2023 Cheating Scandal

The 2023 cheating scandal is a series of events that eventually led to the infamous player Fred (formerly of team T3) being banished from the TrackMania Nations Forever community. The investigation of Fred's records took place in the first half of 2023, and was primarily focused on his trial and platform achievements. Since Fred was one of the greatest and most known TrackMania players, it took the investigators several months to compile and present the evidence to the game's community.
As a result, Fred had quit the game after leaving a cryptic message, and was never seen playing again. His current whereabouts are a rather popular topic within the game, with many players suspecting that Fred might be playing under a different alias nowadays.
== Background ==
=== Platform/Trial ===
After the worldwide release of the platform campaign, tons of drivers were presented with a fresh TrackMania challenge, albeit incredibly difficult. Back then, most players were struggling to get any reasonable attempts on the newly introduced maps. Failing and then giving up or restarting too many times resulted in their runs being invalidated. Leaderboards were entirely barren, with only a few individuals making it to the very end of the incredibly difficult maps introduced by Nadeo.
Some time later, however, the player Fred (in-game name Fred! c:) seemed to smash each and every map with ease, completely demolishing the previously set records. Fred had single-handedly taken 18 world records on the 21 map platform campaign. Not only did he finish every map, he also did it flawlessly. TrackMania experts raised their eyebrows in disbelief at the time, and had taken it to the now-defunct TrackMania Forum to discuss such a strange phenomenon. Nobody seemed to know who Fred was, or where did he come from. However, all his records were perfectly legitimate and the conversation would later die down due to inactivity.
Fred kept on pushing the platform maps, and by the end of 2010 he managed to finish each platform map available with a record 0 respawns on all of them. Meaning, Fred held the world record on every single map of the campaign. This was celebrated by many, and Fred was eventually put into the TrackMania hall of fame for this achievement.
In early 2011, Fred kickstarted the trial map style by asking the community to build even harder maps than what Nadeo came up with in their platform campaign. As builders pumped out new maps, Fred shattered them in record time. To many, he was the best trial player, practically unmatched by anybody. Maps like Oachkatzlschwoafs on ICE and Something on ACID were specifically built to test whether Fred would be able to finish them within hours. Although taking more time than usual, Fred still finished both of them in mere days.
=== Final Enigma ===
In 2017, Simo_9, an accomplished trial builder, presented his new map - Final Enigma. Dubbed "the final challenge", it was, admittedly, the hardest trial map built to date. Many players thought of it as impossible right after seeing the GPS run. Nobody was able to get to checkpoint 1, let alone finish the map in its entirety. But the trial community knew that there was one truly exceptional player among their ranks. Main question in the TrackMania channels at the time was not whether Final Enigma is possible, but rather when will Fred finish it. Fred himself, however, was absolutely quiet.
After one year, Final Enigma still stood unfinished. Fred seemingly vanished from the community too, and no one else could even imagine getting close to the finish line. Due to the skill difference, the majority of trial players moved on to easier maps and never attempted Simo_9's challenge.
The calendar shifted to the year 2019, and the so-called "greatest replay ever" was uploaded to the TrackMania Exchange page of Final Enigma. The first and only finish, by none other than Fred. As he mentioned in the comments, playing the map with millions watching was irritating, thus he opted for offline play in complete secrecy. He seemingly grinded the map non-stop for the past 2 years, and had finished it multiple times in that timeframe. Fred, however, wanted to be remembered not only as the first ever finisher of Final Enigma, he wished to also never be beaten by anybody else. The replay Fred uploaded was a minute faster than the spliced showcase run used as the GPS.
After such feat, Fred had become the "undisputed trial king", holding world records on every trial map there was. On many of them he was also the sole finisher. Nobody in the community doubted the legitimacy of Fred's runs, bar a small amount of players who deemed his statistics and/or replays "too good to be true".
=== Time Attack ===
Fred did not only excel at trial maps and the platform gamemode, he was also unbelievably good in time attack. Before 2023, Fred had gotten never seen prior scores in TA. Those that played with him could not imagine anybody being better than Fred. His time dodging skill was simply unmatched, and he was on to reign the time attack gamemode all by himself as well.
