Video game cheating controversies

[DMC]

Bro! Just how in teh fuck could u fake... FAKE GUITAR GAME

I guess if you get caught cheating in a guitar game, there's only one place to go from here.

As others have said, it must be some combination of narcissistic sense of entitlement/being special and frequent moments of feeling inadequate/not living up to it.
Even the apology video had some grandiose, eulogistic speech with bright lights hitting his eyes.
One of his record videos he screamed "I'm the GOAT" right after finishing it, jumped out the window, and then returned crying. Pretty remarkable given the fact he cheated.

[Sumez]

Now if only the rest of these frauds would do the same and delete their fake gameplay off youtube:
World of Longplays
Nintendocomplete
Shadowserg
Heroes of xanadu sloth
Edusword
Paul Eates

Shadowserg is easily the worst one of those IMO, because it really comes across like it's demonstrating genuine boss strategies (and a lot of the time, it even is), but some of the videos are just super misleading.

But I don't get why people are getting worked up about World of Longplays. It's a channel that demonstrates videos of all kinds of video games no matter the genre, and some times they are even useful in how they demonstrate elements of a game that you wouldn't normally find in other videos of focused runs, such as various menus, attract mode scenes and other "optional" stuff. It's mostly a demonstration of the assets in a video game, rather than the gameplay itself.
Where it becomes dodgy of course is in the context of tight skill based video games, where winging it through the usage of savestates can severely misrepresent what a game is like (we all know about those famous silly bullet dodging examples). But I don't think that's a massive offense, when the channel never claimed the runs to be actual demonstrations of skill, unlike the Shadowserg ones. As long as you don't take what you're seeing at face value, no harm is done. And at least the shmup community managed to talk them into adding the disclaimer that all their videos are tool assisted.

At the end of the day, I prefer that to the era where the only footage you could find of most video games were emulator screenshots of the first stage.

[copy-paster]

WoL didn't specify that the runs are TAS and many people there genuinely think SCHLAUCHI is a god gamer and such. These days all the vids are marked as TAS with some of them are legit runs. I agree about Shadowserg though.

[pegboy]

WoL didn't specify that the runs are TAS and many people there genuinely think SCHLAUCHI is a god gamer and such. These days all the vids are marked as TAS with some of them are legit runs. I agree about Shadowserg though.

Yeah World of Fakeplays *might* mention it's a tas now but only buried in the video description where nobody can see it. And this was a very, very recent change. They have flooded youtube and are the #1 problem with fake videos to the point its nearly impossible trying to easily find a real video of any particular game.

I'm not sure why anyone would defend them, it's insane to me when there are a lot of real videos out there with barely any views because these fucking fake videos have overshadowed them.

I personally take pride in every single video I've made that has ousted this world of longplays fucker and these other frauds out of the number 1 spot in the youtube search. Seriously fuck these guys and their fake shit.

[Rastan78]

All these types of TAS gameplay should be clearly labeled regardless of if they're only for reference/preservation purposes. Not labeling them correctly is 100% totally dishonest. You don't think Schlauchi has seen the thousands of comments kissing his ass as some kind of prodigy gamer? Yet no voluntary clarifications from WoL. The disclaimer they have now " most replays use save states" doesn't tell the whole story. More than likely they use other techniques like slowed down play to flail through shmups.

Based on what Elixir has said, not only did they want to squash comments on their videos that point out that they were TAS, but they are willing to lie and use fake excuses as to why they were not labeled as such. The obvious reason to conclude is they don't want to lose views and feel totally comfortable lying by omission as long as it's to their benefit.

https://twitter.com/shmups/status/14236 ... YEU5g&s=19

So if these guys are just innocently posting these videos for reference purposes only and not trying to mislead, why do they ask Elixir for ideas on how to squash comments correctly pointing out that their vids are not legit gameplay, while acknowledging that their vids are 95% (probably actually 99.99999%) fake? When they finally put up a message why does it only mention save states (which many players will not even interpret as gamebreaking)? Bc they're dishonest.

I think this comment by Elixir sums up well:

Cheaters set unfair expectations on new players & existing players learning games. They give the impression this skill is the norm within the scene with their vids. Even if exposed, they aren't punished. It should be different. It's a small scene. We need to take care of it.

