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Comment by MilnerRoute | Hacker News Reader

It's important to emphasize that this isn't just about a Donkey Kong score. Twin Galaxies took the extreme position that because they were suspicious of a handful of Donkey Kong games played over the decades by Billy Mitchell -- they're invalidating every score in every videogame he ever played in his life. (In 1985 Mitchell held the world's high scores for Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong, Jr., Centipede, and Burger Time.)

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It seems like the record Billy is most proud of is his perfect game of Pac-Man. (To this day on Twitter he calls himself "Pac-Man Billy.") Here's a good article that explains how difficult that was.

https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect...

After 254 levels of normal Pac-man, the screen fills with jibberish and screen noise -- some of the pixels you have to eat are actually invisible. Billy was the first person on planet earth to crack that level.

That's one of the other records Twin Galaxies has invalidated.

Billy's argument is in part: there's zero evidence he cheated at Pac-man, so why is that score being invalidated too.

Looks like the Pac-Man score was reinstated.

https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/29330854/retro-gamin...

By Guinness.

But not by Twin Galaxies...

Ah, thanks for this correction

By Guinness World Records only, despite the fact that GWR are not and never were the refereeing organisation for those records, so they don't have any authority. GWR just republishes Twin Galaxies' records.

Isn't this common in sports? If you're caught intentionally cheating even once your entire career's achievements are invalidated.

Multiple people have been suspended for doping in tennis, but their past achievements were not impacted.

No. It's not. In fact I can't think of any major sports that operate in that way.

Titles/records are stripped from events where they are proven to be doping/cheating but that's usually it. Athletes are then usually banned for a period afterwards.

Lance Armstrong comes to mind.

Lance Armstrong

Armstrong fits the “Titles/records are stripped from events where they are proven to be doping/cheating” pattern not the “acheivements negated for whole career regardless” pattern.

It's just that the conclusion of the investigations into the allegations that started early in the major success portion of his career was that he was cheating the whole time of his biggest successes.

Is it an extreme position? Video game high scores and speedrunning are sports that rely on honour to a certain extent, because it's difficult to detect sophisticated cheating even with video evidence, and many of Twin Galaxies' old records do not even have that, being verified by referees (at least one of whom has his own dodgy history) without surviving proof.

If someone is found to have cheated, their other records also lose credibility because of that honour component. Also, suspending records is maybe the only form of leverage honest players have.

TG removing his scores isn't at issue. I don't think there's a court that could order them to reinstate his scores, since it would be the government ordering them to engage in some speech. His claim is that TG called him a cheater.

For purposes of this ruling the judge found that TG's statements were not opinion but were held out as fact. I think TG did themselves no favors in being cagey. They could've easily formulated their statement as an opinion based on disclosed facts. In essence, "I think John is a drunk" may be defamatory because it implies undisclosed facts while "I think John is a drunk because he buys a liter of vodka each week" is an opinion.

In both cases doesn’t the “I think” convey that it is an opinion?

This comes down to language, specifically what differs an opinion from a belief. Which is quite complex and I cannot fully wrap my head around it. But here's my take nonetheless.

In this case, placing the "I think" would make it a belief. This could also make a statement an opinion, but from what I understand, beliefs have a non-zero chance of being proven or disproven, whereas opinions cannot be proven.

"I think gentleman11 is nice username" is a bit different than "I think gentleman11 is a man". Something being "nice" is a bit harder to prove, and possibly impossible without additional context. Thus, it is an opinion. Someone being an man, cheater, alcoholic, etc have the ability to be proven, so it's not as much an opinion as a belief.

I'm not a linguist, but I'd be interested in what language specialists have to say on this.

Couching your language only gets you so far. By disclosing the facts that underpinning an opinion a speaker may enjoy protections over merely implying them.

IMO, that’s a completely reasonable stance. Cheaters often retroactively lose trophies even if they might not have cheated in that instance. It’s simply better for the community to have such standards.

I don’t have a high opinion of the Olympics but In the case of team events, the rule was revised in March 2003 so that the IOC can strip medals from a team based on infractions by a single team member. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stripped_Olympic_medal...

That’s arguably a much harsher stance.

I'm not sure I understand your point of view. Suppose we're on a four-person relay race team, one of our other teammates is cheating, we win the gold medal in the relay race, and the cheating is uncovered.

It would seem outrageous to me for you or I to keep our Olympic Gold Medals.

They would ban a full team even if the member was simply on the roster and did not actually participate.

Designated alternates only get medals if they have some nominal participation, so they will generally get it when possible.

Well if he's cheated in one game, I think it's perfectly reasonable to issue a full ban, and I'm sure TG's TOS gives them full discretion to do so.

> I'm sure TG's TOS gives them full discretion to do so.

I think Twin Galaxies and those records predate this sort of privately issued internet law.

I don't really agree. Ban him from further games, because he's a known cheater? Sure/maybe. But unless his record in Pac-Man itself seems suspect I don't think it should be taken away.

Many of Twin Galaxies' old records have no surviving evidence allowing them to be verified.

If they want to keep those runs, seems like this could be solved with an Archive/Legacy tab or even better a checkbox for "Show unverifiable runs" that's unchecked by default.

That way a game isn't killed forever because an unverifiable run got a perfect score.

> unless his record in Pac-Man itself seems suspect

Are there good records to determine that it isn't suspect?

The damage for removing a valid score from a known cheater is that they may be robbed of a legitimate score.

The damage of not removing an invalid score is that that score may be impossible or require superhuman skills (i.e. TAS) to attain, thus forever removing that category from competition.

This lopsidedness - and don't get me wrong, a healthy dose of schadenfreude too - makes me strongly believe proven cheaters should be stripped of all records.

This happens all the time in real sports. If you get caught cheating you often forfeit your legacy because everything you've done professionally is suspect, especially if you show a longer-running history of cheating or are caught multiple times.

I'm not sure how you can differentiate the punative nature of banning someone from all future tries because they had cheated indeterminately in the past, but not invalidating all their historical record outside of individiaul cases...

I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't come across as snarky. Last year the Houston Astro's admitted they'd been cheating.

They did not forfeit their legacy, and in fact the very next year came within one game of competing in the World Series.

New England Patriots?

Actually, I would tend to lean the opposite direction. Our ability to detect cheating tends to go up over time [1], so we can provide more stringent defenses against cheating for future events, in particular by requiring more/better evidence of scores. However, our ability to reanalyze older records for evidence of cheating is often more lacking, and so we have to enter in a default judgement.

If you're dishonest enough to cheat once, why should we expect your other records (both past and future) to be more honest? Once you have been caught cheating, that knowledge colors all of the other records, and you have a stronger burden of proof to demonstrate that those records are indeed valid. If that means that we are stripping you of legitimate records, well, maybe you shouldn't have broken the rules if you didn't want to suffer the punishment.

[1] In absolute terms. Of course, cheaters also get more ways to cheat over time, so the relative capability of cheaters versus anticheat detection will fluctuate over time.

It might sound a bit harsh but OTOH anyone who decides to cheat in this context has plenty of time to reevaluate, since (I guess) it takes some preparation and energy.

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