Incredibly popular Minecraft YouTuber Dream has had a turbulent few months. After a hiatus, the content creator returned in May 2021 with some new Minecraft videos. Alongside these new videos was a public statement about the speedrunning scandal that haunted every recent mention of Dream. According to Dream, his world record speedrun attempt was not legitimate, due to a mod acting without his knowledge to influence the game events. This mod, one authored specifically for Dream's streams, would alter certain item and mob spawning chances to make the streams more interesting. Obviously, this is not conducive to a "proper" speedrun attempt, which would require a completely unaltered version of the game as a control mechanism.
Whether or not the speedrun attempt was purposefully cheated is impossible to know. What fans can know, however, is the way these mods function. There are several examples these mods online, even if Dream uses a bespoke version tailored for his stream. As many commentators observed, the chances of the questionable speedrun playing out like it did were astronomically small. Mods that affected that directly, like these, are quite popular with Minecraft. It's not surprising, really, as fans of the game often spend hundreds of hours in game, so finding ways of remixing or refining the gameplay loop are valuable to veteran players.
What Kind Of Mod Did Dream Use?
According to the now deleted statement, Dream began experimenting with mods at the release of Minecraft 1.16 to help with streams and videos. These mods were such an essential part of Dream's streams that he employed a dedicated modder to work with him. Dream had only ever experimented with plugins before, but an actual mod was a whole different ball game. In the YouTuber's own words, "we always increased the Endermen spawn rates and pearl drop rates out of convenience" to make the streams more dynamic. Otherwise, there was the likelihood of spending long stretches of time looking for specific drops.
The mod in question was allegedly acting without Dream's knowledge, which is not necessarily unheard of. Mods like these are incredibly prevalent (especially among Minecraft streams). If Dream was using it as a staple of his streams around the time of the speedrun, it is possible that it was still running by accident.
How Did People Know Dream Cheated?
During the entire Dream Minecraft speedrun controversy, the YouTuber fiercely contended that he had not actively used a mod throughout this process. Now, this could well be true, but it is also a fact that several game-state altering plugins ran during at least 6 different runs captured on Dream's stream without his knowledge. A heated debate arose between Dream and the moderation team of speedrun.com across late 2020 and early 2021. This team removed his Minecraft 1.16 Random Seed Glitchless speedrun, with each side throwing testimonies and investigations from academic professionals back and forth.
One of the most accessible breakdowns of Dream's unlikely luck came from Matt Parker, of the British mathematics comedy troupe Stand Up Maths. In his video, Parker unpacks the staggering odds of Dream's stream playing out like it did. As the speedrun attempt was in the Random Seed category, this spontaneous element was so important - the ability to think on one's feet and react to random stimuli is part of the skill. Parker used the binomial formula to set out how lucky Dream got: his run occurring had a probability of 1 in 2 times 10 to the power of 22 of actually happening.
The Best Dream-like Mods For Minecraft Fans
There are several gameplay tweak mods available on CurseForge, Minecraft's leading mod hosting platform. "CoFH World," also known as "Cult of the Full Hub World," boasts a staggering 37,875,681 downloads at the time of writing. This is a modular add-on to the vanilla game that allows users to customize a wide array of elements of world generation, mob spawning, and inventory management.
For players that want the more streamlined experience of reaching Minecraft's endgame (as Dream enjoyed during his world record attempt), downloading Cult of the Fall Hub World would put them in good company. The name comes from a 90s gaming collective who pivoted to Minecraft modding in 2012 while the Java edition was still the only version out there. Now with 9 years of Minecraft modding experience, the team has one of the most popular gameplay tweak mods available.
Another incredibly popular game-tweak mod, with over 52,348,450 downloads at the time of writing, is Quark. While this Quark lacks the dairy goodness of its German soured cheese spread namesake, it does bring a similarly funky quality to Minecraft in how it can remix the game. The use of "can" is important here, as Quark also allows its users to control just how much the mod impacts their experience of the vanilla game. It is notable here in how it affects spawn rates of Minecraft's ores and mobs - which can massively impact how fast a run of the game can be completed.
Minecraft is available on all major platforms.