Twin Galaxies, the video game record keeper and official source for Guinness World Records, has declared one of the oldest gaming world records invalid after 35 years. Player Todd Rogers has been stripped of his world record for finishing the simple Atari 2600 racing game Dragster, after months of debate over his completion time.

“Based on the complete body of evidence presented in this official dispute thread, Twin Galaxies administrative staff has unanimously decided to remove all of Todd Rogers’ scores as well as ban him from participating in our competitive leaderboards,” reads a post on the Twin Galaxies forum from the organization’s staff.

That’s a major blow to a prolific record holder, whose career stretches back to the earliest days of console gaming. Rogers courted controversy with his oldest record, however — and it directly caused his ban. In 1982, Rogers submitted to Activision’s official fan newsletter a time of 5.51 seconds, which the company recognized in print, awarding Rogers a patch. Twin Galaxies later added Rogers to its own leaderboards in 2001, and Guinness World Records awarded the player with the honor of holding the world’s longest-standing gaming record in April 2017.

Yet Rogers never provided recorded or other proof of his 5.51 time in Dragster, a sticking point in the years that followed. His personal website offered a simple explanation of how he achieved his unbeatable time, while maintaining that Activision’s certification of his time — highlighted in one of the company’s newsletters — was enough to cement his place on the gaming leaderboards.

Yet when Twin Galaxies introduced a new process for disputing scores in July 2017, Rogers’ time in Dragster was one of the first to be challenged. In August 2017, several community members submitted Rogers’ 5.51-second Dragster finish for review. A thread on the Twin Galaxies’ forum about how Rodgers’ Dragster time was technically impossible ran for nearly 300 pages and included almost 3,000 posts. Its most notable skeptic, who goes by the handle Omnigamer, wrote that they failed to reproduce Rogers’ time in a tool-assisted run, leading them to analyze the game’s code and conclude that no one could complete the racing game that fast without some serious cheating.

“It seems like there are multiple witnesses and otherwise for this particular record, but based on the code of the game I do not see how it’s possible to hit 5.54, let alone 5.51,” Omnigamer wrote in a Reddit thread that served as a major basis for Twin Galaxies’ investigation into the record. They also produced a video investigation into Rogers’ time, including interviews with Rogers from over the years and technical breakdowns of how Dragster worked.

Yet after experiencing months of pushback from Twin Galaxies owner Jace Hall on the call to strip Rogers of his record — and Activision founder David Crane offering his public support of the player — the community was able to fully discredit the fastest Dragster time as impossible to perform. When Robert T. Mruczek, a longtime former referee for Twin Galaxies, weighed in with a highly detailed belief that Rogers’ record was illegitimate, it seemed to finally put the back-and-forth to bed.

“It is with great regret that the foundations of my steadfast faith in this nearly legendary performance of 5.51 seconds on [Dragster] has been shaken severely by recent empirical and hard data accumulated by numerous sources and technical experts across the past several months,” wrote Mruczek, in the thread’s final post, before Twin Galaxies announced it would no longer recognize any of Rogers’ records. Rogers is also banned from Twin Galaxies overall.

The months-long controversy has set a precedent for how Twin Galaxies will add new records to its leaderboards in the future, the staff wrote.

“We cannot change Activision’s acknowledgement of this score but we have an overall responsibility for gaming achievements and can no longer accept their historical records as the sole justification for scores set at the time. We were not there, can not find any of the evidentiary materials they used at the time to confirm the score, and could not find anyone who would on-the-record testify that they directly saw the evidence that was presented to Activision.”

The new top time in Dragster, as recognized by Twin Galaxies, is 5.57, set by several players — including Omnigamer.

Update: Guinness World Records has removed Todd Rogers from its archive. Rogers’ page is no longer available on the organization’s website.

Yet Rogers has come out to defend himself and his Dragster record in a long Facebook post. After Twin Galaxies invalidated his high score and banned him from submitting future records, Rogers wrote that he applauded the group for its “strong stance on the matter of cheating.”

At the same time, however, he argued that the idea that he faked his Dragster time was “preposterous.” Yet other members of the gaming community continued to refute his time as impossible, which led to harassment, according to Rogers:

If you wish to call me a cheat, a fraud, etc., you have every right to until you see evidence that says otherwise. Seeing is believing. But when the remarks become personal, and my friends and family are dragged into the mire, it is no longer about gaming. People are wishing ill will upon me and my family over what? A high score on a video game? If that is what the gaming community has become, then despite my love for video games and all of my contributions and experience to help the scene grow by playing live at events and supporting the community, it is not worth jeopardizing my personal life and family outside of gaming.

Rogers is continuing to stand by the title Activision awarded him in 1982, however.

“Who I am, and what I have done with my life will not be defined by a score that I produced live, that others do not believe because they were not there,” Rogers wrote. “For those who have shown me unwavering support over the last few months, thank you. I will continue play games I enjoy and have fun doing so. After all, isn’t that what gaming is about?”