Guitar Hero to Guitar Zero: YouTube's best plastic guitarist actually cheated for years
pcgamer.comGuitar Hero player Schmooey, previously thought to be the best in the world, has admitted that he's a fake. Since 2018, the 20-year-old had garnered a legendary reputation in the Guitar Hero community for his mastery of the hardest songs ever made for the game. It wasn't until December 2021, after Schmooey uploaded his most impressive performance yet, that eagle-eyed viewers started to notice something fishy.
Following a January investigation into his legitimacy, Schmooey has deleted every video on his YouTube channel and uploaded a lengthy apology in which he admits the truth: most of his videos were fabricated.
«I'm sorry I'm not the person you thought I was. I am a fraud,» Schmooey says in the video. While some of his videos were apparently real, the YouTuber will retire from posting videos and return thousands of dollars he earned playing Guitar Hero.
The story is chronicled in the excellent video below by Karl Jobst, a YouTuber who covered a similar scandal in the Minecraft speedrunning community.
How did Schmooey fake his success? According to a Twitlonger posted by Schmooey, the trick was pretty simple. Schmooey used Cheat Engine to slow down songs in Clone Hero (a faithful PC port of Guitar Hero widely adopted by the community) and play them at an easier difficulty. He'd then speed the recording back up in editing and splice that video together with his webcam footage.
Jobst explains that, over the years, fans had noticed a few oddities in Schmooey's content, like videos with unexplained dropped frames or finger movements on Schmooey's guitar that didn't quite match the notes on screen. It wasn't until Schmooey's December 2021 «flawless» run of 9 Patterns of Eternal Pain, a world-first perfect performance of an
Read more on pcgamer.com