[copy-paster]

They have flooded youtube and are the #1 problem with fake videos to the point its nearly impossible trying to easily find a real video of any particular game.

The easiesr method to search of non cheated runs I know of is to add "1CC" or "ALL clear" afer the game name, usually with less than 1000 views or it's by someone familiar from the scene. Not that it's going well everytime since Paul Eales also use 1CC/ALL clear on their title.

[Sumez]

I'm not sure why anyone would defend them, it's insane to me when there are a lot of real videos out there with barely any views because these fucking fake videos have overshadowed them.

I have no interest in defending WOL. It's just some guy uploading super lazy replays for the sake of putting as much content up there to cash big time in on all the youtube the hits. I definitely don't have any love for that kind of stuff.
I just also don't understand why people get worked up about it like it's some sort of prolific cheater. They make no claims of showing off skills, and a vast majority of the games on the longplays channel aren't even really skill based games. And to be honest, I can see why showing someone replaying the same difficult stage 15 times over is counterintuitive to the objective of demonstrating every part of the game.

Hell, stupid as it is, to like 90% of people out there, playing a difficult game with savepoints or rewind (urgggh) is straight up the default, and 1CC'ing a game is a "self imposed challenge" -_-

The easiesr method to search of non cheated runs I know of is to add "1CC" or "ALL clear" afer the game name, usually with less than 1000 views or it's by someone familiar from the scene. Not that it's going well everytime since Paul Eales also use 1CC/ALL clear on their title.

My approach precisely.

[BIL]

Hell, stupid as it is, to like 90% of people out there, playing a difficult game with savepoints or rewind (urgggh) is straight up the default, and 1CC'ing a game is a "self imposed challenge" -_-

OT, but I always explain it to these sorts like this. Imagine you're playing the world #1 in a competitive fighting game you've never seen. He explodes your asshole rim from rim, obviously. You put in another credit and receive a fresh lifebar, while his retains whatever scratches you managed to land on your way to the floor. At the end of Round 2, once more, your carbonised and disintegrating buttocks are hurled into your face. This goes on and on, your scorching fundament a scene of thermonuclear annihilation to make Oppenheimer weep - until, at last, on the 200th credit or so, the champ finally succumbs to chip damage.

Could you in good conscience declare yourself the new #1 at that game, having "beaten the champ?" If the answer is within a thousand lightyears of "yes," you're a gaping asshole, and I've just wasted my time - but hopefully, someone else seeing this will get a a clue WRT "beating games."

[pegboy]

I don't care about fake playthoughs for rpgs or whatever, but the skill based games and specifically the arcade stuff and shmups I do care about.

And yes, by not explicitly stating in the title that it's tool assisted they are lying to people and posting cheated runs. You post a fake run without coming out and saying its fake makes you a fucking cheater. The perikles principle unfortunately.

It's a lie by omission because 99% of the people watching it do not read the descriptions and on good faith assume what they are watching is real.

It sells them a fucking lie and makes it seems likes these games all just rely on impossible reflexes and inhuman dodging that is only achievable by superhuman abilities. Just explicitly label your shitty videos tas and I wouldn't fucking care. But they don't do it and lie about why they won't.

The worst of them like this fuckface nintendocomplete and shadowserg straight up claim they don't cheat. These mother fuckers need to stop.

[Rastan78]

@Sumez, did you see the link to Elixir's Twitter I posted above? WoL falls back on the ides that their videos are supposedly just for reference purposes, but they actively try to disguise the fact that they are TAS and create false excuses. If anything I have ever so slightly more respect for the ones that just ride or die with a bold faced lie. WoL tries to take this wimpy "well we never said they weren't fake" approach so they have an excuse to fall back on if they get called out.

I totally understand the idea of creating a reference database and using emulator tools since it's impractical to beat thousands of games legit. But if that's your only purpose why the stubborn refusal to label appropriately? What's so hard about that?

