Banning of Nockess

Summary

• On February 11, 2019, one of the community's most active and skilled speedrunners, Nockess, was banned following accusations of cheating and slowing down runs. After confessing to staff during a confrontation, over 160 world records were invalidated.

Details

• Suspicions first started to grow almost a year earlier on February 22, 2018 when Nockess achieved a world record on Battlements of 3.669, but it was rejected for WRR 5 after nobody was able play the .rec back to completion or replicate the pathway.

• He also became known for executing runs offline, even when not necessary, especially during the making of his biggest video, Marble Blast Custom Levels 20. His reasoning behind it was so that the video could be a surprise, but after several heated exchanges related to it with Xedron, he revealed his world records and began getting them online.

• Staff members began to investigate, and confronted Nockess on February 10th, citing an unusual speed of achieving WRs, camera and marble movements far too smooth, .rec files and WASD movements far bigger than average, among other things.

• The following day, the ban was announced with Nockess' confession included, in which he said "I cheated on several of my recent videos and efforts in other projects, even if I didn’t say anything about it. This goes back to several months ago, say February of last year or so. I really have no reason to ask for forgiveness from any of you, but I hope my sincerest apology can take off a bit of the pain for you. "

• In aftermath, over 160 world records were taken off of the leaderboards, and Nockess originally unlisted all of the videos on his channel, ironically only a couple days after achieving 1,000 subscribers. A list of all of Nockess' invalidated world records can be found here.

• In addition, Nockess received a revamped backlash in March 2020 after achieving a supposed record on Gauntlet of 8.81 and then 8.79, however the following day it was revealed that the hard trick in the level used colmesh in Nockess' run, although he denied having any knowledge that the colmesh was there in the first place.

• In March 2021, Nockess was unbanned as a result of the staff deciding that it was better to grant access to community services like the forums and the Discord server since the reason behind the ban was solely related to the game. This also resulted in Nockess having access to the leaderboards again, given that the setup of the website, leaderboards, and server were all too tightly woven together and it being practically impossible to separate any of the features. To the present day, Nockess has full access to all online in-game services, but has agreed with the staff to continue not submitting any times to the singleplayer leaderboards.