Dream Finally Admits The Truth About His Speedrun
Popular "Minecraft" YouTuber Dream had a pretty incredible 2020. According to Polygon, he even received recognition from YouTube as one of the most influential content creators of the year. However, in December, accusations of cheating created a great deal of drama around his Minecraft speedrun record, and now, six months later, Dream has finally admitted the truth about the incident.
In a now-deleted Tweet, Dream linked to a Pastebin document (via Reddit) in which he explained that he unintentionally had mods enabled which raised his drop rates for at least one of the two items required to complete "Minecraft" quickly. In the text, Dream explains the situation at length, admitting towards the end that when he and the coders who help him create mods for his videos moved from "Minecraft" version 1.15 to 1.16, "A server side plugin was made for our videos that slightly increases the rate." A few lines later, Dream explains further, "Ender eyes had a low chance of breaking when thrown, and enderman dropped pearls at a much higher percentage."
Increasing the rate at which these kinds of essential items drop improves the speed at which a player can complete a speedrun, and Dream's admission is a complete reversal of his previously defiant stance on the matter. Here is what the "Minecraft" streamer had to say after he finally told the truth about his speedrun.
Dream apologized to moderators he 'dragged through the mud'
Dream's speedruns were put under intense scrutiny from the very beginning, which culminated in a 29-page investigation being published that determined that his high drop rates were statistically impossible and "that Dream's game was modified in order to manipulate the pearl barter and rod drop rates." Dream pushed back against these accusations and even hired a statistician to provide data that supported his viewpoint.
However, even this statistician eventually became suspect of Dream's drop rates. Their second round of findings apparently led the streamer to investigate further which mods had been active during the runs in question. Upon realizing his mistake, he offered an olive branch to the moderators he had spent months feuding with. In his Pastebin message (via Reddit), Dream said, "I felt really terrible for the mods because I dragged them through the mud even though they were mostly right."
The speedrunner also offered some insight into the situation during a recent Twitch stream. Dream explained, "I had huge emotions, the mod team had huge emotions, the public had huge emotions, my fans had huge emotions, it was just like this s***fest of everybody being hugely emotional." Later on, Dream said he was committed to creating more "Minecraft" content, but mentioned that he might take a break from speedrunning.