Agree with peg 100% that posting tool assisted runs without labeling correctly is dishonest. If anything it just wastes people's time if they're actually trying to find a good run. There's no easy way to confirm if they're legit or not unless you're a fairly advanced player who will be able to spot unrealistic dodging techniques right off the bat. You have to remember thay the vast majority of viewers won't be able to tell they're TAS just by viewing. Especially if there are hundreds of comments below complimenting the player on their skills.

It's not unrealistic at all to think new players will be curious about a game like Dragon Blaze or Raiden Fighters 2, stumble on one of these insane flail dodging runs and think no way in hell will I ever be able to do that, so why even try? Well neither can the best players in the world, so don't feel bad.

[Sumez]

I totally understand the idea of creating a reference database and using emulator tools since it's impractical to beat thousands of games legit. But if that's your only purpose why the stubborn refusal to label appropriately? What's so hard about that?

So yeah I get that it took a push from Elixir and a bunch of other community people to get it there, but it is properly labeled now, so it's hard for me to have any issue with that particular aspect.

Again, I really have no reason to defend something as useless as this channel just having found a niche to make a buck with little effort. I don't think it's honorable, and honestly it's the one situation where I think Nintendo's move of putting a copyright claim on videos featuring their games makes a lot of sense, because the only "content" being produced here is the contents of the game - the player is adding nothing of their own, and shouldn't be able to profit from it.

But, purely in terms of the content, it's still weird to me that people spend so much energy trying to portray them as a lying fraud, when they aren't pretending to be anything other than "a longplay".
A TAS is different, even if you don't consider the prerequsite of being a speedrun, a TAS actually takes effort and a deep knowledge of the game, and labeling them as such would be dishonest. None of the videos are labeled as representing any sort of feat, so they are not doing anything dishonest.
Rather, they are all labeled as Longplay, a term not invented by WOL, but definitely codified by them at this point. Again, lots of the things these videos do to demonstrate certain aspects of games, straight up contradicts focused skill runs.

There are many videos on YouTube that do have the appearance of being a skill based run, or at least a demonstration of "how to play" the game, and World of Longplays isn't that. Again, Shadowserg is MUCH worse, because they straight up label their video as being a demonstration of how to beat bosses without taking damage. If a video is labeled as a Longplay, I know well enough it's not something I can use as a reference for skilled play, and that's fine enough to me.
Some people might not realise that right away, but it's clearly stated in the description now, and I don't really see them doing as much harm as people like to pretend. Yes, they are pushing awesome 1CC runs down the search results, but that has nothing to do with how they are labeled. That's the consequence of their volume and the popularity of the channel, that's just how YouTube works. I'm pretty sure I was among the first couple of people to upload an Arcade Mode clear for Steel Assault, landing it within a week of the game's release, but if you search for that now, my video is far far down on the list, because my channel has absolutely zero clout. Hell, there are tons of great superplays of various STGs on YouTube that you pretty much have to know the name of the uploader (or a specific unique term used in the vidoe title) to even unearth. And that has nothing to do with "longplays" existing.

[pegboy]

So yeah I get that it took a push from Elixir and a bunch of other community people to get it there, but it is properly labeled now, so it's hard for me to have any issue with that particular aspect.

Their shitty videos are absolutely not labeled properly, none of the TITLES say "TAS" or "tool assisted" or "fake garbage" or any other moniker that would accurately reflect what is being shown. Even if you read the description you have to go through the extra step of clicking the "show more" button before you actually see this fucking weasel's disclaimer that his videos are fake. Are you telling me that he is not trying to hide the fact this shit is fake? All of his behavior proves otherwise.

Again, I really have no reason to defend something as useless as this channel just having found a niche to make a buck with little effort.

Then why do you keep doing it over and over again?

But, purely in terms of the content, it's still weird to me that people spend so much energy trying to portray them as a lying fraud, when they aren't pretending to be anything other than "a longplay".

The average person clicking on these videos doesn't know all the slimy crap that is going on with these videos, they take this stuff at face value. The don't know that "Longplay" means fake playtrhough of the game. Why should they think that it's fake? All you need to do is take one look at the comments to see that probably the majority of people think this stuff is real.

