A Guitar Hero player who was thought to be the best in the world has recently been uncovered as faking most of his accomplishments.
It might be a while since you have thought about Guitar Hero, but the game still has quite an active community. While the original game itself isn’t used so much anymore, a free-to-play game called Clone Hero is used in its place. Because of the custom song options, many players use it to make incredibly difficult tracks.
Schmooey, generally regarded as the top Guitar Hero player in the world, was recently exposed as having faked a majority of his top achievements in the scene.
Speedrunning content creator Karl Jobst recently released a video going into detail as to what went down with Schmooey. For a few years, on and off community members have suspected Schmooey as having faked some of the tracks he had played. No one was able to find any concrete proof however, so it was mostly left alone. Schmooey was meant to be a player who could beat the toughest tracks around. And at faster speeds than most even play at. But in December 2021, he posted his run of the song 9 Patterns Of Eternal Pain.
how was he found out?
The song is incredibly difficult, and no player has ever finished it while hitting every single note. And when Schmooey posted a video showing him doing just that, suspicion was once again raised against him. And so after some research, it was found that some of the notes Schmooey was hitting didn’t match up with what was on screen. There’s also a moment where a Windows Media Player overlay appears. Which led people to suspect that he was using a pre-recorded video during a livestream.
While Schmooey denied the accusations at first, he admitted to having faked the video. And in turn, he admitted to faking nearly all of his videos, around 100 clips in total. He used a variety of techniques to fake his videos, like splicing them together. And he would play at a slower speed and then speed it up. Schmooey also posted a video apologising for lying to the community, as well as a Twitlonger providing his real accomplishments. And he also returned all bounty money he had earned over the years. He has also since locked all of his social media accounts.
Schmooey actually was a good player, having performed at various events over the years. Which makes the whole situation that much worse. So as he himself notes in his apology video, it was a simple case of greed. All in all, it’s a good reminder that cheaters never prosper.
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Featured Image Credit: Schmooey: Harmonix