• NG = New Game
• NM = No Merchant
• NG+ = New Game+
• SW = Separate Ways
• SW+ = Separate Ways+
• AA = Assignment Ada
• IGT = In Game Time/Timer
• RTA = Real Time Attack
• LRT = Load Remover Timer
• WR = World Record
• SS = Single Segment
• Seg = Segmented
• ASL = Autosplitter

The following rules apply to every single category in the board. Your run must comply with all of these rules no matter which category you're submitting for.

• All SS runs are ranked primarily by LRT, which is the time tracked by our LiveSplit ASL that removes loading times, and secondarily by IGT (RTA in the case of AA) which is the time shown by the results screen and typewriter after the game is completed.
• Because of the above, in order for your time with the LRT to be counted during verification, the timer must be clearly displayed and shown running in sync with your game in your video submission throughout the entirety of the run. Otherwise, your IGT (RTA in the case of AA) will be used to fill both timing methods.
• Your timer should be displayed with at least two decimals. For example, a time of 1:29:17.98 would be reported as 1 hour, 29 minutes, 17 seconds, and 980 ms (note that this is 980 ms and NOT 098 ms). If the final decimals are not reported, they'll be filled as 990ms (worst possible case for missing two) or X90ms (worst possible case for missing one) to make it fair.
• In order for your run to be considered SS it must be done in one sitting with no exiting to the main menu and not making any saves, except for the final one after the results screen.
• In order for your run to be considered Seg it must be done in segments, meaning one chapter at a time and/or saving, quitting and replaying said chapter until it is "perfect" over an extended period of time until you beat the game.
• All Seg runs are ranked only by IGT, which is the time shown by the results screen and typewriter after the game is completed.
• All videos submitted must:

1. Have in-game sound. Muting the in-game music is allowed. Music external to the game is allowed as long as the game audio is clearly audible.
2. Have no significant partial interruptions (such as sound cutting out constantly, black screens, freezes, etc)
3. Have a decent enough quality to be watchable, although instances of low bitrate and framedrops are acceptable to a reasonable degree. You can local record your runs in order to prevent videos from being affected by internet issues.
4. Not expire automatically after a certain amount of time (for example Twitch past broadcasts).

• Showing framerate on screen is required for the entirety of the run. You can use the Steam overlay, MSI Afterburner, RivaTuner, etc. for this. Your FPS counter should be big enough and of a high contrast color. You'll find instructions on how to make the Steam fps counter bigger here.
• Runs ranked top 10 or better on any of the categories must show inputs during the whole run no matter if KBM or controller. If you use both KBM and controller on your runs you should only show inputs for the input method you use the most. For keyboard/mouse inputs you can use NohBoard, and for controller you can use gamepadviewer.com or similar. For keyboard/mouse inputs, all inputs must be shown. This includes LMB, RMB, scrollwheel, and all keyboard keys you use. All these following actions must be displayed.

• HD Project mod: BANNED ❌
• Replacing sound effects with others that aren't silence: BANNED ❌
• RE4 Tweaks mod: BANNED ❌ (available on the CE board)
• Cosmetic/costume mods: BANNED ❌
• Pistol animation mod: BANNED ❌
• Turbo controllers and macro inputs: BANNED ❌ with the exception of the X button mashing QTEs (for example 1-1 end boulder, 3-1 catapults lever, Ashley cranks on 3-4, etc). Using these tools for the other types of QTEs (X + A and LT + RT on controller, X + C and LMB + RMB) is banned.
• Changing gun laser color: ALLOWED ✅
• Modifying input.ini: ALLOWED ✅ with the exception of binding things to scrollwheel. (scrolling for merchants and/or for rifle aiming is allowed as it is the game's default behavior)
• Button texture mod: ALLOWED ✅
• Muting in-game music: ALLOWED ✅
• Muting Ashley's Special 2 costume clanking sound effect: ALLOWED ✅
• Removing the game's film grain through the game files: ALLOWED ✅
• Using SRTs such as RE4 Counter, RE4Central, SRTPluginManager or directly through LiveSplit with text variables: ALLOWED ✅
• Changing the game's exe to 1.1.0, 1.0.6 or 1.0.6 Japan: ALLOWED ✅
• Using trainers to build an NG+ inventory without using them during actual runs: ALLOWED ✅

In addition to the global and game modifications rules, your run must also comply with the rules of whichever specific category you're submitting for.

