UPDATE REGARDING THE USER Duper:
Hello fellow Free Rider High Definition players. No, this is not the new update with this year's reviewed suggestions, although we are working on this and hope to get this out as soon as we can. But no. Today is one of those other days. It's sad that this is still an ongoing issue, especially given that we are in a
Grace Period, but oh well, it is what it is. Today we are here to inform that it came to our knowledge that the user Duper was indeed cheating in the game, using some tools to assist him in the making of his ghosts and then passing them as legitimate.
Duper is an user that started getting attention towards the end of the past year for his great ghosts and his quick ascension in the ghosting scene. I guess the main thing that saved him from getting too much attention, which could make more players suspicious of him, was the fact that his ghosts were good but not insane enough for people not to believe in. He started his forum account in September of last year and from that time onwards we started to see some stuff from him. Some of his ghosts earned him a place among the top 3 ghosters of the month in the Ghosting Awards twice, getting 2nd place in December 2023 and January 2024. He also holds 3 features at the moment and his performances earned him a 63rd place in the all-time FRHD Top 100 Ghosters list and also a 11th place in the Ghosting Battle Contest 4. So, although his impact wasn't as huge as we had with players like Symantec and ShamatoZ, he was a player that was starting to make some waves in the ghosting community.
From time to time people would share some suspicious about him since the start of this year, but it was around late February and early March that these suspicions become more frequent. People would really struggle to find any ghosts of him with deaths, there were multiple ghosts where some sections didn't really look realistic for someone like him to do (and in some instances, anyone), based on what he had shown us so far, so we decided to do something about it.
In March of this year I reached him out sharing our concerns and asking for video proof of his ghosting skills and things like that and the answers were always disappointing. Some other players also tried and there was always an excuse that ultimately would make him not show us anything. One day is lack of motivation, then family issues, then some personal conditions and lots of other stuff. All of this are perfectly valid reasons, but we do have strong reasons to believe that this wasn't the main reason he never sent us anything. We recently found some evidence of a player admitting to cheat in some accounts, which, given the context of that information and from where we receive it, allowed us to link it directly to Duper. When we confronted him about it, no response, the guy completely vanished. We gave him months to sent the video and now more than a week after the recent information we found, so I guess we are done waiting. If we receive new information that surprisingly contradicts everything that we found so far, we have no problem on correcting our mistakes, but this doesn't seem like one. So for now, here's what we'll do regarding him:
Official Featured Ghosts:
He'll lose all of his current 3 features and have the ghosts deleted:
https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/332790-bmx-trial-box/r/duper
https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/507142-maze/r/duper
https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/970702-cabin-fever/r/duper
For the first two ghosts from the ones above, since they were features before, the current second places with have their features reinstated as it follows:
https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/332790-bmx-trial-box/r/theft (for
Cerasium)
https://www.freeriderhd.com/t/507142-maze/r/xenom2.0 (for
Xenom)
The feature on
Cabin Fever was an original one, so we'll put the
2nd place ghost, from
erikeriksson2001 under review to see if it's worth featuring it, but no immediate features will be assigned.
Also, starting from today, he won't be allowed to suggest ghosts to the thread for a
full year. If he beats a featured ghost, at least for now, his ghosts will be deleted. If during the
1 year ban he makes serious efforts to reinstate himself as a legitimate ghoster, we can open a discussion or consider letting his ghosts as unverified features But that's a
BIG IF.
FRHD All-Time Top 100 Ghosters list:
As of right now, we'll just add a strike-through for his name in the 2023 list and prohibit him from joining the 2024 one. The prediction for the 2025's list to be out is on January 2026, so whenever that happens we can see if it's worth reconsidering.
Ghosting Awards:
He'll lose his ghosting awards, so the two times he finished among the top 3 ghosters of the month, both times in 2nd place, that he got from
December 2023 and
January 2024 will be stripped from him. For the December 2023 one, the 1st place will remain with
Xenom, the 2nd place will now be held by
BrendanMagill and the 3rd place will now go to
Cerasium, that had the main shoutout of the month. For the January 2024 one, the 1st place will remain with
Xenom, the 2nd place will now be held by
Tubiek and the 3rd place will now go to
CK9C, that had the main shoutout that month. No other awards were affected.
Forum Ban:
As of right now, we are aiming for 2 months of forum ban, followed by 4 months of forum discouragement (more severe restriction) and then 6 more months of forum restriction, completing then a full year. We can reevalute things later or before, depending on how things go. We never got him being fully open about this, so this is something that works against him in potential penalty reductions. But let's see how it goes.
Game Ban:
Right now we are not sure if we should apply a ban in the game just yet, but if this comes back to happen in any type of way or if we don't see any signs of accountability or redemption, we can consider it for sure.
Final Words:
So this our update regarding him, kind of a short version. As for the GBC4, he didn't place well enough for it to matter to much, but this is something that
Xenom can analyze.
And again, come on guys, do we really need to go through this every single time? It's disappointing for sure. If there's other players in this situation, please come forward so things can have more peaceful ends.
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