On JasonRiot and WNF
EDIT: JasonRiot has been unbanned almost as fast as he had been accused, due in no small part to the excellent counter-investigation led by OmegaTomHanksFL and OreoSpeedwagon. This document will continue to exist for transparency and posterity, but the companion video has since been privated. An apology video exists in its place that also goes over the evidence found that cleared Jason of cheating.
This is a companion document to the video, “On JasonRiot and WNF.” This is regarding my ban on JasonRiot due to evidence, which I believe to be convincing, of him using scripts and custom macros during online gameplay, especially during tournament play.
Anecdotal evidence
JasonRiot is a prominent Sol player in GGPO+R netplay. He is perhaps most notable for dozens of netplay wins over the course of the past year, especially in prestigious netplay events such as GDO, BBB, and WNF. JasonRiot became well known during the COVID era of online FGC competition whereas he was relatively unknown before, due to living in an area (Mobile, Alabama) too far from major events or weeklies. To my knowledge, no major players exist in the current +R community that would be able to identify JasonRiot from offline. Jason currently refuses to play offline events. He’s offered a variety of reasons, from being busy with work to not being willing to play on an offline setup. Jason claims that the offline input delay on a PS3 is worse/higher than the input delay online when playing on GGPO+R.
Jason has already been banned from the main +R Discord for belligerent behavior. Jason’s rise to prominence coincides with when players like ALF and Pmage were outed using cheat engine to play online with scripts/custom macros. While it is plausible that someone new to the game could grow very quickly due to having a lot of time to play and learn over the course of several years, Jason seems to have earned his notoriety during the end of the first year of GGPO+R being out.
Evidence of cheating
This was found entirely on accident by the players who brought it to my attention. Saphri and Mole were doing replay analysis on sets against Jason where they noticed that Sol attempted to perform a canned combo during hitstun. After A.B.A hit with c.S and jumped over Sol, Jason’s input history displayed what appeared to be a 5K c.S 66 2D string, a blockstring that would result in a counterhit confirm on the sweep. If no one bothered to investigate this, it would have seemed like a strange attempt at trip guard anti-airing the A.B.A jump crossup.
On further investigation, Saphri and Mole found other discrepancies, like frame-perfect Gunflame FRCs including a bizarre OS that always had the exact same timings, and in particular a Gunflame FRC with a negative edge Fafnir buffered in. They began to search through JasonRiot’s replays, as well as comparisons between ALF and Pmage, and other Sol players like Ohiro, Burount, and Luke, to find any similarities or differences in their input methods. The frame perfect consistency and playstyle was found to be similar to ALF and Pmage, whereas the various other top level Sol players were nowhere near as consistent with their tight inputs as Jason. I was eventually notified and asked to inspect the input files as well. I later asked Honnou, ElvenShadow, and Skeletal Minion for help identifying information about JasonRiot- Elven and Skeletal if they knew of any offline results for him, and Honnou if he could help me identify potential signs of cheating.
Gunflame FRC
The main target of our investigation was Gunflame FRC, given that it was one of the easiest points of comparison between each Sol player. Gunflame FRC has an FRC point on frames 14 and 15 of the animation where, if canceled for 25 meter, allows Sol to act immediately and follow the projectile. This can be used for additional combo pressure, oki, blockstrings, to bait a jump, and so on.
Other players will always have different timings for Gunflame FRC. It’s a two-frame window- even the best players will always drop the input. There will also be different timings for how long the button presses are held for and which buttons are pressed, and so on and so forth. When attempting a Gunflame FRC, there are four possibilities:
1. A frame perfect GF FRC, performed by pressing RC on frame 14.
2. Being one frame off and hitting RC on frame 15.
3. Being too early- hitting it on frame 13 or earlier.
4. Being too late- hitting it on frame 16 or later.
Most of the time, the top players I analyzed will attempt to be early on their GF FRCs- this usually results either in a frame perfect input or being too early on frame 13. It is only occasional that a GF FRC will be whiffed by being too late, but I observed all four variances while going over replay footage.