A TAS is different, even if you don't consider the prerequsite of being a speedrun, a TAS actually takes effort and a deep knowledge of the game, and labeling them as such would be dishonest. None of the videos are labeled as representing any sort of feat, so they are not doing anything dishonest.
Rather, they are all labeled as Longplay, a term not invented by WOL, but definitely codified by them at this point. Again, lots of the things these videos do to demonstrate certain aspects of games, straight up contradicts focused skill runs.

Beating an arcade game isn't a feat? And how is labeling a tool assisted run "TAS" or "tool assisted" dishonest? That's one of the worst fucking takes I've ever heard. It is literally a tool assisted speedrun, just one that takes absolutely no effort to make If all they wanted to do was innocently "show the content of the game" then why don't they just credit feed through the arcade games? You know perfectly well why they don't do that, they want people to think this shit is real.

There are many videos on YouTube that do have the appearance of being a skill based run, or at least a demonstration of "how to play" the game, and World of Longplays isn't that. Again, Shadowserg is MUCH worse, because they straight up label their video as being a demonstration of how to beat bosses without taking damage. If a video is labeled as a Longplay, I know well enough it's not something I can use as a reference for skilled play, and that's fine enough to me.

Just because you know they are fake doesn't mean the average person does, just look at the fucking comments of this stuff.

Some people might not realise that right away, but it's clearly stated in the description now,

No it isn't. It's not until you click the show more button do you actual see that it's a fake. And it won't ever be enough until they put it directly in the title.

These mother fuckers, and especially world of longplays, absolutely want people to think these runs are real, you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

[Sumez]

It's not fake if it's not pretending to be a video displaying someone's skill. I don't what else I can say to get that point through. And I don't know why you'd think it is that in the first place.

Beating an arcade game isn't a feat?

Nowhere do the WOL videos claim it's a video of someone beating the game (again, a big contrast to Shadowserg which claims it's someone beating bosses without taking damage). Hell, they don't even label them as "walkthroughs", which would be the obvious approach if they were looking for clicks from someone wanting help beating their game. There's a lot of video game content out there on YouTube - and it's such a tiny fraction of it that represents actual skill based feats, that it's super confusing to me that you'd think anyone would assume any video of a game is that, when it makes no claims of it.

And how is labeling a tool assisted run "TAS" or "tool assisted" dishonest? That's one of the worst fucking takes I've ever heard.

Imagine someone out there is looking for an actual TAS of the game - the Longplay videos would be completely useless to them. There's nothing weird about that take, it makes complete sense.

These mother fuckers, and especially world of longplays, absolutely want people to think these runs are real, you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

Sorry but that's ridiculous, what would they even gain from that? This isn't someone trying to gather a bunch of fake respect from people who don't want to read video descriptions. It would make no difference for them. If they wanted to pretend the runs were genuine skill based runs, they wouldn't put it in the description in the first place, and would probably put at least a little effort into making the runs appear believable.

This is just someone who wants to show up high on YouTube's search results so he can feed off ad money from people clicking the video whenever they use YouTube to figure out what some game looks like. Seriously, that's all it is, and it's crazy to consider there's more to it than that.

Just because you know they are fake doesn't mean the average person does, just look at the fucking comments of this stuff.

If YouTube comments in general represent "the average person", this world is a lot more fucked than I thought.

[BIL]

Honestly I think YT comments represent average people pretty well.

Like everything else in life, people are 99.9% dogshit. The good ones are amazing, but you have to carefully discern them. That's what my granny told me anyway. You chaps are good gaming peeps, I value your company greatly. You wouldn't believe how little the average Bruce or Sheila cares about my hardcore action skills! All they want to know is what I make in a year, and how is my hog so big!

Here's an interesting one. I went looking for SYO's beautiful Quaid 4mil+ 2ALL in Dragon Blaze, to complement my ALL TIME CLASSIC GIF.

Hi kids! Do you want to die?

Spoiler

Scroll down to "Bryan Withawhy" (ha! geddit? "Bryan With A Y" LMAO! )

That guy is a bit of a jackass at first, but like a nosediving B52 - whose pilot has suffered a stroke jerking off to that copy of Big Titty Muttis he purloined off a dead kraut - 2LT Common Decency, hauling back on the stick with all his might, juuust about manages to pull up and escape the valley of Dumb Fucking Scrub. Elsewhere though? Rank ignorance. I check back in on Hurblat's Contra III speedrun occasionally, it's like an evergreen of shit-for-brains scrubbery.

