The World’s Most Popular Guitar Hero Player is Outed as a Cheater, Quietly Deletes Video
Ahh, Guitar Hero. Although we all have played it, few were very good at it. Despite not seeing any new entries for years (though Microsoft’s purchase of Activision could have been set up to change), there is still an enthusiastic community of players who are far too skilled to lose.
One of them, Schmooey, was, up until recently, considered to be the greatest player in the world. He cleared songs that others found extremely difficult and performed them faster than the rest. He had also earned thousands of dollars in bounty money that the community had put towards clearing advanced tracks. This is the first time I have heard of Guitar Hero bounties.
There will always be people who doubt someone that is that good. But, aside from a few dark clips here and there, there was never any evidence that Schmooey had been a cheater. He was exposed recently for having faked almost every upload – about 100.
Kotaku reported that he uploaded a run of the song “9 Patterns of Eternal Pain” and that the community noticed parts of the video in which his hands were not hitting the notes. It was discovered that he had been speeding up footage and splicing clips together to fake them.
Karl Jobst, a YouTuber, posted a video that explains the entire situation. It’s worth a look if you are interested. Schmoopy has deleted all of his uploads and made his social media accounts public. He also posted a full apology video last week and paid all his earned bounties.
