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Edit: Dreams original pastebin is at the bottom of this pastebin, since his got automatically taken down for some reason. Starts on "Line 27". (3:16am ET 5/31/2021)

So, Dream put out a statement today about the speed-running situation, admitting to having cheated in the Minecraft 1.16 speed-run in question, along with the 6 live-streams in question. I chose to private my video on the matter, but then chose to just set it to unlisted for historical purposes. My intention with the video was to defend a community that was being fairly under-represented by the wider creator community. As someone with a very long history of speed-running, I wanted to be that voice. Now that Dream has admitted fault, I feel the video has now served it's purpose.

Some people may not choose to believe Dream's story, and that's okay. They are entitled to that opinion. Here's why I believe that Dream's story could be true. I used to make mod reviews multiple times a week on my YouTube channel. I used to swap mods in and out of my mods folder, and I used to run Minecraft inside of a single instance folder. (Thanks MutliMC for fixing that train-wreck of a problem for me). If I were asked to send someone the mods inside of my mods folder multiple weeks, or even months after any given review, they would not get the mods that I had at the time of that review. So that part of Dream's story, I believe.

I also understand how if someone were sending me mods for a series I was actively working on (Manhunt in his case), I might be constantly cycling out, or even deleting prior iterations of the mod as it was being updated by the mod developer. So again, I can believe that side of Dream's story.

I can ALSO understand how Dream assumed his installation of Minecraft was clean because the Minecraft console output at the time of his speed-run didn't list any mods. If any Java developers want to suggest that it would be difficult for a mod maker to accidentally code a mod to not report it's output to the console, by all means, let me know. So again, I can believe that part of his story.

He also mentioned in his pastebin that he deleted his response video when he found out that his game actually was modified. He claims this occurred a few months ago, which is backed up by Socialblade, showing that he removed the video between February 15th and 22nd, which is just over three months ago. I could also understand how, if you just came down from a controversy that absolutely swallowed the Minecraft scene whole for weeks, how you might not immediately want to speak up that you did something wrong. It would be a lot to take in. Though IMO, he probably should have spoken up at that time. If you want to see fault in his timing here, sure, I can see it.

Because I can put myself in his shoes and see how that series of events could legitimately unfold is why I choose to believe Dream's story. Now, does that make everything Dream did suddenly okay? Absolutely not. It is so incredibly naïve that Dream's first reaction to the accusations wasn't to immediately investigate the possibility that the speed-run mods may be correct, even if some of them were acting unprofessional in nature. A few bad eggs doesn't immediately invalidate the valid criticism that the mods had. Dream should have known this.

The only dog I had in this fight was defending the speed-running community's integrity. I used to speed-run all the time, long before it became as popular as it is within the Minecraft community. Before Minecraft Set-Seed Glitchless was really ran at all. I mean hell, you could even qualify my 2011 "Minecraft Diamonds in 2 Minutes" video as one of my first Minecraft speed-runs, and if you REALLY want to go back, I have speed-runs of Portal on my old channel "ProtoTHPS" dating back to 2007/2008. I'm not posting this message to get anything out of it aside from letting this issue go myself. I care a lot about speed-running, which is why I spoke up in the first place. I'm not a fucking clout chaser, as much as critics of this message may try to believe. If I were in it for views, or clout, maybe you think I'd just post videos more often and try to accumulate more viewership and clout that way?

Anywho, I also want to make it clear that I categorically do not approve of how Dream initially handled the situation. The hatred propagated towards the speed-run moderators, and as well, the hatred propagated towards those trusting in the math was absolutely abhorrent, and Dream should be ashamed of how he initially handled the situation. And I believe that he is ashamed of it. However, even in the days following the drama hitting it's peak, Dream had already apologized for his behavior, and was already actively trying to discourage hatred towards others on his social media accounts. I believe people are worthy of forgiveness, and I choose to forgive what he did.