• Special 2 costume is banned.
• All runs require full video, starting at the main menu and ending after making your one and only save at the final typewriter after the results screen.
• The information on the save should be clearly visible on screen before the video ends or you quit out to the main menu.
• Segmented runs require a full video of all segments done in order. A playlist with all the individual videos of these segments is also accepted although not preferred. You can save as many times as you want, and all videos must include the making of the save following the rule above.

• All runs require full video, starting at the load menu (typewriter) and ending after making your one and only save at the final typewriter after the results screen.
• The information on the save should be clearly visible on screen before the video ends or you quit out to the main menu.
• Segmented runs require a full video of all segments done in order. A playlist with all the individual videos of these segments is also accepted although not preferred. You can save as many times as you want, and all videos must include the making of the save following the rule above.

• Special 2 costume is banned.
• Interacting with the merchant is banned.
• All runs require full video, starting at the main menu and ending after making your one and only save at the final typewriter after the results screen.
• The information on the save should be clearly visible on screen before the video ends or you quit out to the main menu.
• Segmented runs require a full video of all segments done in order. A playlist with all the individual videos of these segments is also accepted although not preferred. You can save as many times as you want, and all videos must include the making of the save following the rule above.

• All runs require full video, starting at the SW main menu and ending after making your one and only save at the final typewriter after the results screen.
• The information on the save should be clearly visible on screen before the video ends or you quit out to the main menu.
• Segmented runs require a full video of all segments done in order. A playlist with all the individual videos of these segments is also accepted although not preferred. You can save as many times as you want, and all videos must include the making of the save following the rule above.

• All runs require full video, starting at the AA main menu and ending AFTER calling the helicopter.
• Timing starts on the first frame that the initial text disappears and ends on the first frame that the "yes no" prompt disappears after activating it.

These following actions, although obvious, can and will result in bans as they represent a major offense to our community:

• Submitting spliced runs.
• Using cheats of any sort.
• Submitting other people's runs as your own.
• Toxic and/or inappropriate behavior towards mods or other players, being direct or not.
• Modifying the ASL to provide an advantage.
• Any other type of deliberated offense not mentioned above.

• June 5th, 2019: Added the rule that requires all runs to show full video proof in addition to requiring all runs except AA to show the making of the one and only final typewriter save after the results screen.
• August 22nd, 2021: Added the rule that requires all videos to have game sound yet allowing to mute the in-game music.
• August 22nd, 2021: Added the rule that requires FPS to be shown on screen during the video of the run.
• March 29th, 2022: Added the rule that bans binding things to scrollwheel.
• March 29th, 2022: Added the rule that requires top 10 runs or better to show an input display during the run.
• January 2nd, 2023: Added a rule that sets time limits for all categories, where times below this limit will no longer be accepted, and all current runs below this limit will be rejected.
• January 2nd, 2023: Re-worded and formatted all previous rules properly for better readability.
• January 2nd, 2023: Combined the game modifications rules with the overall rules into one post for better organization.
• January 4th, 2023: Removed the rule that sets time limits for all categories and restored all runs this rule caused to reject.

You can leave any questions you may have regarding the rules down below. Try not to go off-topic or start new unnecessary threads. Also make sure you join the discord as it is full of useful resources and active mods.

As a fellow speedrunner and former runner of this game, I am appalled at this new "time limit" rule for the board. Who are the mods to decide what is "fast enough" and what is not? How can you say a runner didn't really try based on their time? The whole maximum time threshold is completely arbitrary.

Out of the three reasons you stated, only the first one makes some sense. Srcom does have a rule that goes "Runs that are clearly not making an effort to beat the game's category quickly may be rejected." so I understand not approving first playthrough submissions that last for half a day. The problem of having a lot of submissions to verify can be solved by adding more moderators. Taking on the role of a moderator requires one to actively verify runs and take care of the boards. It's not the fault of the submission amount that you deem to not have enough time. Simply add more moderators and/or verifiers. The argument that it "makes the board look better and more competitive." is false. You have LESS competition by removing and disallowing runs above a made up threshold. It does make scrolling down faster and easier I guess, but there's pagination available on srcom now so that doesn't make sense either. Although my run was not removed, I still felt the need to say I disapprove of this.

