DarkViperAU (Matthew Judge)

**Matthew "Matt" Judge** (born: March 15th, 1991 [Age 32]), better known as **DarkViperAU**, is an Australian Twitch streamer and YouTuber known for his *Grand Theft Auto V* speedruns and *Pacifist%* series.

## Personal life

Matthew is born on March 15, 1991. In 2016, he graduated from Swinburne University of Technology with a Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology). A recording of the ceremony was found years later by his audience. Upon completing his bachelor's degree in 2016, he shared his current home with two roommates. However, he eventually became the sole occupant and purchased the property in 2022.

## YouTube & Twitch

### YouTube

DarkViperAU got his early start on YouTube discussing politics, religion and philosophy. He eventually started speedrunning *GTA V* on Twitch, uploading his failed runs and highlights to YouTube.

Nowadays, his YouTube channel mainly focuses on various *GTA V* challenges, his Facts & Glitches series and GTA Online. He also plays other games such as Hitman and Minecraft.

### Twitch

Matthew discovered Twitch in 2014 through Hearthstone tournaments, which sparked his interest. Since then he has amassed over 700,000 followers and 16 million views, with a peak of 14,091 concurrent viewers.

His current streaming consists of various playthroughs of games such as Grand Theft Auto V, Noita, Slay the Spire, The Binding of Isaac and more, with a focus on *GTA V* challenges, which get edited and uploaded to his YouTube channel.

## Content

### Grand Theft Auto V

#### Speedrunning

Speedrunning has been at the forefront of DarkViperAU's career, and while he started his Twitch career with an interest in Super Mario speedruns, after watching fellow streamer and speedrunner witwix's *GTA V* gameplay, Matthew was inspired and began playing the game. Realising its potential, he took on the challenge of speedrunning *GTA V*.

#### *GTA V* Without Taking Damage - No Hit Run (OHKO)

In January 2020, DarkViperAU set out to answer the question "Can you complete *GTA V* without taking any damage?", inspired by ToriksLV's attempts to complete this challenge in 2017 and using a mod created by Abyssal. The rules were simple: don't take any damage from any source, Trevor's special ability was disabled, along with other healing and protective items such as health packs and armor.

Originally following the classic% speedrun route, Matthew and others developed many strategies to increase the chances of not taking damage over the course of 18 months, and managed to continually reduce the number of deaths.

For most of the attempts, the ALT-Strat, named after the character switch button, was used as a strategy to prevent asset loading and reduce game speed. This technique was most effective at high FPS settings with distance scaling at minimum, making it less useful on consoles and lower-end PCs.

On October 9, 2021 DarkViperAU completed this challenge with a time of 11:18:19, but the then-unknown speedrunner UnNameD beat him to it and completed a successful attempt on May 16, leading Matthew to pause the project for a while.

Many have helped Matthew with the development of new strategies. Arham Mahra, DarkViperAU, Mack, UnNameD and WelHeizel have created a guide to help others learn how to complete *GTA V* without taking damage.

#### How The Speedrun Ended (HTSE) and HTSE 2.0

This series highlights both the successes and failures of the many speedruns and speedrun attempts that Matthew has recorded over the years. The original How The Speedrun Ended series consists of 169 episodes, including three compilations of early runs.

In the sequel, How The Speedrun Ended 2.0, Matthew returns to speedrunning in January 2022 after taking a break to focus on his No Damage runs. This version of HTSE documents the challenges and victories as he tries to catch up with the progress made in the speedrun during his absence.

#### GTA V Chaos Mod

In November 2019, a challenge was introduced to DarkViperAU with the *GTA V* Chaos mod created by Pongo1231. With this mod, four random effects will appear on the viewer's screen, which they can vote for by typing the corresponding numbers in chat. Every 30 seconds, new effects appear that affect the game world. Since then, there have been several seasons of the Chaos mod, each introducing a new feature and more effects to make the challenge harder for Matthew to succeed and keep it interesting for viewers. The first season of Twitch Controls Chaos used majority voting, but to give more variety to the effects chosen, proportional voting has since been introduced.

#### GTA V Online

Matthew spent a lot of time playing deathmatches and other activities with the viewers of his livestream, which attracted a lot of people who wanted to play. Starting in January 2023, he will attempt to complete every available Award, which is a set of tasks/achievements for GTA Online, covering most of the game's available content.

Due to Rockstar Games' careless approach to player security, Matthew was rarely able to play GTA Online for any length of time without being interrupted by DOS attacks. Despite this, and thanks to new workarounds found to prevent other players from tampering with his game, he was still able to experience a significant amount of GTA Online, completing various heists, missions and other activities.

