like smaller text to prevent cheating 😄

[@thebrave9971]

Yeah, it's a nice addition to the bot, it's just sad that it took 2 years for someone to notice the subtle difference

[@Zeropointill]

@@thebrave9971 Yeah that's what i don't get, 2 years and all that analysis before anyone thought to check.

[@MeatiusGaming]

@@Zeropointill The thing is, that the list team changes a lot, since the entire list is run by the community. Another thing is that old hacking methods tend to be forgotten fairly fast, and a thorough analysis on every record is virtually impossible, even a 5 minute clip could be turned into a >3 hour long analysis session if you wanted to check for every known hacking method. And with thousands of records to check, it would take years to do a thorough review, which as I said is virtually impossible. So since the new team is practically entirely different to the one that was around when Space started becoming a prominent player, the new team pretty much just saw a player already approved by the old team, maybe checked his records with newer methods, and then accepted his records.

[@idontwantahandlethough]

how does that work exactly? I've never heard of that method before but it sounds clever!

[@Zeropointill]

@@MeatiusGaming Yeah the trust basically got grandfathered in an he just kept doing it.

[@xenobeam7874]

10:34 hold up, placing checkpoints is a vanilla feature, and zbot is just for botting. Just a quick correction.

[@dartsandmonkeys]

In practice mode

[@flummi-h9k]

@@dartsandmonkeys you play through the level in practice mode, then use the playback macro in normal mode

[@gmdFrame]

Ham sndwch

[@bloo9781]

"You might be thinking: Hey, this doesn't look hard!" nope, it definitely looks insanely hard :')

[@millenial8212]

And its like 100x times harder than it looks when u actually play it lmao ☠

[@thechugg4372]

​@@millenial8212i get that feeling, one way to not feel overwhelmed is to not see the level for what it is but rather a series of inputs, forget about the visual stuff and only think about when you need to click.

[@tammytheranger7645]

It's advanced hard

[@izakireemsi2783]

Utmost Definition of "Easier Said than Done"

[@AspireGMD]

Right it looks humanly impossible lol

[@MeatiusGaming]