It seems there's been a lot of confusion and misunderstandings here, and this is mostly our fault for not explaining all of this as in-depth as we should have. First of all, what is and isn't "fast enough" wasn't a random time put together out of nowhere as you're making it seem. We have enough knowledge and experience in the game to know what the optimal, yet achievable times are for all categories across all platforms, so what we did is simply add 30% to those times. If the majority of the RE4 community thinks this is too harsh we'll gladly change it to something higher, but the overall idea remains. And before you assume we chose 30% for the sake of it... we tried many different percentages checking everytime what the limits would translate to and then making sure those times weren't too harsh nor too lenient using our experience having watched thousands of runs and knowing exactly what kind of "execution" or "skill level" is required to get each kind of time. For example, the limit for NG Pro 60FPS ended up being 1:53, which we thought was perfectly acceptable given that the vast majority of the board was faster than that limit and the first run submissions of people are almost always either faster than this or very close to it.

Over the years of verifying runs, we've noticed certain trends.

1. There's the people who do one or two runs putting the absolute bare minimum in and never touch the game again. The people that don't learn strats, don't learn the route, don't practice, don't make use of the countless amazing guides and resources we have, etc. I get that many people just try stuff for fun, or maybe they tried the run, submitted, and then decided the game's not for them. Perfectly fine. But.. why put the run on the board and keep it there then? What purpose does it serve? Just to say "I ran this game for a day"? The only valid purpose I can see is for database/history/archive/statistics purposes, because otherwise it seems pointless. And yes, I get that many people see speedrunning as nothing more than a light hobby and don't take it seriously at all, but that's the whole point. From our POV, even people who take it very easy can get past these limits we set with just doing a couple attempts every once in a while.
2. There's the people who do the same as the above, but do it on categories with little to no competition so they can get a free "WR" just like that, which we find insulting to our boards and our categories. We would like all our categories to be competitive and optimized to a certain extent.
3. There's the people who wanna run the game, get better at it and get to a decent place on the board (and no, I'm not talking about top 10 or wr-level). The problem here is, many of these people (not everyone of course) submit PB runs they'll beat within the next day over and over again, which is of course exacerbated by the fact that the slower your time is, the easier it is to PB, and the bigger this problem becomes. We've found that politely asking people to not submit runs every single day doesn't work, as a lot of runners have little to no regard for the time mods spend out of their lives for free, so it has now come to something drastic like this. Point being, we would much rather someone with a first run PB of 2hs not be able to submit until they get the 1:53 which in most cases will take them just a few days of attempts, so we save hours of our lives verifying for nothing. It's not meant to be an attack as in "you're not good enough", it's simply attempting to help people be patient as well as avoiding time-wasting within the mod team.

Adding moderators doesn't solve the problem. Sure, the time spent verifying is more equally divided among mods but the issue remains. A mod either spend hours verifying these runs or they skim through it very quickly as it is a non-competitive time anyway so the chances of the person cheating are near-zero, but at the same time risk missing things like parts of the vod missing, audio missing in some parts, among other hard-to-spot rule-breakers which hurts the integrity of the board, specially when it happens again and again and again as it has. So now you could tell me, well.. who cares if some runs on the board break the rules and yet are still on the board, letting people BE on the board to begin with by not setting any limits is more important. But I fail to see the point of this. I fail to see why some people who clearly state they don't take speedrunning seriously are suddenly so preoccupied with being on a board despite having no intentions of climbing up on it (trend 1) OR why some people are so impatient to be on a board as soon as they finish their first run only to go at the very bottom. Why not (trend 3) give it a few more days of attempts, get a better PB (since when you're learning it's very easy to PB constantly) and THEN submit, so you go onto a nicer spot on the board AND you avoid making mods watch 4 PBs of yours instead of 1, for example.