I'm getting old I suppose. Outside of little enclaves like this, where if someone says something comparably retarded, I can show them the light with my internet-renowned Compassionate Face-Breaking Fist I can't be arsed. World is dead and soon we'll all be too. I gotta put whatever ATP remains in my aging system into shaweet nomisses that'll live on after my sons huck my corpse into a dumpster full of lighter fluid and toss a match (this is our version of a viking funeral ;-;7).

Do you believe in Hell? You know that years after that den of godless sodomites "Badabun" plagiarised those world-class SMB1 killas for their retarded-ass fake video, people are still accusing the legit runners of stealing footage?

Man is born into scrubbery. This world is itself Hell.

[DMC]

If I do an incognito search on some arbitrary arcade STG on youtube, sure WoL is likely on top, but then among top 5 hits or so I get people like Jaimers, Mark, Shmupjunkie, Bullet Heaven, Buffi, Trap.

So I don't think the situation is that bad that it warrants a lot of anger.
Yes, WoL were quite dishonest first not mentioning the use of save states etc, then hiding it in the "about section" rather than video description.
Some of the videos, Schlauchi was talked about like some legendary player, which is silly, but I think the main reason for the success was the sheer quantity and range of videos and the timing of when they started.
These gameplay videos are also easy to run in the background while doing chores or easy work, and the youtube alghoritm likes videos that people watch for a long time.

Now WoL label them as such, so I agree with Sumez the rage is a bit exaggerated now. I still think the videos are low quality though (e.g., in Soukyugurentai iirc the player seem to have missed the weapon that the game is completely designed for, the NALS weapon, so I would say the video is a poor representation of what makes Soukyugurentai fun to play, but if it was an authentic survival clear the gameplay would still be valuable).

So if some of us cared enough we would create a shmup community youtube account with legit runs only, maybe having standardized labels like casual run/survival 1cc/hi scoring. Of course we would have to interact with it a lot and pump out a lot of videos to get it up the algorithm, and people would have an alternative to WoL, but without ads and with genuine runs.

[BIL]

Oh wao, Incognito is tha shit!

TOP A THA WORLD ♫

Spoiler

Got PWNed by FalsificareSerg on Magician Lord though 3; At least my brave superiors BEN_SHINOBI and MOSQUITO_SAMA battled back the scrub horde!

I'm amused that several commenters hone in on ShadowSperg's near-hit @ 4m55s. TBH, while generally unforgiving, ML hitboxes can be weird. Peep muh invincible cheatz on these turrets FALSIFICAREEE

However, nobody wonders about his fuckin ridiculous st6 miniboss, or the even wackier stage boss immediately after - how do I destroyed pink bullet? lmao, he's pathetic! Even if he were showing off (with, uh, the weaker body-armoured form)... HE LOOK LIKE SHIT

I ain't dancing in a club like this
The girls are all slags, and the beer tastes just like piss

[Rastan78]

Nowhere do the WOL videos claim it's a video of someone beating the game

Yet they are literally videos of people beating the game, at least when viewed from the perspective of the average person. Posting tool assisted videos and not saying anything about how they were achieved is just a cop out, and absolutely leads to confusion for certain players such as my man Bry, a seemingly decent PCB player who assumed SYO's run was faked. No doubt this is an assumption easy to jump to when there are 10s of thousands of faked videos on YouTube with no indication of what's going on.

WoL saying they used save states is not the whole picture as they are no doubt using slow motion gameplay or frame advance at least in certain instances. Just because something is a poorly optimized TAS doesn't mean it's not a TAS.

This is the definition of TAS from TASvideos.org

Welcome to TASVideos, a community dedicated to creating and publishing tool-assisted superplay (TAS) videos, which are gameplay demonstrations that are created with assistance from emulators and other tools in order for the demonstrations to resemble superhuman playing sessions.

Looking at a video like WoL Dragon Blaze that pretty much fits even if the unstated intent was only to showcase the game's content. I'd argue the best solution would be to include TAS and Longplay in the video title (not in the description). The word longplay would eliminate ambiguity for those actually looking for highly optimized superplays or speedruns of theoretically perfect play. The phrase TAS will eliminate ambiguity for those who don't realize sections of the video will include gameplay not reproducible by a human player.