This video is good for what it's trying to convey, but a lot of information has been missed that is relevant to perceive just how dominant SpaceUK was thought to be and how it ruined some players. As you can see in the poll for best player of 2021 SpaceUK won with over 70% of the votes, and looking from the perspective of any good player worth their salt, it was obvious he was the best player in the game by miles. The game was in the middle of a stagnation period due to the fact that new hardest demons take a lot of time to be verified, it takes thousands of (active playtime) hours to get good at this game and whenever a set of top players quit (they tend to all leave after a certain period of inactivity) it can take quite a lot of time for new top players to rise to the challenge and verify new top 1 demons. The hardest demon at the time was Tartarus, a level verified in January of 2020 by fairly good player, Dolphy, who took around 60k attempts, for context how a less good player compares, Mullsy had been attempting to verify Tartarus since I believe early 2019, maybe late 2018, and he was at around 200k attempts when Dolphy completed Tartarus, Dolphy's hardest was the then top 3 demon Zodiac, whilst I don't really know what Mullsy's hardest was when he started playing Tartarus, but somewhere along the way he beat a top 20 called "Bloodlust". [1] Anyway, after this a lot of good players quit, the dominant player in 2020 was Nswish, along with Rori, Technical and Wolvez. Nswish was a dominant player by miles similarly to SpaceUK because of one specific thing he did that no one before him had ever done, he had completed the entire main list of the Demon list, all 75 demons. Nswish, Rori and Technical all quit sometime in 2020, and the only one that remainder fairly active was Wolvez. Usually new top 1s get verified in about a year, Tartarus had been the longest lasting top 1 this game had ever seen, staying at #1 for a total of about 18 months I believe, during that time ONLY 26 people completed it. Let's now move onto why it takes so long to get good at this game. Completing Geometry Dash levels can be very difficult, and with every level you complete you get ever so slightly better, the harder a level you completed the more it'll improve your skillset (unless your skillset is perfectly tailored to the level, then it won't help that much). I used to be a top player and it took me about 3 years (2015-2018) to go from beating an easy demon, to completing a top 5 demon, with a total of about 3000hours on the game, with at least 50% of those being active playing hours. As time passes new and improved gear is made (mice with less latency, monitors with lower visual delay etc.), but so does the difficulty of levels increase. During the time between when Tartarus was verified and SpaceUK rose to prominence a new rule was allowed, that is, people were allowed to use "fps bypass" to play the game at 360fps, before that people were limited to their native monitor hz, so most good players were using 240hz, but sometimes you'd see some people climb to the top with 144hz, because 240hz was way too expensive. This rule made the game easier, explaining why would make this comment way too long, but in short, the more frames you have the easier this game is, if you don't believe me, try playing the game on 60fps and then switch 240 or 360fps and you'll see how much easier the game is, even if the timings you are doing are easy. Due to all of that happening the release of a new top 1 was expected to be delayed, and thus we waited, after a year passed people started playing hard levels again, the one I was most interested for was Firework, which ended up being verified by Trick (the guy who got #2 on the 2021 polls), not to confuse you, this level ended up being verified after Slaughterhouse (was hacked by SpaceUK)... a day later to be exact. Trick's hardest demon at the time was Bloodlust (same level I mentioned earlier with Mullsy), he had also gotten some runs on a different unverified top 1 (aod) whilst playing Firework. [2] Why SpaceUK was (considered to be) an absolute monster (skill wise): Looking at all this information, you'd expect SpaceUK to be an old player, playing for a couple of years at least. Well you'd be wrong, Space came from practically nowhere, completing The Golden (this wasn't mentioned in the video, but The Golden was the 2nd hardest demon in the game when Space beat it), as his 5th demon, for context on just how insane this is, even if you want to try jumping into this game and trying to recreate what Space did, you'd quickly realize that jumping straight to The Golden is not a good idea, it's just way too hard. This is approximately how normal progression would look: - you beat the first couple of official levels - you beat an easy demon, or one of the official demons (Clubstep, Theory of Everything 2, Deadlocked) - you try a medium demon, it probably takes you around 1000 or so attempts - you beat a couple of medium demons, feel confident enough to take on a hard demon and beat it in probably less attempts than your first medium demon - you beat some hard demons or jump straight into an insane demon (this will probably take you a couple of thousand of attempts) - you beat a couple of insane demons, and then finally you undertake an *entry* extreme demon... Wait... An "entry" extreme demon? What does that even mean. Well as you would expect, when there's not enough difficulties levels that are not even close in difficulty tend to get clumped up pretty easily, there's currently almost *700* Extreme demons in existence. SpaceUK on the other hand, had a progression that looked like this: - beat a medium demon - beat an insane demon - beat an entry extreme - beat a top 20 demon - beat the number 2 demon in 60k-ish attempts Yeah, remember that Dolphy guy who had a top 5 demon completed and took 60k to verify a new top 1, imagine being compared to some guy who came out of nowhere and almost matched your skill after 5 demons. [3] Granted Space probably grinded lots of other levels (we know he got 77% on an entry extreme that he never beat), to get good at the game, whilst this is a valid tactic, it's a really roundabout way of going about gaining skill. Ignoring knowing that he hacked, this guy then proceeded to absolutely melt every level that was thrown at him, I don't remember how many demons he actually ended up completing, but if I recall correctly he had done at least half of the top 10 before setting his sights on Slaughterhouse. There were multiple people trying to verify Slaughterhouse, since it was so hard it went from being a normal to an semi-open verification. [4] SpaceUK, after getting verification rights proceeded to absolutely destroy the level in about week, and in about 40k attempts stealing the title for the verifier of the (at then) top 1. Other players that were attempting to verify it quickly lost interest and stopped playing it (except for Doggie, who ended up being the first victor (later verifier) of the level). The other level I mentioned earlier, Firework ended up being verified by Trick in whooping 200k attempts. The only players who could at the end of 2021 even say they were a competition for Space in skill were Crisis and Wolvez, but by that point both had started to lose interest, SpaceUK was just too much of a monster to contend with. After Slaughterhouse: Not much ended up happening with Space after Slaughterhouse, Space ended up becoming the 2nd ever person to complete the entire main list, right after Nswish, he did this sometime around the mid point of 2022 and it's the same reason why he ended up getting the award for being the best player of 2022 as well. If you ask me for my personal opinion on just how good Space was perceived to be by all the other players though, I'd say he was easily without competition in 2021, which ruined pretty much everyone's motivation to even try beating Space, in 2022 things took a turn for the better when new top players started appearing, mainly Zoink, Trick, Cursed, Doggie, Diamond, Baeru etc. Even then most of these weren't enough to overtake Space in skill, even after he had practically quit the game after completing the main list, the closest I'd say anyone got to actually becoming a real SpaceUK was probably Zoink, since he ended up being the 3rd person to ever complete the entire main list. Footnotes: [1] A top 1 level being verified by you doesn't necessarily make you a top player, you are definitely good if you can pull it off in a reasonable amount of attempts, and despite Mullsy taking over 200k I'd say he was more than good enough for his time. [2] There's plenty of levels around that are technically top 1, but they are unverified, left on the servers to someday be picked up by someone and verified. [3] We know the furthest Space got on The golden was 94, so I'd still argue that he almost matched his skill [4] A normal verification would constitute a single person having rights to verifying the level, whilst an open verification means anyone can attempt to verify it. I say semi-open, because it was given to a couple of people to attempt to verify it. Quick shoutout to people that I know got madly screwed by Space's existence: Wolvez, Crisis - The undisputably best players of 2021 Jeller (Laniakea) - Cheated out of being the #1 player on the stats viewer Doggie, Trick - Being cheated out of being the verifier of a top 1 Cursed, Trick (again), Doggie (again), Zoink - The best players of 2022 And everyone else that had their motivation destroyed by SpaceUK, I hope you can pick yourself back up after all this, and if you find the motivation to give Geometry Dash another try, I wish you luck :)