Related to the above, I get the impression some people might be thinking we're doing this out of laziness or something, which couldn't be further away from being the case, and anyone who actively runs the game knows this for a fact since runs on our board (and the CE and Console board as well) almost never take more than a week to get verified, and most take between 1 and 3 days, which is significantly faster than in many other boards, specially ones as big or bigger than RE4's. The issue here isn't verifying per se, it's verifying runs that many times don't even look like runs, which feels insulting to our board, insulting to the effort that has gone into trying to make it as serious as possible, and insulting to the mods who aren't being paid to watch and verify these runs.

I know I speak for myself and the entire modteam when I say that we love verifying runs of people that have taken the time to properly learn the route and have attempted to understand how the game works, even on a basic level. We love seeing them improve and climb the board little by little through hard work. And once again, before you say it, no, we're not talking about the 1% of guys who learned the game and got to the top 5 within a month. We're talking about the countless people we've seen slowly make their way up to the top 60, top 50, top 40, top 30, top 20, asking questions, participating in the discord, participating within the RE4 speedrun streams on Twitch, etc. What we DON'T love however is people who do one or two runs putting the absolute bare minimum in and never touch the game again. I get that this rule can backfire and end up hurting people that don't plan on doing what I just said, but neither me nor the other mods thought people would take this as some sort of insult. In fact, we all agreed that if a game we wanted to run had this rule and our run got rejected because of it being too slow, that wouldn't discourage us at all, it would only motivate us to try harder. Of course this is due to the fact that our modteam is entirely made of people who take speedrunning seriously no matter what, and I get that many people don't see speedrunning this way. But the point is, we simply don't like the idea of casual fast runs, casual speedruns, whatever you wanna call it. It is not something we enjoy verifying, it's not something we enjoy seeing on the board.

Two things I forgot to add but are important:

1. We didn't delete any runs. We REJECTED runs that were slower than the limits we set. Our choice of words was poor there. The difference is, in case you didn't know, rejected runs can be easily verified if need be, deleted runs have to be submitted with all their data from scratch.
2. We didn't reject any old runs on Steam nor Console that didn't contain skips and/or strats that were discovered later on, to make it fair. Many people didn't know this as we didn't specify it anywhere, which is our mistake once again.

I don't think I said everything I wanted to say yet, but this is getting pretty long already so I'll leave it at that.

Further discussion is welcome and encouraged, but replies with clear insults or disrespect towards anyone will be deleted. As always in serious times like this, we'll value opinions of current or ex runners of the game significantly more than those from outsiders.

This ain't it chief.

When will "We don't want to verify this run because we've deemed that it's too slow" turn into "We don't want to verify this run because we've deemed that you didn't increase your time enough from your previous PB."?

This is a serious question. Sure, maybe the top ten players always get their scores updated, but what if the person has a 1:35.00. The arbitrary time you've decided. And then they get a PB and submit and it's 1:34.99? I mean, it's the next step in the evolution.

And while I will praise the SRC staff member for coming in and discussing with the mod team for a reversal of this decision, I'm still disappointed that members of the mod team don't actually care and would still rather it be an elitist community.

https://imgur.com/a/T6wMoS4

1- First of all, what is and isn't "fast enough" wasn't a random time put together out of nowhere as you're making it seem. We have enough knowledge and experience in the game to know what the optimal, yet achievable times are for all categories across all platforms, so what we did is simply add 30% to those times.

So why not 29, or 31%? It's completely arbitrary for no reason.

2- The only valid purpose I can see is for database/history/archive/statistics purposes, because otherwise it seems pointless.

That's the whole point of having a leaderboard.

3- There's the people who do the same as the above, but do it on categories with little to no competition so they can get a free "WR" just like that, which we find insulting to our boards and our categories. We would like all our categories to be competitive and optimized to a certain extent.

If you find that insulting then go put a better time on those categories and make it harder to WR.

4- 1) We didn't delete any runs. We REJECTED runs that were slower than the limits we set. Our choice of words was poor there. The difference is, in case you didn't know, rejected runs can be easily verified if need be, deleted runs have to be submitted with all their data from scratch.

They were still runs already verified and that were on the board and now they're not anymore for a rule change made after they were already there. This is just semantics to try to make it seem less worse than it is.

