Editing Super Pichu cheating scandal

{{ArticleIcons|competitive=y|ssbm=y}}

The '''Super Pichu cheating scandal''', also known as '''Pichugate''', was an incident that occurred in the North East [[Ohio]] competitive ''Melee'' scene.

On June 24th-26th, 2016, a [[Smasher]] by the name of Chaos placed 2nd at the Alter Reality Games 2016 tournament using {{SSBM|Pichu}}, a fighter notoriously known for being a [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JokeCharacter joke character]. Following this, it was proven that Chaos had cheated by installing [[gameplay modification]]s on his setup to [[buff]] Pichu in various areas to an absurd degree, with the egregiousness of the buffs leading it to being dubbed "Super Pichu".

This incident is notable for being the first and currently only recorded case of cheating in offline ''Smash'' tournaments through gameplay modification.

==Background==
At the time of the incident, Pichu was ranked 24th out of 26th on the game's [[List_of_SSBM_tier_lists_(NTSC)#Twelfth tier list (December 10th, 2015)|twelfth tier list on December 10th, 2015]]. This ranking resulted from Pichu's bevy of weaknesses, mainly its extremely light weight, poor range, and lack of defensive options. In fact, Pichu was intended to be a joke character by the game's developers,<ref>''[http://sourcegaming.info/2015/09/24/meleepichusite/ News Flash! Smash Bros. Dojo: Pichu]'' (translated 2015-09-24; [https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n01/n64/software/nus_p_nalj/smash/flash/1211/index.html original] posted 2001-12-11)</ref> emphasized in its [[List of SSBM trophies (Pokémon series)#Pichu Smash|Adventure Mode]] and [[List of SSBM trophies (Pokémon series)#Pichu Smash 2|All-Star Mode]] trophies.

Despite Pichu being a bottom-tier character, however, numerous players such as {{Sm|Mew2King}}, {{Sm|Keropi-}}, and {{Sm|Swordsaint}} have demonstrated Pichu's potential strengths, including a fast neutral aerial, a strong frame 9 up smash, and an effective grab game, at various tournaments. Swordsaint notably placed 97th at {{Trn|EVO 2014}}. With this being its best placement at supermajors, however, most of Pichu's competitive success is limited to small tournaments.

Chaos picked up Pichu in 2014<ref name="Lil Homie"/>, aiming to become the best Pichu player in the world. On March 10th, 2015, Chaos (xChaos on SmashBoards) replied to a SmashBoards forum titled "Pichu isn't the worst!"<ref>[https://smashboards.com/threads/pichu-isnt-the-worst.393987/post-18736874 Pichu isn't the worst!]</ref> He stated that despite {{SSBM|Marth}} being his most used character, he was gravitating towards Pichu's potential from a personal skill-based perspective, intending to improve himself with the character. In turn, this would spark arguments with users on the forum.

==Affected tournaments==
{{results|Compile more tournaments to illustrate scale; one player named X is on some and places highly, but it's unknown whether this is Chaos.}}

This list compiles tournaments Chaos attended before he was caught and thus possibly cheated at, though it remains uncertain when he started cheating.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
!Tournament!!Date!!1v1 Placement!!Notes
|-
|[https://challonge.com/argw7 ARG 7]||September 14th, 2015||9th / 14||0-2
|-
|[https://challonge.com/arg8/standings ARG 8]||September 21st, 2015||9th / 15||0-2
|-
|[https://challonge.com/arg9 ARG 9]||September 28th, 2015||7th / 18||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/argt10 ARG 10]||October 5th, 2015||4th / 6||Round Robin
|-
|[https://challonge.com/arg11 ARG 11]||October 12th, 2015||7th / 14||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/arg12 ARG 12]||October 19th, 2015||7th / 18||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/arg13 ARG 13]||October 26th, 2015||4th / 11||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/arg16 ARG 16]||November 9th, 2015||13th / 22||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/argt21 ARG 16]||December 22nd, 2015||17th / 30||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/ARG38 ARG 38]||June 6th, 2016||13th / 33||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/argm45 ARG 45]||June 20th, 2016||7th / 36||
|-
|[https://challonge.com/ARGMM2 ARG Melee Monthly #2]||June 25th, 2016||2nd / 24||See below
|-
|[https://challonge.com/argmim ARG Melee in Medina 45]||June 28th, 2016||2nd / 19||
|}