[@MeatiusGaming]

Also, just saying, but don't blame the list mods for not spotting this, it may seem incredibly obvious in hindsight, but checking for hacks in Geometry Dash is a long and arduous process. A lot of old methods tend to be quickly forgotten as there's simply too many ways to hack (Geometry Dash as you can imagine is very easy to hack). And since the list is run entirely by the community it's members tend to change a lot, consequently they might not even know about some super old methods, and even if they do it would take far too long to actually check every record using every method for every known hack, a 5 minute clip can quickly turn into a 3 hour long checking session and with thousands upon thousands of videos checking everything is simply not feasible. I see a lot of people blaming the list team, but I don't think they deserve even 1% of the blame they've been receiving. The current team is especially under a lot of scrutiny despite most of the current team members not even being around back when SpaceUK rose to prominence, and as time passed he became a well established player with multiple "verified" records, which made the current team just assume he was obviously legit.

[@DJ1482.]

Thank you for submitting your English 12 final essay

[@saint_lol]

wow, well thought out I had no idea just how dominant space was and how much that meant. I enjoyed hearing this from someone in the community!

[@jawis2836]

I feel like meatius's post presents information that is inaccurate, lacking in evidence and context, and misrepresents the true nature of the game and the community around it. The following paragraphs will address these issues and provide a counter-argument. Firstly, the poll for the best player of 2021 that SpaceUK supposedly won with over 70% of the votes has not been sourced, and it is unclear where this data comes from. There is no mention of the poll in any of the official Geometry Dash channels, and no evidence has been provided to back up this claim. Without any reliable sources, it is difficult to take this assertion seriously. Secondly, the text claims that SpaceUK was the best player in the game by miles, which is not only subjective but also overlooks the achievements and skill of other players in the game. Geometry Dash is a game that requires both skill and perseverance, and it is not fair to dismiss the efforts of other players who have also invested countless hours into the game. There are many players who have completed the hardest levels in the game, and it is unfair to give all the credit to one player without acknowledging the skill and dedication of others. Furthermore, the text suggests that SpaceUK's dominance was due to the game being in a period of stagnation, but this is a flawed interpretation. The game has been consistently active, with new levels and features being added regularly. There are also many players who continue to play the game and achieve great things, so it is not accurate to say that the game is stagnant. Additionally, the text describes the game as being incredibly difficult, and claims that it takes thousands of hours to become a top player. While it is true that the game is challenging, it is not accurate to suggest that it is impossible for new players to become skilled. The game has a gradual progression system that allows players to improve their skills gradually, and many players have become skilled without investing thousands of hours into the game. In conclusion, the text about SpaceUK's dominance in Geometry Dash is flawed and misrepresents the true nature of the game and the community around it. It is important to consider multiple sources and perspectives when assessing the achievements of players in any game, and to give credit where it is due. The skill and dedication of players should be acknowledged, and it is unfair to give all the credit to one player without considering the achievements of others. Your post angered me so much that i felt the urge to write a short disstrack on you... nothing personal but, Ah, Meatius, the former Geometry Dash pro But now he's fallen, a sad and sorry foe With his dog by his side, he thinks he's tough But hacking Sakupen Realm is not enough He used to be skilled, now he's just a nerd No more fame, no more glory, not even a word He thinks he's got game, but it's all just a sham Meatius, you're done, you're just a one-hit wonder man You might have been good, once upon a time But now you're just a has-been, a shell of a prime You hack levels, but you can't hack the game Meatius, your legacy is nothing but shame So go ahead and try to come at me, bro But you'll always be a loser, don't you know I'll just sit back and watch you fail Meatius, you're nothing but a sad, sad tale. With all that said meatius. Please delete your comment

[@Chocolatepenguin]

@@jawis2836 It is so obvious that you just asked ChatGPT to create counter arguments towards Meatius´ comment lol

[@etopowertwon]

zBot authors really had some 200 IQ moment with this end level font size decrease.

[@figmentboy]

The watermark being 2 years old definitely contributed to the longevity of his records; by the time he started using zBot the method fell into obscurity

[@zmansadventures]

It's funny how doggie was originally the verifier of slaughterhouse (but a heavily nerfed version), gets beaten by spaceuk, becomes first Victor, hacker gets caught, and he becomes the rightfully deserved verifier he should've been all those years ago.

