Leaderboards

There is an important discussion happening in the speedrunning community that pertains to larger societal issues. I am still processing that and won't be addressing it in this paste. However, I would like to make a point about leaderboards, since people have been debating whether potential abusers' names or times should remain there.

A leaderboard is not a record of the fastest or best speedruns ever done. It can't be. If three friends at a GDQ decide to race their favorite speedgame in the casual gaming room, and one of them gets a WR, that run can't be accepted to the leaderboard without a video recording. Even if 20 people witnessed it live, it shouldn't be accepted. Likewise, if someone is streaming a run on Twitch and their Internet goes down for a minute, the run can't be accepted. I've seen this happen more times than I can count.

Let's say someone can't afford to play on console, and they complete a run on an emulator that's not allowed on the leaderboards. The run finishes 3 minutes faster than the current WR, the emulator's inaccuracy accounts for only 10 seconds of that, and there is no reason to suspect cheating. Is that run not the fastest ever done? Do we just pretend it didn't happen? This also has happened many times.

Many great speedruns don't finish. The runner makes it to the final fight and then dies to bad luck. I've noticed that these runs are rarely acknowledged, while worse runs are remembered because they're on a leaderboard. But some of my favorite speedrunning memories come from incomplete runs.

Some runners don't submit their runs to a leaderboard. They shouldn't be obligated to. And some runs on a leaderboard are cheated. Moderators typically don't have the time to verify whether every run is legit, and some cheaters are bound to slip through the cracks.

The point is, a leaderboard is only a fraction of a speedgame's history. Removing abusers' names or times doesn't remove the history.