===ARG Melee Monthly #2===
During the ARG Melee Monthly #2 2016 ''Melee'' singles, Chaos, and another player, Remix, were arguing over whose setup would be used for their tournament match. Both players soon agreed to play on Chaos's setup, where Remix won 2-1 in Round 1. However, despite Chaos losing to Remix, he would go on to defeat five opponents in a row in the losers' bracket, notably defeating {{Sm|Surf's up. hail satan}}, who was one of the best ''Melee'' players in the region. In his next round, Chaos would argue with {{Sm|Minnty}} over setups once more. Eventually, both players agreed to play on Chaos's setup, where Chaos would defeat Minnty 2-0.

After defeating Minnty, Chaos went on to loser's finals and faced off against {{Sm|Joeycrzl}}, who was ranked 9th on the [[Northeastern Ohio Power Rankings]] in the summer of 2016. Chaos went on to defeat Joeycrzl in a 3-1 upset,<ref name="Lil Homie"/> and would go on to face {{Sm|4%}}, ranked 1st on Summer 2016's Northeastern Ohio Power Rankings, and notably ranked 99th on the [[SSBMRank 2016]]. Despite Chaos's previous victories, 4% beat Chaos in a very narrow 3-2 win, winning the tournament. Chaos placed 2nd and Joeycrzl placed 3rd, each of them winning cash prizes for their respective Top 3 placings.

==Suspicion & exposure==
Following Chaos' suddenly high placements over ranked players using a character largely seen as unviable, and players noticing things about Pichu in his matches that seemed unusual, players began considering the likelihood that Chaos had been cheating. The suspicion was further stoked by Chaos refusing to play friendlies and to play on any other setup but his own. In a forum post from an unnamed tournament attendee, they claimed that Chaos had KO'ed Joeycrzl's {{SSBM|Ice Climbers}} with Pichu's uncharged forward smash at 18% during a transformation on [[Pokémon Stadium]].<ref name="Lil Homie"/> While Pichu's forward smash is notable for having the highest base knockback of any forward smash in vanilla ''Melee'', it provably does not normally KO at said percentage range, even if [[DI]]'d the worst way possible on the absolute edge of the stage. Despite these suspicions, players were hesitant to voice them publicly, as they felt it would be seen as them making [[excuse]]s for losing, especially with the seeming absurdity of accusing someone of utilizing gameplay mods to cheat at an offline tournament.

Some time later, a local event was organized for players in the Ohio ''Melee'' scene to gather together, with Chaos showing up as one of the attendees.<ref name="Lil Homie"/> While the attendees were playing their games, a plan was devised to expose whether Chaos was actually cheating or not. The plan involved distracting Chaos by having some of the attendees take him to a Sheetz convenience store nearby, while having another group stay behind to copy the SD card in Chaos's Wii to a separate SD card. After Chaos returned and everyone went home, the people who copied Chaos' SD card showed video footage of Chaos' Pichu down tilt, which turned out to have increased range compared to vanilla ''Melee''.

On July 2nd, 2016, the_beanwolf would make a [https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/4qyq9x/on_melee_modifications_and_cheating_a_warning post] in the r/smashbros subreddit that confirmed Chaos had cheated the whole time by playing with a modified Pichu.