[@Sephyroth97]

Ah Yes, the classic: "I totally did it then the footage got bugged then I faked it because I could have done it again anyways"

[@millenial8212]

He got 96% on The Golden tbf, its harder than Kenos so its definetely possible he actually completed it off camera

[@dondrake8443]

@@millenial8212 and so it was for every other cheater that uses this excuse: to cheat in a way that doesn't get detected you have to be good at the game yourself, only the best manage to get away with cheating and they ALL use the same excuses every time "I got fed up" "I totally would have done it eventually" etc... Yes, it was plausible...so? He said it to try to defend himself AFTER he was already exposed so...yes, he could have done it...and he didn't...and even if he did off camera he still didn't do it legitimately on the leaderboard so, your point?

[@millenial8212]

​@@dondrake8443 nothing lol im just saying he prob did it legit?

[@millenial8212]

​@@scubasteve6175 Yes however he knows the Wasu and The Golden click pattern well. There is 0 reason for him to lie about such a random level like Kenos

[@millenial8212]

​@@scubasteve6175 also he used mouse cam before

[@kolo4664]

A bloody excellent video! Great script, montage and narration! Thanks for the credit too!

[@skraxel]

It is unfair that you showed proof and no one believed you because you were not known. Thats just sad from those people by denying everything because "SpAcEuK iS LeGiT" while they dont even know that themselves

[@thongdinhngo8337]

The prophet himself is here

[@Consumer_of_small_children]

bri'ish

[@WildMilotic]

Insane work Kolo, good job!

[@ryli06]

what always amuses me most about non-GD players covering GD situations is how they paraphrase our insane vocabulary. thanks for covering this, it was a shock to most of the community

[@whammautgd]

Its always a pain to see people understate the difficulty of GD, it cant really be put into words how hard it is 😭but its just what we have to deal with and its kinda dumb how they get so many facts wrong but its fine :/

[@alephzero1984]

@@whammautgd first off, what the fuck is a bounce, I've never heard a GD player call that shit bounce. (find it in the slaughterhouse part of the video) and zbot doesn't even place the damn checkpoints, it's called practice mode. It's in the base game. but it's still a good video, even if I can't overlook that shit

[@whammautgd]

@@alephzero1984 yeah the bounce thing was super fucking weird especially, never seem a singles person EVER call it that

[@ramseydoon8277]

"..it was a shock to most of the community." Why most? Shouldn't it have shocked the whole community?

[@ryli06]

@Ramsey Doon well inevitably there was a loud minority who suspected him for a while leading up to the exposal

[@zeldafan242]

As Karl Jobst has said, cheaters are thieves

[@izakireemsi2783]

Fellow Karl Jobst's Absolute Legend Viewer

[@youtubeilluminati1295]

Which is funny because either this guy stole the video from Karl or the Karl stole this video. I haven’t checked the dates but the order of the video is pretty much identical.

[@SkyeTheFennec]

Also as a side note. Im p sure the watermark faded into obscurity before someone mentioned it when space admitted to using zbot, which leads to the mods checking for it and ultimately finding it. i personally used zbot for 7 months to screw around with making macro's for humanly impossible levels and never once noticed it. i can see why it took so long to catch cause it was so subtle and only players that remember the watermark being added would of said something, combined with his trusted rep, led him to be able to cheat with it for 2 years before it all was exposed.

[@leta2742]

Really glad I hmcould have helped you with this story on Discord ! Great job!

[@Faiilcat]

Great video! It really is hard to grasp the amount of damage this has done to the community. I'm willing to say that this goes in the top 5 worst cheating scandals in any video game because the sheer amount of damage he caused. take Trick for example, who spent 200k+ attempts and over a year to verify Firework, with the promise of verifying a top 1. Just for space to swoop in and ''verify slaughterhouse'' and steal the top 1 spot that shouldve gone to Trick. and poor Crisis who was FRIENDS with space, who got demotivated after he wasn't as good as space (he wouldve probably been THE space with all the attention and praise etc). theres of course many more examples. I care a lot about this game so this whole thing hurts a lot. These are the REAL top 1 players that wouldve been top 1 if it wasnt for space: -Spiritex - Crisis - Wolvez - ThunderBT - Laniakea / Jeller - Snowballer - Zoink And some real first victors: Firework - Crisis Aerial Gleam - Zoink Oblivion - Skyzl Abyss Of Darkness - Trick Acheron - Doggie Slaughterhouse - Doggie (verification)

[@The_Jazziest_Coffee]

i don't wanna be that kind of asshole cuz i've gone around the GD community here and there, but idk if this counts as a top 5 worst cheating scandal for a video game ever mainly cuz a: there was no insane cash prizes (if we were talking in the thousands or officialised competitions with cash prizes at stake then yes that's insanely scandalous) and b: so far no one has genuinely gone and lost their life because of this that being said, this incident is absolutely mind boggling cuz i am fully aware that in spite of what i said, spaceuk practically destroyed the legacies of many skilled players who DESERVED his fame and respect, and that is my biggest frustration with this too the cash also sucks and so does the other points that you made

[@Faiilcat]

