Diablo’s Random Seeds and the Illusion of Luck: Grobbo’s Deceptive Run
The excitement of speedrunning lies in its unpredictable nature, especially in games like Diablo, where maps and dungeon layouts are randomly generated. In theory, this randomness means that every run is unique, requiring both skill and a good amount of luck to achieve record-breaking times. However, Maciej "Grobbo" Maselewski exploited this randomness in a way that no one could have imagined, ultimately perpetrating a fraud that would last for more than 15 years buy Diablo 4 gold.
Grobbo’s run of 3 minutes and 12 seconds became famous for its sheer impossibility. In Diablo, players progress through dungeons by finding stairways to the next level, which appear on random tiles. For Grobbo to repeatedly find the "next" set of stairs immediately after entering the first set seemed beyond improbable. On top of that, he received an early drop of Naj’s Puzzler, an essential item for completing the run, at the perfect moment.
When the speedrunning community began investigating his achievement, they weren’t initially suspicious of foul play. They simply wanted to recreate the run’s improbable luck. But their investigation revealed a shocking truth: the seed Grobbo claimed to have used didn’t exist. The tools used to uncover the legitimate seeds showed that Grobbo’s run had been manipulated by combining elements from multiple different runs and even manipulating the game’s internal clock.
The investigation also revealed that Grobbo had used different versions of Diablo and patches to perfect his spliced-together run. Despite his defense that the run’s spliced nature had been acknowledged in the video description, the methods he used violated the rules of the Speed Demos Archive. The fallout from this discovery was profound, with many in the community feeling betrayed by Grobbo’s actions buy Diablo 4 gold.