The changes compiled for the "Super Pichu" are as follows:
*{{buff|Pichu's [[weight]] was drastically increased from 55 to 90, making it much more difficult to KO and significantly reducing its vulnerability to [[throw]] combos.}}
*{{buff|Pichu [[falling speed|fell faster]].}}
*{{buff|{{mvsub|Pichu|SSBM|Down tilt}}'s [[hitbox]]es were much larger, making its [[reach]] about 1.5× longer, and had increased base knockback.}}
*{{buff|{{mvsub|Pichu|SSBM|Forward smash}} dealt much more damage and had much stronger knockback.}}
*{{buff|Aerial attacks had their [[landing lag]] reduced to being nearly nonexistent.}}
*{{buff|{{mvsub|Pichu|SSBM|Neutral aerial}}'s hitboxes were much larger.}}
*{{buff|{{mvsub|Pichu|SSBM|Up aerial}}'s hitboxes were much larger and it was given full body [[intangibility]].}}
*{{change|''Melee'' was running on [[List of regional version differences (SSBM)|the 1.0 release]], making [[SDI]] more difficult.}}
*{{change|The changes could only be used by plugging a [[GameCube controller]] into the fourth controller [[port]], then holding the [[L button]] and down-left on the [[control stick]] when starting a game as Pichu's blue costume.}}

As a result of being publicly exposed, Chaos would be banned from attending tournaments in Ohio for an undisclosed period of time, and he was required to return his winnings from tournaments and [[money match]]es he won using the Super Pichu.

The same day as the truth was revealed, {{Sm|Dan Salvato}} would release a response video about the subject,<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP9oSqnyOTw Dan Salvato's video]</ref> which would receive over 100,000 views and bring the issue to a wider audience.

==Legacy==
This incident is widely regarded as the first known notable instance of cheating through [[gameplay modification]] in competitive ''Smash'' history. However, it is far from the first case of cheating in general, with incidents such as [[tournament collusion]] happening for many years prior. The impact of Chaos' cheating raised numerous questions about hidden modifications being put into ''Smash'' [[setup]]s. At the time, with mods like [[UCF]] gaining in popularity, it could even raise the question of whether any mods should be allowed at all, though little has changed in this regard. That being said, [[tournament organizer]]s now tend to be much more scrutinous about what hardware and software gets used in a tournament to make sure a similar incident never happens again.

On 3rd August 2017, the University of Advancing Technology covered the incident in reference to rising security issues like BlackHat and Defcon.<ref>[https://blog.uat.edu/blogs/5249 University of Advancing Technology article]</ref>

In October 2020, Esports talk cited the scandal in their "The Difference Between Cheating in Esports vs Traditional Sports" article.<ref>[https://www.esportstalk.com/blog/the-difference-between-cheating-in-esports-vs-traditional-sports/ The Difference Between Cheating in Esports vs Traditional Sports]</ref>

Since Dan Salvato's video, multiple viral videos have been produced covering the spectacle of the situation. On December 20th, 2019, {{Sm|ZeRo}} would cite the scandal in a video discussing competitive ''Smash'' players who got caught cheating, garnering over 900,000 views. The next year, on November 10th, 2020, {{Sm|AsumSaus}} released a video about cheating in competitive ''Melee'', where he discussed the incident at-length, which reached nearly 2,000,000 views.<ref>[https://youtu.be/iik_iUPCSl8 Cheating in Competitive Melee]</ref>

A few years later, on March 19th, 2023, {{Sm|lil homie}} would also release a video covering the incident in depth, which has reached over 500,000 views.<ref name="Lil Homie">[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5asTiS_FILQ "How Melee's Biggest Cheater Was Caught" by Lil Homie]</ref> A month later, the scandal would see coverage on EventHubs, possibly due to the renewed attention the scandal received.<ref>[https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2023/apr/03/super-pichu-cheater-caught-ssbm/ EventHubs article]</ref>

==Gameplay videos==
{{#widget:YouTube|id=J6UcBkV0AnU}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Significant events}}

[[Category:Competitive play]]
[[Category:Pichu (SSBM)]]
[[Category:Hacking]]
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