@@The_Jazziest_Coffee i was probably exaggerating a bit yeah but its still really bad

[@The_Jazziest_Coffee]

@@Faiilcat yeah that's all g

[@alephzero1984]

@@The_Jazziest_Coffee well I dunno if the gd awards count as having prizes

[@The_Jazziest_Coffee]

@@alephzero1984 i guess the most they could amount to is if they were a cash prize handed to them i'm not saying this to invalidate whoever won the award because it is extremely prestigious for any GD player to receive one, but i meant prize as in actual cash prize, and that would be insanely immoral

[@ItzCreeperYT]

Thank you so much for covering this situation! Love from the community ❤

[@diskoBonez]

I couldn't help but laugh when Abyssoft kept saying stuff like "This might not look difficult" I'm not really familiar with this game at all and it looks literally unplayable from the clips shown lmao

[@Consumer_of_small_children]

so, imagine this, you have to do like 5-10 frame perfects a second in the drop of slaughterhouse, then like 5 seconds into the drop you have to spam alot then straight fly for like 5 seconds straight and then with all of the pressure of almost beating the hardest part, you have to straight fly but go up abit which is much harder than normal straight fly and at the end do like 5 frame perfect jumps in a row

[@ectothermic]

It's always like this, the best at a game is a cheater and the community is like "eh couldn't be, him trustworthy!" and flames people WITH EVIDENCE of cheating. I'm surprised it keeps happening and these communities keep ignoring suspicions coming up and instead bully the people who bring them up.

[@MeatiusGaming]

Well the previous top player who was caught cheating was Cyclic back in 2015, people tend to get caught way before they even get to be this high up on the list, hell most people get caught with a single list record, it just so happens Space had the god of luck on his side

[@millenial8212]

We didnt thought he hacked because we blindly trusted the demon list team. They usually do a good job and take down 99% of hackers. Unfortunately things like this happen and SpaceUK isnt the only one who slips through; however this guy slipped for 2 years meanwhile other cheaters only last like a month

[@elion4245]

I disagree, i literally haven't met a person justifying or arguing that he is legit. Community seems to be very one sided on this thing.

[@ectothermic]

@@elion4245 OF course not anymore, but for things like this with speedrunning communities people blindly trust the runner and attack anyone coming up with either suspicions or evidence. Just look at every "Cheater exposed" video Karl Jobst has.

[@elion4245]

@@ectothermic hm, i thought you were correlating this situation to something like dream, where basically the income, the fans and "fame" were basically fine after the exposion and more over a lot of people were defending him. Basically, not only the demonlist did a bad job detecting hacks, but it's "alternative opposition" called "global list" also failed to expose him early enough. And i don't think that people felt somehow wrong about him, they just didn't know and that's it. It's really late here, i should've been asleep like 4 hours ago so i can and I'm probably do interprete your comment incorrectly but i hope i answered it in at least some way UPD: OK got it. You've said that "people attack other people with evidence", i interpreted it incorrectly, because basically the only evidence there is came the day he was exposed. So nobody was attacking anyone with evidence beforehand, that's why i though you meant that there are still supportive people of him now. Basically there was literally 0 people talking about his illegitimatacy with at least some form of evidence before paqoe touched it. But it was so easy to expose, his cheating method is pathetic even for cheating standarts, like people can fake beliveble mouse cams without delay difference and with click sounds on stream with donations with some conditions. Level to hack should be created by YOU, allowing you to record clicks while creating macros for a level. Then use that macros to make a gameplay. Then you have a working level, macros and even perfect clicks and perfect mouse cam That's just a more advanced example of hacking, which as far as i know wasn't used yet

[@SLKibara]

Thank you for saying "Action Platformer" and not "Rhythm Game"

[@SleyGD]

this video was really well put together, the level of detail you went into easily clears any other video ive seen on the matter from someone outside of the GD community. the only important distinction i can think of is that "verifications" are usually closed off / private instead of being public, usually the level stays private until it is verified by a set verifier instead of it being a race for any player to beat the level.

[@whammautgd]

as a member of the geometry dash community, it completely shocked us all. Nobody seriously thought space would be a hacker, we all looked up to him. The game is extraordinarily hard, me having poured over 3,000 hours in GD I'm still nowhere near the best, but its a game that cannot be understated how difficult it is. I personally believe it is the hardest game ever made, or at least the verified levels (editor levels). W video bro 🔥

[@AspireGMD]

Yeah GD is easily the hardest game ever made if you include user levels, acheron is easily the hardest stage/level in video games no question (that's been done by a human before.)

[@whammautgd]

@@AspireGMD yeah 100%

[@cdd-]

I always find it funny how non gd players talk about gd, "the rocket" lmao

[@catlovingtrio]

I never expected there to ever be a geometry dash cheating scandal, but here we are.