In the beginning of 2017, Fred had attained 1003 points on Test1 Coca-Cola, which is still the world record (under dispute). The closest score ever obtained by somebody other than Fred is 933, set by ZhangZilong (of team IQ+) in 2023.
== Allegations ==
As 2022 was coming to a close, the aforementioned group of players doubtful of Fred began an investigation into his trial runs. It all started with one of them noticing weird patterns in Fred's online races. The player Macintosh, for instance, said: "he gliching all over the placs this is wierd". They also noticed Fred getting an invalid time (aka "redtime") every odd try. Others, however, did not trust the suspicious players' judgment, dubbing it "paranoid remarks about a respected community member".
At that point, an investigation team formed to look into this matter seriously, as the evidence kept piling up. The team consisted of the players Rob1n1, north, excel2004, buckley9 and Macintosh, who was appointed as the leader of operations.
The investigators spent day and night analysing online gameplay footage and replay files of Fred, including each single run he had driven in official and professional modes since 2006. His TA replays, though, were neglected in the process due to the sheer amount of uploads Fred had. The majority of manpower was focused on his trial and platform runs, the 2 styles in which Fred was considered the best player by an enormous margin.
During the investigation, it was found that Fred used a rather obscure memory patching exploit, presumably first discovered by himself, that allowed him to effectively "rewind" time and infinitely retry his successful attempts to acquire a better-looking run. excel2004, for one, noticed that Fred's replays always had weird input sequences, especially towards the end of his runs. Such sequences included him releasing the acceleration key for exactly 200 milliseconds each time. Fred's constant spam of the horn was taken note of also, and it is presumed that he used the Num0 keybind to set his game to rewind to the specific point where the horn sound could be heard. Splits like that were found in each of his officially submitted 943 replays for the global trial leaderboard, as well as all of the later platform replays by Fred. The amount of such splits (also called splices in the final paper) were calculated using a Python script written by north.
=== List of Cheated Records ===
Below is a non-exhaustive list of trial maps (mostly the ones from the prestigious trial leaderboard) Fred was discovered using the "rewinding" exploit, with the amount of splits in each run in parentheses (some figures are approximated):
# The Possible 7 (~8647 splits)
#Uncanny Valley (~266 splits)
#Hyperdrive (48 splits)
#Acramaxo (~785 splits)
#MONKETRIAL (~176 splits)
#Clairvoyant (78 splits)
#Oachkatzlschwoafs on ICE (6 splits)
#K a n n a g a r i (88 splits)
# PEZ (21 split)
#Endless Sunrise (84 splits)
#Cryptomnesia (9 splits)
#aerial toms (97 splits)
#A S T R A L (3 splits)
# Canopus (8 splits)
#Elysium (91 split)
#Abe's Oddysee (~553 splits)
# Cygnus (~219 splits)
#Hidden Curiosity (63 splits)
#Eternal Winter (22 splits)
#Fury Road (46 splits)
# Cloud District (11 splits)
# City of Tears (~118 splits)
#Hydrogen (2 splits)
# Lavender Town (1 split, presumably by mistake)
#Khepri Ur (39 splits)
# Natrialum (3 splits)
# Nyxorithal (~177 splits)
#Roofs of Dubai (90 splits)
#Respiration (56 splits)
# Metavoid (~473 splits)
#Abstracture (12 splits)
#Ascension to Heaven (53 splits)
#Badlands (31 split)
#complexity of road works (~872 splits)
#Auburn Estuary (36 splits)
#Feria Sevilla (83 splits)
#Crocodile Dundee (29 splits)
#Curse of the Ancients (84 splits)
#Heaven's on FIRE (~971 split)
#Rainbow Tylenol III (~119 splits)
#Groundhog Asylum (35 splits)
#Ringworld (73 splits)
#Tartarus (~193 splits)
#Oriental Reverie (~566 splits)
#Something on ACID (~6381 split)
#C e l e s t i a l . (~899 splits)
#Phantom Realm (90 splits)
#Psychosomatic Exhaustion (~226 splits)
#Relikt (42 splits)
#Pipe Torture (9 splits)
#Sol (~353 splits)