5- A mod either spend hours verifying these runs or they skim through it very quickly as it is a non-competitive time anyway so the chances of the person cheating are near-zero, but at the same time risk missing things like parts of the vod missing, audio missing in some parts, among other hard-to-spot rule-breakers which hurts the integrity of the board, specially when it happens again and again and again as it has.

By your logic (by your I mean the mod team) if those runs are so bad to the point they shouldn't even be on the board, then why does it matter if they aren't 100% following the rules?

This board has 5 mods and 14 active runners at the moment, that means 1 run a day being verified, if that's too much of a workload put more people to verify. And if verifying runs is that much of a bother, then why be a mod? Ain't nobody being forced to be a mod here, people can just leave.

Not to mention the fact that not everybody that has a bad time didn't put any effort, what about people with disabilities? Do they not deserve to have a chance to submit a run to a leaderboard? It's just speedrunning, it shouldn't be this serious.

You know I respect you sawkenn but this rule is terrible.

Damn, you had the perfect opportunity to realise the mod team made a mistake, and you doubled down on it. You legitimately took a hobby that is for everyone, and are trying to gatekeep anyone who isn't trying to be super competitive. Point 2 is just outright stupid, and just goes to show that you have too many empty categories, and trying to blame the runners who are just trying to have a bit of fun. Your point of rejecting instead of deleting also won't fly, you're still removing the runs from being seen by the general public. A first time runner who is genuinely trying with basic strats is just as valid as a WR holder, stop gatekeeping.

Speedrunning is for EVERYONE. If you don't want slow runs on the board, step down as moderators and find people who actually care about the community, not just the fastest percentage of runners.

https://www.speedrun.com/knowledgebase/moderation-rules

This is a list of moderation rules set by speedrun.com

Down below in the 'Run Requirements' category is the following... A minimum effort requirement is reasonable. It is recommended to at a minimum accept a first playthrough done in one sitting with an intention of playing the category quickly. Runs that are clearly not making an effort to beat the game's category quickly may be rejected.

This is how the site should be run. Yes, communities can make their own rulesets, but your ruleset is literally elitist, abliest, and doesn't seem to be very popular with anyone who has bothered to comment here. Putting a time limit on how fast a run needs to be goes against the spirit of the first guideline. And the second guideline lets you handle the runs that are clearly not actually speedruns. Everything else that has gone on here is distasteful at best.

Also to add in to what alkaline linked above, I'd love to point out the section that says "The users moderating a game should represent the consensus of the players of the game.", and judging from what I've heard from runners of this game so far.... Not looking good for the moderation team :)

As a fellow moderator of a popular game, I cannot believe someone thought this is fine. Dear moderators, the leaderboards of this site aren't your leaderboards: as stated in the Knowledge Base of speedrun.com, the leaderboards hosted here are the community's leaderboards. I am not going to judge whether this decision is right or makes sense, what I am going to say is that it is unacceptable to go against the playerbase's consensus. This situation could have been handled way better: I understand that you may not want to take the risk of adding more moderators to help out, but at least make a public poll to check if the players themselves feel alright with this. Removing runs done before this rule was applied also is very unfair to the players who do not speedrun this game anymore. I hope the situation will turn to the best for the speedrunners and the players of this game.

Sawken, this thing right here that you just said is without a doubt the most ELITIST thing I've ever read, heard or watch related to speedrunning:

"1) There's the people who do one or two runs putting the absolute bare minimum in and never touch the game again. The people that don't learn strats, don't learn the route, don't practice, don't make use of the countless amazing guides and resources we have, etc. I get that many people just try stuff for fun, or maybe they tried the run, submitted, and then decided the game's not for them. Perfectly fine. But.. why put the run on the board and keep it there then? What purpose does it serve? Just to say "I ran this game for a day"? The only valid purpose I can see is for database/history/archive/statistics purposes, because otherwise it seems pointless. And yes, I get that many people see speedrunning as nothing more than a light hobby and don't take it seriously at all, but that's the whole point. From our POV, even people who take it very easy can get past these limits we set with just doing a couple attempts every once in a while. "

