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A historic Diablo speedrun may not actually be legitimate. 15 years after breaking the community’s minds, Maciej “Groobo” Maselewski’s legendary Any% run of the original game has been investigated by rival speedrunners, and it may have been debunked.
Recorded in 2009, Groobo’s speedrun of the original Diablo somehow resulted in an Any% speedrun time of just three minutes and 12 seconds. Playing as a Sorcerer, the 27-segment speedrun has been investigated by rival players as an impossible run as it takes place in a generated map that shouldn’t be possible.
2009 Diablo speedrun debunked
Via Ars Technica, speedrunners Funkmastermp and dwangoAC worked together to create a Tool-Assisted Speedrun of the original Diablo game to figure out how Groobo beat the game so quickly. To discover the exact map used, the team created a custom map tool to reverse envineer a game, as well as a scanner tool to find speedrun-perfect dungeons.
However, after generating over 2.2 billion seeds in the ARPG, not a single map came close to matching the map layout, quests and loot drops of the 2009 run. In fact, after deeper investigation, it appeared that the infamous speedrun was actually a cleverly edited version stitching together multiple runs into a single video.
As they continued to investigate, the team discovered that the historic 2009 Diablo speedrun had a number of markers in the main menu as well as inconsistencies with the in-game inventories, quests menus and other aspects of the game.
The exact process of how Groobo created the speedrun is not known, but the team suspects numerous different methods. Alongside video splicing different runs together, the team also suspects that the run is using some modifications to get the exact drops needed to complete the game.
“Overall, the team’s analysis conclusively reveals the run was not possible as Groobo described without disqualifying modifications. The run should therefore be immediately retracted from all leaderboards,” the team announced.
As for the reason behind the deep investigation, Diablo speedrunning in the Any% category has been stagnant. With Groobo’s time being impossible to beat—or even come close to—players simply have given up for years, but the invalidation of the run means that players may now try again, finding new methods to nab the fastest time.
For more Diablo coverage, read why creator David Brevik isn’t a fan of modern ARPGs, or check out his original idea for Diablo 3.
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