The prolific Guitar Hero guitarist, once considered the world’s most productive, faked it and admitted it in a lengthy apology he posted on YouTube.
“I probably wouldn’t waste my time on this,” he said. “Yes, most of the things I did were not authentic and I am guilty of being a fraud, of the things I altered and altered. “
“I’m sorry, I’m the user you thought I was,” he added. “I’m a scammer. “
His apology comes after YouTube researcher Karl Jobst discovered his trap in a now-viral video.
Since 2018, Schmooey has dazzled the Guitar Hero fan network with world premieres. Often playing some of the most complicated songs at speeds much faster than everyone else, he was considered the greatest in the world. But him posting a world first on YouTube in December 2021 would be his downfall.
The video featured the world premiere of Schmooey, a “perfect” series of nine models of eternal pain. This attracted suspicion and, upon closer examination, the video contained several errors.
Expert players spotted an inconsistency between the notes and the position of their fingers, but the moment that sealed their fate was a Windows Media Player overlay that appeared very briefly towards the end of the video. It’s a big red flag: it’s not a live video, but a screenshot of a previous recording.
Schmooey admitted that he “pasted” some of his videos into a Discord call in January, but insisted that he only modified some of his videos. Then the Guitar Hero network began reviewing previous videos of him and discovered even more evidence of video splicing. . . as well as evidence that his game was running slower than it deserved.
How did he do it? Well, their approach is deceptively simple. Schmooey used the Cheat Engine to slow down songs in Clone Hero, a PC version of Guitar Hero widely used in the online community. He would play them back at a less difficult difficulty level and then speed up the recording with video editing software, combining them with footage from his webcam.
The effects were convincing enough to idiot Guitar Hero experts for several years. Although some enthusiasts have spotted oddities in their videos (a few dropped frames here, some inconsistent audio there), this has largely been forgiven with intelligent faith. He had proven to be a pretty decent player in live events.
But now, the chain hopes to move forward. “He’s done some crazy things live, he’s done some crazy things in online sessions,” Acai, Guitar Hero’s most level-headed musician, said via Twitter. “All we had to do was let our guard down and accept as truth with him the legitimacy of him and he deserved it. “
Separately, Microsoft boss Phil Spencer said he was interested in revisiting Activision franchises that were discontinued after Microsoft bought the company. . . and this has led some to speculate that we may eventually see a new Guitar Hero game.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment reporter and film critic for IGN. You can see it on Twitter.