Also WoL does not completely walk back from saying their videos could be used as a walkthrough:

A longplay is a play-through of a computer or video game, created with the intent of completing it as fully as possible, mainly for the purposes of nostalgia, preservation, and possibly as a walkthrough.

How can this description/mission statement not include mentions of tool-assisted gameplay if they admit at least 95 percent of their vids are produced this way? They simply say "play-through" which can reasonably be interpreted to mean normal gameplay unless stated otherwise.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

These mother fuckers, and especially world of longplays, absolutely want people to think these runs are real, you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

I agree with this assessment. World of Longplays is not motivated by altruism; even if the project may have started with the noble goal of showcasing games, it is currently very obviously motivated by the ad revenue its monetization generates. There's a monetary incentive to obscuring the fact that the playthroughs are not legitimate, as blatantly cheated playthroughs (that use invulnerability) simply are not as interesting to watch, so by neglecting to label the videos accurately, they can attract both the viewers who want to see an actual player naturally playing the game, and viewers who don't care if it's tool-assisted and just want to see the game itself.

The problem is that by obscuring the use of tool-assistance, is that viewers get the idea that the way they're being played is natural or authentic, which the communities of players who actually play these games have to set straight repeatedly and make it clear that these are not a useful resource for learning how to play the game. Further adding to the confusion is that other channels will label their videos as Longplays, and sometimes it's an actual playthrough without any tool-assistance. It's safe to assume a Longplay is tool-assisted because of this, but this does a disservice to players who are showing off gameplay without using tool-assistance. The term Longplay is, frustratingly, as ubiquitous now as it is ambiguous.

As awful as some cheated playthroughs are to watch, I can at least respect the channels that are openly marking them in the descriptions as using cheats.

Disclaimer:

Spoiler

(For the record, I don't monetize anything on Youtube or Twitch. I don't have a financial conflict of interest here, as my footage is basically just to back up that yes, I do in fact have some degree of skill in the games I enjoy talking about. I think it's icky asking people to pay me to watch me play video games, and it should be an activity that's accessible to everyone without commercializing the experience of engaging with other players.

Paying people to play video games for a living also can potentially create an artificial skill gap whereby a popular player who can make a living playing games can therefore dedicate more time to playing and getting better at games, making it difficult for others to compete to the same degree because the average person has to do an actual job to pay the bills.)

How can this description/mission statement not include mentions of tool-assisted gameplay if they admit at least 95 percent of their vids are produced this way? They simply say "play-through" which can reasonably be interpreted to mean normal gameplay unless stated otherwise.

It's probably because they don't care about or understand the value of gameplay that actually looks natural and authentic. And they don't care to foster a community that cares about or recognizes the difference, hence how you end up with footage like this, that goes the entire game without taking advantage of one of the core game mechanics. The discreet disclaimer they've recently been adding (after being pressured repeatedly) to their videos now saying most of their runs use savestates is a big hint to anyone that's savvy that the runs should be assumed to be tool-assisted, so that's something at least...

[Udderdude]

They should just rename themselves World of Kusoplays. Obviously.

[BIL]

Disclaimer:

Spoiler

(For the record, I don't monetize anything on Youtube or Twitch. I don't have a financial conflict of interest here, as my footage is basically just to back up that yes, I do in fact have some degree of skill in the games I enjoy talking about. I think it's icky asking people to pay me to watch me play video games, and it should be an activity that's accessible to everyone without commercializing the experience of engaging with other players.

Paying people to play video games for a living also can potentially create an artificial skill gap whereby a popular player who can make a living playing games can therefore dedicate more time to playing and getting better at games, making it difficult for others to compete to the same degree because the average person has to do an actual job to pay the bills.)

Oh nice, white spoilered text. At first I was wondering why it was so much easier for my tired eyes to read! Excellent solution!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Haha, thanks. When I realized the [color=white/red/etc [/color tags worked in spoilers I started doing it because I figured for lengthy spoilers it's more legible than light blue on dark blue is.

