Kaspersky: Doom Eternal speedrunner sets world record with antivirus gaming mode enabled

How fast can you beat Doom Eternal? Probably not as quickly as American speedrunner Xiae who completed the game in just one hour, eight minutes and 52 seconds during Kaspersky’s Break the Record: Live. Xiae completed his record run with the game with Kaspersky Internet Security installed and its Gaming Mode enabled.

He beat six other of the best Doom Eternal speedrunners to secure the new world record in the process, beating the previous record by just 48 seconds. The open competition was watched by 196,000 viewers, saw the speedrunners face off to compete for a USD8,000 prize pool.

If you re not familiar with the concept of speedrunning, it essentially involves gamers trying to complete a game in the shortest time possible. As an article by Engadget describes high-level speedrunners, their craft involves an incredible level of persistence, perfectionism and mastering a specific sequence over thousands of hours.

The competition required the speedrunners to optimise their system completely including the software it ran, which included the installed security solution, to play the hardware-demanding game. 

Kaspersky said it developed Gaming Mode, a special mode that holds off scans, updates and notifications. This then allows gamers to fully concentrate on their games and minimise consumption of CPU resources that would slow down gameplay.

Xiae commented after the competition, “If an antivirus solution doesn’t annoy me at all, that’s perfect. If I can’t tell it’s actually doing anything, that’s what I want. So it [Kaspersky Internet Security] did a good job.”

The cybersecurity expert’s vice president of marketing Andrew Winton said Xiae’s victory offered a strong validation for its internet security product as it was allowed Doom Eternal, a notoriously demanding PC game to run at top speed. “We are honoured that Xiae decided to compete with our product’s Gaming Mode enabled and are glad that we justified his trust in us.”

The Gaming Mode feature is available in Kaspersky’s consumer product line, including Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Kaspersky Internet Security, Kaspersky Total Security and Kaspersky Security Cloud. To learn more about these products visit the official website. 

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