You may not accept his statement, and that's okay. If you read through his entire pastebin, and do not believe his story you are welcome to that opinion. This is what I choose to believe. I will be keeping my video unlisted, and I won't be speaking on the matter again on Twitter, or on my YouTube channel, unless something objectively factual comes out against Dream's side of the story.

If there are any critical points that I forgot, I'll edit this pastebin, and note the edits below this line, and when I made those edits.


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Dreams Original Pastebin:
I feel like this is something important to talk about, I’ve been very withheld for a while about it all and just decided it’d probably be best to just let it out so I can feel relaxed a little more I guess. This will be a very long read i’m sure, I’m writing this in my bath at 4am on my phone so forgive any mistakes or confusing bits.
 
Back in October/November of 2020, I for the first time since when 1.16 had just released I decided to try and speedrun 1.16 some to get a decent time. My goal was to get a time faster than 25 minutes, which was a good time and fairly obtainable at the time for me without spending months speedrunning. We had or were just about to switch manhunt to 1.16 and I wanted to get practice for that, and then speedrun for a better 1.15 time, because my record on 1.15 had been beaten.
 
After running for about a week, I got a 19 minute time (that arguably could have been lower, ironically enough due to bad luck). I started running 1.15 directly after, and a few day’s later there were some suspicions involving my streamed runs on 1.16. At this point, I was cooperative but upset and confused that I was being questioned. I provided all the information that I could, and assumed that everything was fine. As chatter grew, I was confused and the numbers didn’t look to be in my favor.
 
At this point I reached out to the only mojang developer that I had contact with, and talked for an hour or so about what was going on. I told him the details and was asking if there’s potential for a bug or glitch, and he told me that no there isn’t, but said some things about how banning for luck seems far fetched and that they should improve their system.
 
I felt a little reassured, but also angry that I was potentially being dragged for absolutely nothing. It wasn’t a huge thing yet, but it still lingered in my mind and I couldn’t really think about anything other than it.
 
As time went on and many weeks passed, I grew more and more frustrated, convinced that I was being targeted due to the fact that I was a Youtuber and a couple of the mods (self admitted) didn’t like me at all and didn’t have many kind words to say. I was an asshole and lashed out publicly, saying the investigation was a farce and expressing how pissed I was that I was being targeted and that it was taking so long, as the mods kept giving me deadlines and then missing them.
 
This was terribly stupid of me to do. I was scared and stressed and said and did shitty things. I regret it a lot and really wish that I had been able to keep my calm.
 
Later that month, the speedrun team released a video and a document detailing why my 1.16 runs couldn’t have been legitimate based on math and statistics. I admittedly don’t know shit about math and statistics, I didn’t go to college and I hated math my whole life. At this point I felt complete fear, as I felt like I had been publicly smeared in a way that I have no clue how to respond to. I didn’t understand the math and I didn’t understand why I had been left in the dark for so long only to have a video dropped randomly on me right before MCC. At this point and before, I had multiple speedrun moderators messaging me scary things about how it was a shit show and no one could agree on things just before the release, that they were clearly biased against me and so on. In retrospect, this may have been out of fear and wanting to be on the good side of a really big youtuber, or maybe they were being truthful or a little bit of both. All I know is that it scared me a lot. feeling like everything you built might come tumbling down and there’s nothing you can do about it is really stressful.
 
Again, I lashed out. I tweeted about the mods being clout chasers, and said a lot of really dicky things. I was pissed, I was scared, and I was being an idiot.
 
shortly after that,  someone gave me the idea to hire a professional statistician because I know nothing about math. This calmed me down a lot and brought me back to a much healthier mindset. I googled and I ended up finding two professors and I emailed them both about the situation asking for assistance. Only one of them was available to help. 
 