[@kolo4664]

Well it's not the first time. Cyclic vs Riot, Noctafly scandal, Kurumi controversy and all this good stuff

[@Ocabez]

you have never been in the community before because there is drama and a cheating scandal every other day

[@entropicvoxels]

this is at least our 400th

[@lostinthestars_]

well boy do I have news for you-

[@alephzero1984]

@@kolo4664 ANDROMEDA

[@Ceereeal]

This is a really well-researched video for someone who seems to not be too invested in geometry dash (although correct me if I'm wrong), and it explains things pretty well for people who don't know much about the game by including a bunch of context in the first half of the video. I also had no idea about Kolo's initial exposing video so thank you for including that! It is pretty disappointing what happened, and I honestly think if Space never started hacking levels, he could've gotten at least somewhere close to the number of achievements he faked, since he at least had some level of high skill, although it would've taken him much longer and probably wouldn't give him as much recognition as he received.

[@GarryDumblowski]

"And you might think, 'Hey, this doesn't look hard'" That is in fact not what I was thinking

[@crazyjorge]

Thanks for making this video, I don't think many people outside the community know how destructive this could be

[@ts4858]

at 16:03 when you talk about how he didn't get caught because he was so trusted, you're mostly right but also hacking with zbot is such a simple method that most list mods wouldn't check for it for someone who was already trusted

[@bramble553]

Cheating scandals like this genuinely depress me... Not only are these runners knowingly hurting the values of the entire community, they're actively abusing their own skills to achieve something like this. Same with the Guitar Hero and Minecraft scandals, it really shows that even high leveled runners have to be scrutinized even if they've proven without a doubt they're trustworthy, because there's always bad eggs like these people. And the fact SpaceUK isn't showing remorse for this... That's just terrible.

[@MemeAnt]

This man making a geometry dash video is wonderful

[@Abyssoft]

Yours is the the 69th comment

[@MemeAnt]

@@Abyssoft double nice

[@starryskies9655]

I never understand people who lie after being caught. If he’d just shut his trap after admitting to the hacks the first time, instead of doubling down on deleting his vods and releasing a twtlonger, I guarantee he would’ve gotten so much less backlash attention

[@mikethompson1653]

4:07, WHO IN TF IS THINKING THAT??

[@Chocolatepenguin]

I just recently discovered your channel when you released your video on the Bowsers Castle shortcut for Mario Kart 64. Would have never guessed that you would expand into games such as Geometry Dash, but I say that´s it´s a welcomed change!

[@Abyssoft]

Glad to have you aboard, there's more non Mario Kart videos in the pipeline :)

[@unknownanon4993]

What has Flappy bird become

[@Ascension721]

geometry bird

[@sirtopoftheworldegg]

flappy ufo

[@BobbieTheFish]

What's very surprising to me is that there is a built-in feature to detect cheating (the text) and there wasn't a minimum requirement to check that to verify a run

[@Consumer_of_small_children]

the creator of zbot never told anyone just so that cheaters like space use zbot and get caught

[@jomi867]

I would add the reaction of the other top players, especially that of Zoink who until then was the top 2. On KZbin he posted that he had always seen SpaceUK above him every time he managed to get a new achievement, either because SpaceUK was the first win or because he did it in fewer attempts. Zoink got better and better to beat SpaceUK when he gets the news that his rival has been cheating all along and that he was always the best. Incredible

[@bird_obsession]

I think I should say that although Aby compared Avernus to the Choco Mountain skip, it’s fair to say that Avernus is dozens, if not HUNDREDS of times more difficult. Zoink is often considered the best player in the entire game (a game with a MASSIVE skill ceiling too), and it took him 27k attempts. A level like this would likely take the average player MILLIONS of attempts to complete, likely over the span of an entire year. Safe to say this game’s limits have been pushed further than people think.

[@deeznuter4828]

Fax, all attempts in the choco mtn skip take like 10 seconds on average. However, it isn't fair to discredit that achiement. Each input is like almost a 360 frame perfect type difficulty. But yea I absolutely agree avernus is like many folds harder

[@thatoneguy9582]

-all for shit level-

[@herobrine8763og]

The levels do not ‘throw off your timing’. To beat one of these extremely hard levels, you need to practice every part, learn what visual cues to click to, and to engrain click patterns into your muscle memory. Since the level doesn’t change, you can always rely on making the exact same inputs to pass it. Going upside down does not mess with your muscle memory, because you will always go upside down every time, and you would have practiced the click patterns in practice mode. The majority of the difficulty of top levels comes from not just the nearly impossible timings, but also the awkwardness of the click patterns, with memory playing a much less part than this video implies. Awkwardness in click patterns comes from high cps and requiring the player to perform a sequence of holds and releases where the time you release is very specific and short. The last factor in difficulty is length of the level, which tests your ability to consistently perform at a high level and also your mental with nerves.