#Oneiros (94 splits)
#Decay (~927 splits)
#Oriental Sanctuary (~382 splits)
# Infernal Gauntlet (3 splits)
# Black Cyalume: Afterglow (~698 splits)
#Hidden Palace (66 splits)
# Lumaria (~203 splits)
# Last Chapter (77 splits)
#magnetic distortions (36 splits)
#Unhxppyness (~779 splits)
#Mahârâja (63 splits)
#zurg (~599 splits)
#Jammed Up (~667 splits)
# Azure Citadel (~832 splits)
#Gehenna (~255 splits)
# Calmth (~290 splits)
#Augmented Past (~2722 splits)
#Deadlock (~493 splits)
#Vacation. (~936 splits)
#Carton Hop (~4839 splits)
#Agglutinate (~836 splits)
#Chaos Emeralds (~478 splits)
#Vacuous (~493 splits)
#The Journey (~279 splits)
#Suduaya (~584 splits)
#Branching Path (~2946 splits)
#Decimation (~9093 splits)
#Tenebris (~327 splits)
#Ligneous Megalopolitan (~595 splits)
#Pipeline (~773 splits)
#Lost in the Forest (~421 splits)
#Disintegration (~322 splits)
# Sandtrap (~228 splits)
#Aggregate (~473 splits)
#Marsella Miradors (~992 splits)
#Uaxactun (~181 split)
#Reign of Kronos (~289 splits)
#Rainbow Tylenol II (~2721 split)
#Spirit's Glade (~249 splits)
#tree house (~883 splits)
#Tribulxtion (~8371 split)
#Delta-V (~1187 splits)
#Silversong (~389 splits)
#Black Cyalume (~2994 splits)
# Midas (~4481 split)
#Choreography (~356 splits)
#Woolen Calamity (~669 splits)
#Chocobo Jam (~280 splits)
# Final Enigma (~15236 splits)
#Krakatindur (~356 splits)
#Psychosomatic Exhaustion II (~630 splits)
# Octahedral (~437 splits)
#Empyreum (~2829 splits)
#Aggrandizement (~584 splits)
#TRON (~664 splits)
#Rainbow Tylenol (~6783 splits)
#Plasma (~22383 splits)
#The Twisted Treeline (~12399 splits)
#Spandrelism (~889 splits)
#The Hadean (~5885 splits)
#Shangri La (~942 splits)
#Hyperdrive (~428 splits)
#Arena Eternal (~179 splits)
# World's Demise (~829 splits)
#Shining Sands (~392 splits)
#Cretaceous Period (~1188 splits)
#Intergalactic (~9937 splits)
#Project YoRHa ([E] splits)
#Frozen Hell (~1883 splits)
#Sign Language (~746 splits)
#Quandary (~1992 splits)
#FROSTPUNK (85 splits)
#Crimson Realm (~631 split)
#Gates of Hades (~2937 splits)
==The Report ==
Shortly after compiling the results of the investigation, Macintosh published them on his website, and on the dedicated trial players forum. It immediately sparked an outrage and was deleted shortly by the admin Simo_9, who himself could not believe what was written in the report. The investigation team then contacted Simo_9, providing him with all the evidence gathered during the investigation. That included Fred's autosaved replays with input files attached to each of them, a copy of the script used to calculate the splits, and an exclusive car skin made by Rob1n1. Upon reviewing the materials, Simo_9 discussed it with the admin team (which included Fred, who was temporarily expelled) and the prosecutors from team Law, and allowed the report to be reposted once again.
Many seasoned trial experts were baffled by what was written by Macintosh's team, and began to ask Fred himself to either refute the statements in the article, or admit to cheating. He, however, decided to stay quiet for the time being, which prompted the trial leaderboard admins, as well as TrackMania Exchange admins, to suspend all of his submitted records until further notice.
A week later, Fred went online for a brief moment, and started typing a message, presumably a response to the claims made in the cheating report. He was seen typing for approximately 42 minutes, but alas, Fred's final sent text included 7 (including the whitespace) characters only. It read: "lol ^^`". After sending this message, Fred deleted all of his known social media accounts, including his TrackMania Forum and TrackMania Exchange handles.
==Aftermath==
As Fred's response was weirdly cryptic, nobody could really understand what it meant. Nonetheless, he was not able to prove his innocence and henceforth was banned from the trial leaderboards. TMX admins decided to remove all of the trial and platform runs driven by Fred, but reinstate his Time Attack scores, as no evidence of them being cheated was provided by the investigators.