I was looking for help and I told them that I didn’t cheat, and that I just needed a second opinion on the math. Eventually the professor came back with a conclusion that the mods numbers were off by a significant significant margin, and that’s it’s possible although extremely unlikely. Again, not completely understanding math but knowing that my experts opinion seemed to be that the mods were off, I felt vindicated and relieved. I made a video about it, and expressed the professors views. people hounded me for it saying that the Astro physicist was fake, but the mods confirmed it was legit. I just wanted a (mostly) unbiased parties opinion.
 
The mods came back with a response, correcting the professor and saying that he was off and providing reasons for why. Again, I don’t understand complicated math so I sent it directly to the professor asking for his thoughts. Later on, he came back admitting there were mistakes in his original assessment, although he still believed theirs was off. In his rebuttal though, he came to the conclusion that it’s improbable that I didn’t cheat. I felt like the right thing to do was post his findings, even though he hadn’t asked me to yet, I did. I tweeted them out and replied saying that I agree that it seems more likely than not that I cheated. I didn’t say anything more than that.
 
Funnily enough, he actually emailed me a day or two later saying I need to post his findings, or he will (semi-threatening, but not in a mean way), and I responded that I already had before he even asked.
 
At this point I was lost, and I was fairly confused about the whole thing. Wondering what the other options were and exploring the possibilities. as much as I was confident that I didn’t cheat, I had never explored the option that I possibly did. due to the way I reacted to the mods and perceived everything going on I was convinced that they were out to get me. I tunnel visioned and was paranoid and didn’t think straight. I had plenty of valid reasons to believe that they weren’t impartial, and had the mod team and I been completely friendly from the beginning I believe it never would have gotten to the point that it did.
 
After considering this, I ended up finding out that I HAD actually been using a disallowed modification during ~6 of my live streams on Twitch. At the time we were just starting to record videos on 1.16 and we had just hired a developer to help with coding mods for videos because me and George had no experience with mods only plugins. One of the mods that they were working on was an overall recording mod, that I have used in every video (with updates and improvements) since around the speedrun controversy. You may notice it in my videos due to f3 being small or particles being reduced, or recently on my streams things like the background being custom or a “Dreams servers” option and plenty of other features and improvements.
 
In our challenge videos, before 1.16 we always increased the enderman spawn rates and pearl drop rates out of convenience and we’ve mentioned that openly before. It makes the videos better because we don’t spend hours looking for pearls or spend so much time farming blaze rods (a totally RNG thing, mostly pearls). When 1.16 came out, it was more complicated to increase piglin trades then it is to do enderman pearl drops. A server side plugin was made for our videos that slightly increases the rates. Around this time is when the first versions of the recording mod was being made, although it was more of a chat mod at this point. 
 
I had considered at the time that this potentially could have been a problem, but brushed it off because 1. Server side and client side are completely different and as far as I was aware nothing had been done client side. 2. as far as I knew it was just basically a chat mod so far and 3. I was 99% sure that I didn’t even have the recording mod on. Which was backed up by the fabric api logs saying that only the fabric api was loaded (although I found out later it only lists things that explicitly ask to be listed which I had no idea) this was mentioned in my response video.
 
I ended up thinking that it’s basically the only explanation after the professor came back with what he did. I talked with the developer and ended up finding out that when working on the mod stuff he had added the same improvements from our challenge servers to the client side mod so that they would work in single player for videos like the shock collar video or other “single player” mod videos. This was only in an early rendition of the mod and was removed because the developer realized that those type of videos can just be done on a PC hosted server. This actually included a couple other things that weren’t mentioned at all during the controversy much as far as I’m aware. Ender eyes had a low chance of breaking when thrown, and enderman dropped pearls at a much higher percentage (I don’t think I killed many enderman so this wasnt noticeable, similar to the eyes).
 
When I realized this, I felt an extreme sense of guilt and I took down my response video not believing in what I said in the video at all anymore. This was a couple months ago at this point I believe. When the drama first started I cared more about defending myself and being right, then about figuring out what was actually going on and I shot myself in the foot by doing it.
 