### Pacifist%

Pacifist challenges for video games have been around for many years, but Matthew was the first person to bring the idea to *GTA V*, with his own self-imposed rules to better match the game:

* No personally ending someone unless he must.
* If he has to do so, he must do so with melee.
* If he can't melee, he must use his weakest weapon.
* No armor unless he can't progress.
* Must play on the latest patch and with no mods.

The first Episode of Pacifist% was released on May 25, 2019. Later episodes were recorded while streaming the challenge on Twitch, where his audience could watch him play the game in a non-violent manner, occasionally suggesting new strategies and ideas. He finished recording the footage in early 2020, but the editing required a significant amount of work and creative output, so the penultimate episode was released on January 1, 2023.

Unsatisfied with the results of the first iteration, Matthew decided to try and further reduce the overall number of deaths by replaying each mission with newly acquired knowledge in Pacifist% 2.0.

Results of Pacifist%
 Michael
 Franklin

### Variety Content

Although his main focus is Grand Theft Auto V, Matthew also likes to play other games and keep a certain level of diversity within his channel, some of these games include: Noita, Slay the Spire, Dark Souls III, Among Us, Fall Guys and others. He will also from time to time make compilations and highlights of his videos, or upload response videos, songs, stories, tutorials, rants, vlogs and more.

#### Viper Rambles

In Viper Rambles (formerly Speedrunner’s Rambles), Matthew covers a wide range of topics, from casual gaming discussion to serious political debate. He covers relevant topics of interest and welcomes suggestions from his audience, offering his unique perspective and occasionally engaging in a back and forth with viewers. The series moved to its own channel in March 2023.

#### Reddit Recap

Viewers can submit community-created memes, artwork and more to Matthew's subreddit, where he looks at the most popular submissions around the 1st of each month. r/DarkViperAU has over 100,000 members and has popularised many memes over the years.

Due to some good submissions being missed, occasional episodes will feature handpicked submissions.

#### Real life streams

On rare occasions, Matthew has done IRL streams. These range from buying plants and cooking to multi-day trips to PAX Australia, a convention centred around gaming culture and content creators.

#### React Content Series

In this multi-part series, Matthew shares his perspective on reaction content and its negative impact on the creators being reacted to, as well as other creators on the platform.The series began with the creation of a 14-page document, which he later followed up with a series of videos discussing the responses to the original document and furthering his stance against reactors.

### Other channels

On DarkViperAU Clips viewers can find short highlights, bits and moments from his streams and videos. It was created in October 2020, put on hold in September 2022 and made a comeback in January 2023.

On **DarkViperAU #Shorts**, viewers can find clips from his streams and videos uploaded in a vertical format on YouTube Shorts. The channel was created in October 2021 after YouTube added support for Shorts, but was shut down in September 2022, after only one year due to lack of success. All new shorts have since been uploaded to the main channel.

The DarkViperAU Livestreams (formerly DarkViperAU VODs) channel features full-length replays of past livestreams with minimal editing. It was created in January 2023.

The Viper Rambles channel has taken over the videos previously published on the main channel in various rambles series. It was created in March 2023.

## Controversy

### Reaction content criticism/Drama with Penguinz0

In February 2022, DarkViperAU published a 14-page document titled "How The React Grift Works", criticising reactors for exploiting the less fortunate. Penguinz0 responded with a video disagreeing with the essay. DarkViperAU called out Charlie for misrepresenting his work, accusing him of deliberately distorting it.

The catalyst for Charlie's response may have been a Twitter conversation in which DarkViperAU mentioned that people who exploit others for money and power are the kind of people who would sexually abuse someone. Charlie concluded that he was equating reactors with rapists, but later apologised and retracted his misinterpretation.

DarkViperAU clarified that his essay was about reactors doing bad things, not about them being bad people. Charlie and DarkViperAU played a game together and tried to reconcile. DarkViperAU completed a series of videos responding to comments made by various creators about the drama and clarifying his position on reaction content.