[@jjgh5421]

It’s sad that Spaceuk hacked Acheron and slaughterhouse

[@Dinoober]

thx for covering our game Abyssoft, been watching you for about a year now and LOVE your vids!

[@TheRussell747]

If someone's gonna make what is essentially a TAS tool, and have the forethought to make an obvious cheated-run indicator, i feel like the mods should've almost immediately put in place a system that checks for the size discrepancy. It's so easy to do, I don't get why they wouldn't have done it day one of being informed by the creator that it's part of the program.

[@anti7654]

They didn't do it because the developer of zbot only told a couple of people

[@TheRussell747]

@@anti7654 okay and? Those few people still included part of the moderation team. You've just been told of the simplest and easiest way to detect a cheater, and even if you don't want to tell the rest of the team, you're not manually checking for that? That's bad moderation.

[@Zeion97]

Dropping this here during the video, as someone who let Super Jumps stop them from running SMRPG, you CAN do it with practice. It is definitely hard, but once you pracfice it and get it, it is amazing. I always said i never could and my record is 138 jump while holding my than 7 month old. On the video as a whole, amazing job as usual!!! Keep up the good work.

[@SwagYso]

glad this situation got a lot of attention, the community needed a breakthrough

[@__8120]

4:50 "games would be unplayable without vsync" wha- excuse me???

[@MeatiusGaming]

this was unexpected

[@ComradeYosh.]

This was by far the most impactful gd drama as I started in Late 2019 and began playing harder levels in Late 2020 due to spaceuk so to see he hacked it’s definitely something 😂

[@ScottobozoGD]

10:33 Correction: zBot isn't what lets you place checkpoints in the game. That's just practice mode, a vanilla mechanic in the game. The rest looks good though. Good work!

[@raghugba863]

I know I'm very late to reply, but as someone that has no idea about it works, I am sure he meant that zBot places the checkpoints automatically for you, which is also kind of obvious given that it's called zBot and the checkpoints are set by pressing z

[@gdsz492]

@@raghugba863that’s another vanilla feature called ‘auto-checkpoints’ which is automatically enabled but can be disabled in settings

[@MrdDoge1]

How he said acheron hurt my soul

[@LordVadercraft]

Abyssoft gd video is crazy

[@Guidingsonar]

As someone who is in and out of watching the community, I am glad this showed up. I remember watching that video.

[@FrogsGD]

I think this is a very good video! Given that the whole drama was so large that it started to become heard in the wider community. People from outside of GD would come in and see what's up, but not understand anything. This video goes through it step by step and I think it works perfectly.

[@FoxLadyQueen]

Amazing video explaining the fundamentals and mechanics of gd and explaining the spaceuk situation

[@yolomodeboom]

you made a better video describing the situation than some people who actually make gd content, holy gj!

[@CiRdy34]

Kudos to you for explaining GD’s mechanics in the best way so most outsiders can understand a little better

[@komitoad]

as a geometry dash player since 2014 you described the mechanics of the game pretty well! good job!

[@Saicofake]

How do people play this game without getting dizzy.

[@pineapplefanta-be2zb]

would like to point out that practice mode is a base game function, and zbot only adds macros other than that, great video

[@LimusTG]

Thank you for covering this.

[@bmo14lax]

A few technical things about frame rate/frame perfect. Its not only if you're running at 60fps. Its only if youre running in the game modes *intended* fps. In this case, 60 just happens to be a fraction of 360.

[@bmo14lax]

Also in the beginning you said " Today we'll figure out how he did it" when You are just recapping the work other people did. I understand what you were going for it may seem like semantics but yeah, I appreciate you putting the video together Cheers.

[@martymcfly88mph35]

This video is a banger as usual. Love this channel

[@jakecooper5855]

That was the weirdest pronunciation of 'subsequent' I've ever heard!

[@Bodgie7878]

Just wanted to clarify, most games will work just fine without vsync, it's just reccomended to enable it if you're experiencing screen tearing, it essentially makes your monitor wait for the next full frame so you dont have 2 different half frames on your screen at the same time

[@JXChannel]

wow, the nuances of the game and community explained perfectly. idk how you got some of the obscure info but damn this was an amazing video

[@vipervenom9556]

WOAH I didn't expect this

[@TheFiendishFive]

These demon levels and all the new levels are all so visually unclear that it's no wonder people can easily fake runs. It's a precision game at its core, and making the levels so visually busy and unclear is kinda antithetical to the original game

[@Ren99510]

What is it with cheaters going 'oh yeah I cheated, but only in a few runs..." Like, every single one of these I've ever seen, that's what the cheater has said, but in reality they faked all of their runs. Just come clean, man. You got caught.

[@CarrtxGD]

good to see you inside the gd community too :D

[@dantedeloden]

ive been playing stepmania for over 20 years now. ive played quite a bit of other rhythm games, im a master at deemo, cytus, osu, pianista (was rank 3 in pianista) and yes, GD. but i had a feeling the top scores in GD were cheated. and that the real top players were getting the shaft. there are many great gd players that dont deserve this, the same in osu as well. osu has had its fair share of cheaters and its just disturbing.