No matter what semantics you try to use or what explanations you can get from your arse, this here says " I don't think the effort of someone who doesn't want to commit to this game is worth it, leave the ledearboard to us because your run isn't worthy enough to be archived in our glorified spreadsheet. " Of course people want to archive their runs here for "database/history/archive/statistics purposes" BECAUSE THAT'S THE THING WHOLE THAT THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE IS ABOUT! I'M SORRY IF SOMEONE WANTS TO SPEND THEIR TIME SPEEDRUNNING SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD OF LEARNING YOUR GAME'S NEW STRATS! F*CK MARATHONS TOO, NOW THAT WE ARE AT IT! Because something tells me you didn't have marathons in mind when making this backwards ass new rules, what if someone only speedruns RE4 once because the've done it on a full franchise marathon BUT they are a top RE2 runner for example? They don't take speedrunning seriously according to you? AND DON'T GET ME STARTED WITH PEOPLE WITH ANY KIND OF FISICAL CONDITION THAT WOULD HARM THEIR SPEEDRUNNING SKILL IN SOME WAY! NOW YOU ARE GONNA BE ABLEIST TOO?

This rules are born from elitsm and pure and unapologetic laziness, and you don't make a good job at hidding it.

lol

I also think that these arguments might seem a tiny bit less elitist if they weren't being said by a top runner on the leaderboards that currently holds a whole bunch of WR in a bunch of categories around every RE4 related page on Speedrun.com and orbits around 3rd place on the rest. Your post screamed supperiority all throughout, but this just adds even more.

I have no dog in this race so I weighed up whether or not to say anything, but my level of disturbance at this decision, and your defence Sawken, is far too high to not say anything. I may not run the game, but I have a significant investment into the speedrunning community as a person and I shudder to think of the idea of speedrunning moving in this direction as a community, so wish to do my part in raising my voice to stamp this deplorable rubbish out before it becomes any more predominant than this.

I will run through and respond in general to different sections of your response Sawken in this forum thread:

• You say there's been a lot of 'confusion and misunderstanding. I can't say I've checked (and would love to get proved wrong here), but I doubt there was community consultation on a matter like this. It seems like it's been fired out of a cannon and been met with a repsonse the mod team didn't expect. I'll tell you for free, it's not confusion or misunderstanding, it's plain disagreement and antagonism.
• As someone else said, 30% off optimal is totally arbitrary. Why not 40%? It's pointless. More importantly though, there still isn't a valid reason as to why this is happening at all. For mod load, the suggestion here is that you're taking a fine tooth comb to every run? Even a last place run? Who cares if it doesn't follow a rule if it's last place! Just verify it and move on.
• You describe the three types of submitters. The first...who cares? They're having fun, they're speedrunning! Wouldn't you want to try entice them to run your game and grow your community? Instead, you shut them out now entirely. Don't say you don't, because you do. Submitting a first run onto a leaderboard to get it verified is a magical experience and you're taking that away from so many people who may not want to put in effort to beat these arbitrary benchmearks. The second just suggests that you have too many categories. If there's no interest for a category so that people can get a 'free one'...just don't have the category. The sheer audacity of complaining that people are running side-categories without putting in effort. Shame on you. The first category...again, just insta-verify with a quick skim 'bad' times, and take caution with good ones.
• Who cares about 'the integrity of a board' when it comes to non-competitive times? I promise you that there aren't people out there going "damn, those mods are so awful, they verified a 60th place run that breaks this weird rule on this board!" People want to speedrun, watch speedruns, and have fun. Why is it your role to gatekeep people's speedrunning? It's pathetic and petty. This isn't some pro tournament, it's a community affair and always has been, why disallow people from being a part of that community? Your decision harms the community aspect of RE4 speedrunning,and speedrunning as a whole.
• Of course people who don't take it seriously still want to have their name on the leaderboard! It's permanent, it's THEIR accomplishment, why are you taking that away from them, even if you don't deem it worthy of your precious board? How dare you.
• Again, why do you care about people's first run being down the bottom? Why do you care about people being in a 'nicer spot on the board'. Why are the mods watching all 4 PBs if they're at the bottom of the board? Who cares!?
• Laziness is the most obvious reason for people to come to as to why this is ocurring, whether that's true or not. Either that or ignorance of a strong variety of factors. Hanlon's Razor exists but still...
• Plenty of people totally agree that 'runs that don't look like runs' can get rejected. But your definition of 'run' is arbitrary and ridiculous, this 30% thing. It's not the specific number to be clear, it's the fact that you HAVE a specific number as opposed to whether someone is just putting in a good effort and trying to speedrun. What if they don't want to learn modern strats and deliberately use some old strats, hence getting a time worse than the 30% benchmark. Does that mean it's not a speedrun?
• "Insulting to our board" is the worst thing I've read, and shame on you for writing it. So if I want to learn the game casually (as a run, maybe during 12 Hour Challenge or something), put up the time I got and quit because I didn't vibe the run to continue, but want to have that record that I did run the game at one point, however poorly, I'm insulting your board? Disgusting and disgraceful opinion. Be better.
• Understandable that you love verifying people who work hard, and hate people who don't. But your opinion as people who 'take speedrunning seriously no matter what'...it is not your right to impose that view on the community as a whole. This viewpoint being imposed on the board is ACTIVELY going to discourage people from joining. The fact that you don't see that is surprising, shocking, and just unfortuate. You may not 'enjoy verifying' lower quality runs, and may not 'enjoy seeing [them] on the board', but it isn't your board, it is the community's. It isn't YOUR BOARD to impose your views like this.
• You said that 'neither me nor the other mods thought people would take this as some sort of insult'. In the most literal and non joking sense possible, speak with actual diverse human beings you absolute silo. You all agreed you would 'get motivated' because you're all invested in speedrunning. There are so many more people that aren't though.
• Saying you didn't delete runs but rejected those...that's disgusting pedantry. You removed runs from the board, they're deleted, whether that comforms with the technical definition of SR.com "deleted" or not. The idea of not grandfathering in the history of your game and community is extremely shameful, and is the most despicable abuse of power I have seen in my 10+ years of being involved with speedrunning. It's petty, crass and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Doesn't matter that you didn't reject old runs that 'didn't contain skips or strats that were discovered later on', the shame is equal, that you retroactively told people that they weren't worthy. That this most absurd fallacy of board integrity was more important than the members of your community retaining their history. Above all else, this element is the most pathetic and deplorable of the whole thing.