## Quotes

* *"Were Fortnite characters always that thick."*
* *"Being a gamer isn't something to be proud of, is not something that should bring forth awards. Being a gamer is basically a crime, a sin against man. The idea that in modern society that there can be an entire show dedicated to rewarding and exulting in the existence of gamers is disgusting."*
* *"I want you right now to believe that you can fly. Have you done it? Great, jump out your window."*
* *"Salmon, the chicken of the sea."*
* *"You disingenuous dense motherfucker! Obviously you have to know something about something or you couldn't tie your shoes!*
* *"THERE AREN'T COUGARS IN MISSIONS! I HEARD IT BUT THERE AREN'T COUGARS IN MI- ...THIS IS MILLIONS TO ONE! THIS IS ACTUALLY MILLIO- I HAVE BEEN PLAYIGN THIS GAME FOR 8000 HOURS, I HAVE NEVER SEEN... AN ANIMAL KILL SOMEONE IN A MISSION BEFORE!"*

## Trivia

* Matthew has a sister.
* He is based in Sydney, Australia, and lives alone.
* Despite his love of cats and dogs, Matthew does not own any pets. He cites lack of time to care for them and his allergic reaction to fur as reasons for this decision.
* Matthew has Hashimoto's disease which struggles with low energy levels for an extended period.
	+ Additionally he experiences sleep problems that are worsened by tinnitus, which lead to an irregular sleep schedule that negatively impacts his ability to stream consistently.
* On January 5, 2020, Matthew held a charity stream to collect donations for the New South Wales Fire Service, which raised a total of $13,000 USD.
* With over 10,000 hours of play time on *GTA V*, Matthew has become very familiar with the story of Micheal, Franklin and Tevor. It is a common misconception that the game's main protagonist, Michael, went into witness protection and made a deal with the FIB to turn in his accomplices.
* During one of his No Damage runs, he was the victim of a cougar attack. In shock, he exclaims, "There aren't cougars in missions!"
* Matthew became a Twitch affiliate at the beginning of 2017, and gained partnership status later that year.
* In February 2020, Pongo1231 added a new feature to the mod, allowing Twitch viewers to control the effects by typing in chat.
* In October 2021, Matthew tried the new Rainbomizer mod by Parik27, which randomises various aspects of the game, from vehicles and sounds to missions and weapons. After completing the game using only the Rainbomizer mod, a season of Chaos with Rainbomizer began in January 2022.
* In January 2023, a new season of Chaos added a mirror effect, where the entire game is permanently flipped vertically. Like the previous season, it also featured random effects chosen by viewers and the Rainbomizer, although fewer aspects of the game were randomised.
* In pursuit of more money in GTA Online, and due to its solo playability, Matthew became interested in speedrunning the Cayo Perico Heist in GTA Online, and began learning the run in November 2022, with the first video released in early December. His current personal best for this speedrun is 19 minutes 34 seconds.
* poo

## References

1. ↑ https://steamcommunity.com/id/darkviperau
2. ↑ https://www.speedrun.com/user/DarkViperAU
3. ↑ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAnJ4ZuTYaeG-uBQrAnS-pjzHT41G8lwt
4. ↑ https://youtube.com/watch?v=FTLnXIQcrcw?t=3519
5. ↑ https://youtu.be/DOmtnPs1oos?t=248
6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-fglacgzV0
7. ↑ https://youtu.be/JVDslC1qhjg?t=855
8. ↑ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gEmcrSByRkBzir7IvZTE2CZOkFfMRxv20jxVZ-yClfw/edit#gid=1564797632
9. ↑ https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRid-d3hQpDnTpAlIBWICuZO4J\_C2j0FX-PqT2HPEGLDpTy\_jhebAiXbBtn-6OwdPvY\_mj0VYDfkHPj/pub
10. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAPDd-cB8Do
11. ↑ https://youtu.be/cqWNmXYC76A
12. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3raLgXC0czs
13. ↑ https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAnJ4ZuTYaeGv4WIexP9C5LAuMEnMkG-Q
14. ↑ https://youtu.be/ejJz5jfVkZ0?t=319
15. ↑ https://twitter.com/DarkViperAU/
16. ↑ https://youtu.be/9vXGIQwdKPk?t=886
17. ↑ https://youtu.be/-hcbjcUCwng?t=4325
18. ↑ https://youtu.be/mq9YYD6UGeY?t=1264
19. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y\_BQ8uZH8NQ&t=227s
20. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6ZVH6JSLuA&t=1198s
21. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIjPuY4d1K4&t=1317s
22. ↑ https://twitter.com/DarkViperAU/status/1213411088399646726
23. ↑ https://twitter.com/DarkViperAU/status/1214085122321874944
24. ↑ https://youtube.com/watch?v=5iWRwzuirYY
25. ↑ https://youtube.com/watch?v=pTNu0A-EhPs?t=2555
26. ↑ https://www.speedrun.com/gtao/run/yol26v0y