I felt really terrible for the mods because I dragged them through the mud even though they were mostly right. I still feel as though the mod team was extremely unprofessional when dealing with it, but they’re a group of volunteers just trying to do their job and in their eyes I was some cheating sob youtuber who didn’t care at all. Maybe in their position I would have treated me the same. I was an asshole back to them which didn’t help at all either.
 
I reflected a lot about the entire thing and had a lot of regret about just the first few days after the runs. What if they had asked for my mods sooner, what if I had realized sooner, what if I hadn’t had a history with a couple of the mods maybe I wouldn’t have jumped straight to them being out to get me. Further past that what if I could have controlled my emotions and not blown the whole thing out of proportion. I can’t live by what if’s though so I was just left with what I had. I debated live streaming or making a video about it, but the drama had basically already passed and I was worried about rekindling the fire when I had already gone through basically a couple months straight of absolutely being shit on by anyone that didn’t think of me favorably, and the mods had gone through weeks of torture Im sure too.
 
I figured it’s out of the way, and it would be a story I would tell in a few years when no one really cared. I told a couple people and just felt like the community had been through enough drama and that it was pointless. I didn’t want to be the center of controversy for the hundredth time. 
 
it was shitty and an unfortunate situation where I felt like I couldn’t defend myself anymore in good faith without feeling bad but I also didn’t have any intention of cheating.
 
Since the speedrun controversy there’s been some animosity between me and the mods, and I feel like the relationship only got worse. They declined my donations from the controversy video, got into drama a couple times with me/my community on Twitter since(don’t want to go into specifics), and a month or so ago added me to a chat questioning me about my previous 1.15 runs from around a year ago. They saw a suspicious black box that they thought meant a splice, but it turned out to be a youtube setting on their end that they realized, and they had some other random questions as well. This was resolved fairly maturely I believe and I haven’t talked to them since.
 
Yesterday around MCC the mods made the decision to remove my old runs due to suspicions and the fact that my 1.16 run was invalid, which is something that is done with most people who submit any invalid runs at all. I’m sure there’s reasonable suspicions about most runs, especially offline ones from back when they were allowed, so couple that with a 1.16 run being actually invalid and it’s a completely reasonable assumption. You can’t give someone the benefit of doubt on lag or frame skips or potential cuts or anything unless they’ve earned it, and in this case I haven’t at all. So I don’t want to see any hate towards the mods or any drama involving the fact that they were marked invalid due to my 1.16 run. I think it’s dumb that it’s been done 11 months later, but it’s understandable and if anything, I deserve it, and it puts an end to any potential drama. (at this point what could they do, double ban me? /j)
 
I’m not really sure what Im expecting out of all of this, but I just felt like I had a huge weight on my shoulder and I want to get it off. I think the whole situation was extremely shitty overall for everyone involved and I wish that I could go back and do things differently because it was some of the worst weeks of my life and still impacts me every day. I’m sorry to anyone that I let down or disappointed. I always strive to be the best person that I can be and that whole debacle wasn’t the best that I can be or anywhere near it. I hope this brings some closure to anyone who needed it, and I really want to move forward with positive vibes like I’ve been trying my best to promote as much as I can.
 
When I got into speed running I was doing it every day for months, and you can see the skill improvement even just over a few months of tryharding. It was so much fun and I got a few snarky records that I shouldn’t have got in the first place (my first world record I chopped down trees for 10 minutes, I still find that hilarious how unoptimized the category was). I came in at the right time and met some absolutely incredible people who are some of the best Minecraft players on the planet. I am no where near the best speedrunner and I never have been, I was in the right place at the right time and was able to have a lot of fun because of that.
 
I hope that this gives insight into my mindset a little bit, but if not I’m not sure what will. I’m sure I’ll talk about it more just for clarity sake, but I want to avoid causing more drama. please don’t send any hate to the mod team or anyone involved in the situation, I don’t want any more drama at all, you’re no supporter of mine if you do.
 
dream