In summary, I find both the decision and defense of it deplorable. The fact that you can post Sawken with a straight face a defense of this is laughable. I have done my best to avoid getting involved in speedrun drama for almost my entire time in the speedrunning community. That stopped today because the situation made my blood boil so much.

Finally, the point that others made about Speedrun.com rules is pertinent. If you want to retain your position as mods, reverse this elitist position on leaderboard times. Somebody from SR.com will stand up eventually to rectify it with or without you. For the sake of your community, of which you and the rest of the mod team are obviously well respected Sawken and work hard for your community, please really think about this one hard, read everyone's points, and do better. Be better leaders, and better representatives of our community as a whole.

(Dropping this here as well to reach the most eyes) Wow... This is disgusting Elitist behaviour. Who are you to decide what level of effort someone is putting into a run, and more importantly, why does it even matter? Speedrunning is a hobby that should be accessible to all. Everybody starts somewhere, and that somewhere probably isn't within a 30% threshold of WR, but does that mean they don't deserve to document their run the same as everyone else? No matter how you try to justify this decision just know that from any single person looking in on this from the outside all this looks like is a team of lazy moderators who decided they weren't going to "waste their time" even acknowledging people if their runs aren't close enough to WR to be considered worthy. Essentially saying "get lost kiddo. We don't want your slow ass around here making the rest of us look bad" But what you fail to see is the only thing that makes your leaderboards ugly is this ruleset.

Mod's "not having enough time" to verify runs is a cop out and I will not accept it. Sure it's a volunteer job that people do for the love of a game/community and nobody can be expected to do mod duties at any particular time, but that being said if you no longer are interested in verifying runs maybe you shouldn't moderate anymore. Pass the torch on to someone with more time and motivation to verify runs. Shouldn't be that hard to find someone either since "your community is so large"

Also I don't even understand what yall are worried about when it comes to slow runs being verified. it's not like there is a time limit for verification. Do it at your leisure. Slower runs will take longer to be verified but oh well. I'm sure people would be understanding of that. Or like I've seen others mention, don't even bother actually verifying runs that are that slow. Genuinely who cares if someone lied about being 75th place on the leaderboards. That doesn't diminish the accomplishments of those at the top of the leaderboards.