JasonRiot’s FRCs have very little variance between them. Honnou and T5D estimate that JasonRiot potentially hits the Gunflame FRC frame-perfect over 75% of the time. The input performed by Jason when executing a GF FRC is also always the same. On frame 13, he will hold SH for 1f, then perform the RC with PSH for 1f, let go of P but continue holding SH for 3 to 6f, then finally let go of S and hold H for 1f. From what I have found, this is also how he performs all other RCs, such as VV RC. He will never hit the RC too early, and he will hit the frame 15 FRC less than 25% of the time. I have only seen one case where he dropped the FRC on frame 16.
Devil’s advocate
Even with scripts, misinputs can still occur. Just as how rollback can occur if the PC’s performance becomes unstable, causing rifting/desyncs, that same instability can cause the script to ‘drop’ the input or do it too late/too early much like a human can. This phenomenon was also observed with ALF and Pmage, and could explain situations where Jason drops combos like prolonged dustloops and Sidewinder loops. The aforementioned players were also eventually dismantled by tactics like zoning that prevented them from running their scripted offense- Jason has found it difficult to engage against top tier characters/players that can wall him out successfully. Drops can also occur because, in a game like +R, no one script will potentially account for every situation. Jason’s behavior is also consistent with those players, who had large egos and would gloat about their performances constantly. If you consider that Jason is cheating, a lot of his incomprehensible mentality and behavior begins to make sense.
On the other hand, it can also seem very dangerous to make these accusations if one cannot definitively prove that a player is cheating 100% of the time. They could in fact be ‘just that good,’ playing at a highly optimized but imperfect level that could be mistaken for TAS by a paranoid mind. Indeed, Jason does drop combos and setups (rarely,) can play close sets with top level players like ElvenShadow, Skeletal Minion, Blitz, Saphri, Jacobpat, and Noj, and will even fat finger Respect- if he has macros, leaving the taunt button on where he can easily hit it on accident seems like a strange move. Even with all of the evidence above, I have to make a disclaimer that Jason really could just be an intensely strong player.
Unfortunately, with everything placed in front of me the way it is, and with the information corroborated by several trusted sources, I feel I have no other choice but to protect the competitive integrity of my event and ban JasonRiot from it. This is despite the fact that the running narrative at WNF had been dethroning and collecting bounties, both monetary and art-based, from defeating him any time he earned a winstreak. Even so, if JasonRiot’s toxic presence as a competitor and spectator hasn’t chased players away from my event and others (and I know for a fact that it has,) then the suggestion that he may not even be playing legitimately would surely leave a sour taste in players’ mouths should he be allowed to continue entering.
Being reasonable, I will give Jason an opportunity to disprove me and lift his ban.
1. A stream/long video recording of himself playing +R where he is accompanied by a video camera recording his hands. He should perform reps in training mode of his difficult combos and setups, and he should play sets online where he attempts to perform the same inputs. The conclusion of this stream/submission of this video should include the replay files for any sets he played during said stream/recording.
2. Alternatively, Jason can attend an offline event and simply play +R with other players who can verify that he’s doing the same things online and offline.
Either of these solutions would allow him to verify that he is indeed just extremely cracked, and I will apologize publicly and lift his ban from our event. It is likewise at the discretion of other players and TOs if JasonRiot should be deemed fit to continue entering their events.
On a personal level, if Jason is truly hacking when playing online, it is extremely frustrating and heartbreaking to have the results and prize pools of my event devalued so thoroughly. It is also extremely ironic that a player who claims games like BBCF/Xrd/GGST are for ‘babies who can’t do an FRC’ would likewise need an FRC script to perform inputs he cannot normally do. That being said, I would love to be proven wrong and allow him back into events if the evidence can be overturned.