[BIL]

They should just rename themselves World of Kusoplays. Obviously.

How about MUNDO DEL FALSIFICARE (■｀w´■)

[Rastan78]

World of Dungplays?

Although the Italian does have a nice ring to it.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Disclaimer:

Spoiler

(For the record, I don't monetize anything on Youtube or Twitch. I don't have a financial conflict of interest here, as my footage is basically just to back up that yes, I do in fact have some degree of skill in the games I enjoy talking about. I think it's icky asking people to pay me to watch me play video games, and it should be an activity that's accessible to everyone without commercializing the experience of engaging with other players.

Paying people to play video games for a living also can potentially create an artificial skill gap whereby a popular player who can make a living playing games can therefore dedicate more time to playing and getting better at games, making it difficult for others to compete to the same degree because the average person has to do an actual job to pay the bills.)

It's more that streamers who are trying to have it be a career are entertainers + bartenders. Or well...you know the other type. I do think things like sub only chat are pretty gross but then on the other hand you also need some chat restrictions due to the bots that spam hate speech.

I will add this on the WoL thing... When I was watching casually when I was younger I didn't realize they were worthless runs of now value that don't showcase real strategies. Which leads to you thinking wow this player is amazing. And let's be honest basically no one is clicking the expand option, that's why they hide things there instead of putting it in the title.

[drauch]

Clearly World of Dongplay.

[Udderdude]

Clearly World of Dongplay.

There are plenty of other sites you can click on for that already.

[drauch]

That will have to wait until after work! (insert BIL's raising eyebrows grinning smiley)

[Rastan78]

Welcome to TADVideos, a community dedicated to creating and publishing tool-assisted dongplay (TAD) videos, which are dongplay demonstrations that are created with assistance from %$&#^@ and other tools in order for the demonstrations to resemble superhuman playing sessions.

[Sumez]

I agree with this assessment. World of Longplays is not motivated by altruism; even if the project may have started with the noble goal of showcasing games, it is currently very obviously motivated by the ad revenue its monetization generates. There's a monetary incentive to obscuring the fact that the playthroughs are not legitimate, as blatantly cheated playthroughs (that use invulnerability) simply are not as interesting to watch, so by neglecting to label the videos accurately, they can attract both the viewers who want to see an actual player naturally playing the game, and viewers who don't care if it's tool-assisted and just want to see the game itself.

There's definitely no "noble goals" involved, and I've said as much several times over already. This is just a channel which found a shtick it can use to make easy money with low effort.

But the notion that its general audience are referencing the channel with the expectation of seeing skilled clears - hell, not just clears, but straight up explicably unlabeled no-death runs - pretty much exclusively exists within this community.
I've told other people in the past that they shouldn't take "World of Longplays" at face value, because they are being played be someone who doesn't know what they are doing, and they might be misrepresenting what the game plays like (which IMO is a much bigger flaw than the implication that they are "cheaters"). But even then, the response is almost unanimously that they don't care, they just want to see what it looks like.
But you believe what you want to believe, I think I've exhausted my vocabulary on this subject already. As much as I believe it's ridiculous to waste so much effort getting fired up about a "cheater" that doesn't even have the pretense that they aren't, there's also really no reason for me to go to any bigger lengths trying to explain the logic to people.

[Rastan78]

Sumez, you're logic is easy to understand. No one here is as dumb as a brick and can't follow you. But just look to the comments section on these types of vids and you'll see at least some percentage of viewers are totally confused.

Let's just come up with a random number of only 10% might watch bc they misunderstand them as superplays. If you have over a million subscribers like WoL, that's 100,000 subs. That's enough to have a vested interest in not losing those viewers. Explain to me why else they would go so far out of their way to lie about reasons why they can't label them correctly.

I don't think WoL is some kind of nefarious evildoer who we should be enraged by, but I do think their approach is very problematic. For one thing it set a precedent for their millions of viewers that tool assisted play on youtube doesn't need to be labelled, and there will be no backlash. I wouldn't be surprised at all if players like edusword got a bit inspired to take that "dont ask dont tell" approach into faking actual superplays. It's a very thin line between the two, and it's not always easy to tell the difference at a glance.