[@Lunaticboi956]

based fellow stepmania enjoyer

[@dantedeloden]

@@Lunaticboi956 😁😁😁

[@maddoxmonteza]

0:00 the red ball 4 enemy square skin looks so cool

[@Daniel-gb9ex]

Josh Strife Hayes said good players cheat not to get a faster time, but to get a time faster. Those are usually hard to catch, because of their knowledge of the game, so they know what a good run is supposed to look like.

[@patrickdix772]

Yeah, this seems to be the common thing in nearly every speed running cheating scandal. The people caught cheating are often very good to start with, and their mindset often becomes "I know I can do it, but it'll take a lot of attempts."

[@meaty2406]

theres a few mistakes with the video but it would honestly be a nitpick just to list them but apart from that fantastic coverage of an event from and outsider perspective so good job and great work as always 👍

[@TheVikingDaddy]

Found you thanks to a DarkViperAu rambles and now I'm hooked to your channel. Time to binge!

[@Abyssoft]

Oh cool, did he mention me on a recent stream?

[@TheVikingDaddy]

@@Abyssoft I don't know how recent the stream was I only catch his KZbin stuff, it was on his rambles channel.

[@LunaMinuna]

I feel like everyone who gets called out for cheating and then act like “they’re done with this game” are insecure they aren’t good enough and cope with denial into knowing they aren’t the gods they were anymore. It’s sad but Power corrupts people

[@aliquotgd]

11:11 Correction: it's 6% smaller, not 20%. (1004 pixels -> 940 pixels if no texture pack was used) 20% is a massive difference which space would've realized and consequently opted for a different hacking method; for if otherwise, he would've been caught by everyone and their mother on his first zbotted completion. The 6% difference is obvious when the two images of the level complete screen are placed side by side for comparison, but without having a reference image it is hard to tell. It's how he managed to get away for 2 whole years, especially since people didn't even think about checking for something like that. Space was also a genius social engineer in terms of how he managed to forge all the trust that other top players, the list mods, and the geometry dash community as a whole had for him. It's why videos exposing him, like Kolo's, were never taken seriously and were instead automatically assumed to be a hater presenting false accusations.

[@Leftysrev3nge]

14:00 I'm moreso wondering why Kolo got so much heat for questioning top scores. Why is the crowd so quick to demonize someone raising suspicions rather than taking them seriously?

[@Speed-TV]

This is probably the most verbose and most explanatory geometry dash video ever

[@therpgloverreviews7399]

man every time i see news of this game i see levels just getting worse and worse

[@anti7654]

I mean you're not wrong, Avernus is terrible and no one wants to even play it lmao

[@koiasana]

As a GD player, I can say that you explained everything well

[@Pokefan220195]

Those "people" who can play those levels aren't really human, they're gods walking amongst us mortal souls. Looking at some of the footage should confirm that theory.

[@truffleee]

11:00 z bot isint what allows you to place checkpoints its a feature in game zbots purpose it to create the macros

[@GrimslyRyuzaki]

So people make visual clusterfuck levels and pretend they’re good?

[@empxrubix9387]

Player: *uses macro* Mindful developer: "You just activated my trap card"

[@leandrusguy144]

LETS GOO YOU MADE A VID ON IT! W

[@greenytoaster]

10:33 zbot doesn't allow you to place checkpoints. zbot just uses the checkpoint system in practice mode to make macros.

[@MyHandleIsAplaceholder]

I can't believe the guy who I used to watch for the explanation of Pokémon speedruns is explaining a drama I was interested in

[@Thoughtful.]

I remember beating the theory of everything 2 on my iPod in high school. Good days. ❤

[@Castellante]

Around the five minute mark, you begin to talk about frame perfect inputs at 60FPS, and how playing the game at higher frame rates would make the game easier with a higher number of frames to make the appropriate input. Although the number of frames increases, those frames would still take up the same amount of time. Instead of 1/60 of a second, the input window would be 2/120, or 6/360, which all occupy the same amount of time.

[@yommmrr]

At least he can join that illustrious group with Billy Mitchell and Todd togers.

[@Swagtildawn]

I absolutely cannot stand the lies and ego on people when they shit like "I got bored and just wanted to fuck with the mods" or some dumb shit like that. Be an adult, own up to it, and lets move on. Either way, great video! very interesting.

[@Yoshimitsu4prez]

Loved the random clone hero shoutout about getting FCs

[@PartOfTheGame]

This just goes to show...rank means nothing. Mods for ANY game should consider ANY run cheated until it is looked over. This sucks, I agree, but it's because they don't that things like this have been happening. Top player, new WR, hell, even a long-time runner, ALL should be treated with suspicion with new runs. This is a sad state of affairs for speedrunning...