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I see daily high scores in the billions and the all time high scores are ridiculously high, how are people getting these scores?

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I think there is a glitch that makes the path always straight forever. – Joe the Person May 13 '12 at 22:18
@fireDude67 is it random? – Louis May 13 '12 at 22:20
1  
I hear you need to double-swipe on the first two turns. – Joe the Person May 13 '12 at 22:22
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Yeah, that's it. I just did it, looks like they still haven't fixed it. Here's a video of how it's done. – Louis May 13 '12 at 22:45
@Louis you should leave your own answer so people can vote it up. – user3389 May 14 '12 at 0:26

3 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

What is more than likely happening is that these users are hacking these scores. A quick Google search will reveal software that you can obtain by jailbreaking your iOS device, allowing you to hack whatever score you wish to send to the Game Center leaderboards.

If you look at the All-Time High Scores for Temple Run, the highest score you will see is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 or 2^63 - 1, which just so happens to be the largest signed integer that can be stored within 64 bits of data (see this Wikipedia article). These users likely tried to fake the highest score they could, but the leaderboard cannot store any value higher than the one shown above.

(Another common number seen faked in leaderboards is 2,147,483,647 (2^31 - 1), the largest signed integer that can be stored in 32 bits of data.)

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As you can see from this image the same hack is being used on Angry Birds. – Joe the Person May 14 '12 at 3:13
While I'm surprised that jailbroken devices can get on the Game Center, this is more believable than ever getting that score even if you managed to grab every coin running at top speed. Although I wonder why there are so few of these high scores if such software is out there. – Louis May 14 '12 at 3:17
Game Center has a way to report users for cheating, so I'm guessing many of these cheaters have been reported and their high scores have been removed. – Kevin Y May 14 '12 at 3:32
up vote 6 down vote

As fireDude67 points out, there is a glitch in the game that causes the path to be continuously straight and free of obstacles.

To perform the cheat:

  1. Enable the Tutorial mode and start a game
  2. On the first turn, swiftly perform the gesture to turn, twice; practically simultaneously (see demonstration).
  3. The character will now run forever, until you trip twice and cause the apes to eat you.

There don't appear to be any coins or bonuses after glitching, so by my rough calculations I estimate that you'll earn about 500 points per second.

So to get a billion points, it would take about 23 days. The all-time high score (and possibly maximum score as it is tied five ways) of 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 would take nearly 600 million years. So maybe there's a way to glitch a coined path, or maybe that number is somehow significant in computing. The mystery remains.

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I tested this glitch on my iPhone to confirm, and I still saw bonuses (including the Mega Coin). I also noticed it messed up iOS's sound engine and resume functionality, requiring a full restart to fix. – user3389 May 14 '12 at 3:03
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Does this work on Android? I have tried it without any luck. – Vaishali May 14 '12 at 3:39
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Of course if you do a web search on 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 you would find how it's significant. :) – fluffy May 14 '12 at 15:11
up vote 3 down vote

If anyone tried this you would have found that when you successfully preformed this, after a few seconds it starts to thunder and lightning. After straight running for a while it resets to the normal game play and after you get eaten or you miss a jump it says "YOU ATTEMPTED THE GLITCH you tried to cheat :-)". It gives you one of those achievement things so the creators of Temple Run must have seen or heard of "THE GLITCH". This only works on the latest iOS update.

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