Diablo hackers prove legendary speedrun was faked after 2.2 billion randomized dungeons

All of the Diablo games have healthy speedrunning communities, as dedicated players compete to shave seconds from their times across different categories. Now, it has emerged that one of the most storied runs in the original game has proved to be a fake.

For well over a decade, Maciej “Groobo” Maselewski’s 3-minute and 12-second run served as the greatest individual playthrough since the original Diablo released in 1996.

Playing as a Sorcerer, he used a series of acceptable glitches and unique gameplay mechanics to complete what many saw as a perfect run. For years, many in the speedrunning community tried to equal or even beat the time, but all came up short.

Now, an exhaustive investigation has drawn the conclusion that Groobo’s Diablo run simply isn’t possible.

Groobo run unable to be replicated in Diablo

Blizzard Entertainment

As relayed in an original report by ARS Technica, an investigation by the Diablo Mapgen team details that Groobo’s methods went far beyond those allowed within the rules.

The element of the run that originally drew their attention was the number of levels which featured an upstairs and downstairs right next to each other. This unusual generation led to repeated attempts on their part to replicate the anomaly.

After reverse engineering Diablo, they used the Diablo Mapgen Tool they had created to lay out an entire dungeon within an individual seed. Overall, this leads to 2.2 billion possible combinations that could be considered legitimate, with Groobo’s map not found within that range.

This led to the further conclusion that the run was taken from spliced together from different versions of the game, which would be more than enough to invalidate the run.

DwangoAC weighed in to share his thoughts, saying. “It did harm. Groobo’s alleged cheating in 2009 completely stopped interest in speedrunning this category. No one tried, no one could.”

The run has now been removed from Speed Demos Archive, though it remains a Guiness World Record for the ‘fastest completion of an RPG videogame’ at the time of writing.