Gab Hernandez 
EpicSeastar is losing the world record for a Jump King speedrun on two popular custom maps after being caught cheating multiple years after submitting his record times.
Speedrunning remains one of the most fascinating niches in the gaming world. Whether it’s Elden Ring challenge runs or classic speedruns for charity, speedrunning is a unique aspect of gaming culture. However, with the accolades of speedrunning comes people who want all the clout with less of the hard work.
Many ensuing controversies have shown that people take fake speedruns very seriously. Still, it sometimes takes a while before cheaters get caught. This was the case when EpicSeastar held the world record for two popular custom maps for Jump King.
Jump King speedrunner EpicSeastar fakes world record runs
EpicSeastar held the world record for Jump King custom maps “Babe of the Realms” and “Babe of Ascension” until others found out he had spliced his record run videos. Jump King is a popular platformer to speedrun given its high skill ceiling, active community, and prevalence of custom maps.
EpicSeastar’s records of 07:35:785 in Babe of the Realms and 07:55:354 in Babe of Ascension put him at the top of the ranks for two years in the two respective custom maps. Both instances notably saw him claim that he was high while playing the game in the accompanying descriptions, perhaps in an attempt to make the feats seem more impressive.
Twitch streamer ChariotRider later watched the runs and found evidence of the speedrunner’s cheating. The viral clip that exposed Epicseastar to the public was thanks to a sloppy photoshop of a victory screen.
The victory screen’s format should show times as “00:00:00” (minutes, seconds, milliseconds). But EpicSeastar’s victory screen showed “7:35:785” with a zero absent from the minute segment of the timestamp. While this an obvious tell for casual viewers, Jump King veterans were already suspicious before that.
Even if the timestamp had been correct, it would not have been possible for Epicseastar to get a time of 07:35:785 because of one key detail: Jump King runs on frames 17ms long, meaning the milliseconds must be divisible by 17, which 785 was not.
From there, people quickly found both Jump King world records were heavily edited and thus fake. EpicSeastar pretended to play an impressive single-segment run instead of breaking any real records. They have since unlisted both runs on their YouTube channel. The moderators of speedrun.com have also rejected both runs in light of the news.