Having lower times on the board encourages new runners to submit / stick around. It's discouraging to pick up a game and see that you aren't even on the leaderboards with your time. And to also have the leaderboards not even be a true representative of the average persons experience progressing their speedruns is demoralizing. You think wow am I the worst person to ever try speedrunning this? But then it turns out nope, there were others like you that finished with similar times but their runs were removed for being too slow.

Saying that "if you put effort into your run and follow proper strats and routing you won't ever have an issue with this rule" is just not true. You don't get to dictate what people's starting skill level is, you don't get to dictate how they choose to learn the routes, you don't even get to dictate if they choose to learn the routes. Take a step back for a second and imagine someone wants to speedrun this and has literally never played a RE game before. Do you really think they would have "no issue" achieving a fast enough time? Speedrunners tend to forget after their hundreds or thousands of hours in a game that not every person has the innate knowledge and understanding of the game that they do and something that may be very simple and straight forward to them will be confusing and difficult to a new player who doesn't understand the nuances of a given game yet.

Speedrunning is a hobby for many people, some just do it for fun and never intend to be a top level player, but maybe still want to be able to look at the various runs they've done across various game all in one convenient place (SRC) . And others are more engaged in the competitive aspect, reaching for top spots on the leaderboards and constantly seeking to improve. Both are valid and both deserve a space here. It is very authoritarian of you to decide who does and who doesn't get to participate in your community based on whether you deem them skilled enough or not.

This decision might be one of the worst decisions ever made by a mod team on SRC. RE4 will be the absolute laughing stock of speedrunning communities everywhere if this decision is not modified or reversed. I know you think you will be more respected if all your leaderboard times are competitive but i promise you it isn't that deep. Not a single person in the real world cares about how fast you play a video game

One of the major aspects of moderating any gameboard is being the consensus of the runners. Additionally looking through the discord there was no in-the public vote allowing for the runners to voice their opinions, and the excuse of "top runners made the decision" is also elitist and not taking every runner into account. Additionally there is no runner roles and the server is bear boned meaning the vote, that didn't happen, couldn't of happened with runners notice.

This game is sub 2 hours for most categories, these are typically lengths of runs. If the mod team cannot keep up with a 21 day limitation then search for more verifiers/moderators. If you can't find any that means the game isn't active enough to even warrant a change for this. It's ridiculous to even fathom the solution to seemingly a non-existent problem is to just outright ban intro level runs. Games like outlast, sm64, and countless others add and replace verifiers actively to keep up with submissions.

There are other boards that get 1000s of runs a week submitted and still verify 500+ place runs. Keep in mind you rejected a run that's +30 minutes from wr, and was currently wr for it's time. Which for a board like sm64 +30 minutes is 300/500th place. If they implemented a rule like this it'd nearly half their entire leaderboard.

Plenty of communities have rules that are contentious. Bioshock Infinite has a modded category as the most competitive category, Super Mario Sunshine has a hacked file. The difference between these examples and this decision is it's clearly been dropped on everyone out of nowhere. No discussion, no polling just BOOM runs we don't agree with are getting removed now. It is part of your due diligence as a game's moderator to reach a consensus within your community before making such changes.

The first step to rectifying this is to reinstate the historic runs that you've removed. It's ridiculous to remove history like that. The next is to abandon this notion of gatekeeping the run with this 130% rule. If you need more mods get them. If this is an issue of your verification process itself, look to modifying or streamlining that rather than making sweeping changes that actively exclude people from the hobby.

Speedruns were all just fast letsplays once upon a time and to actively destroy that history so you can play elite runner club is honestly disgusting. You already had space in the site wide policy on runs to remove non-genuine runs in the first place. This was unnecessary, short sighted and frankly, rude. Speedruns are for everyone, not just you and your friends.

Don't like slower speedruns? Remove yourself as mods, you act like gods on a hobby website for games.

Great decision. So when's the decision where you're all stepping down as moderators?

What an amazing new ruleset! In the Dead Rising community we are now taking it upon ourselves to do this also.

Any submission that is not top 3 is automatically rejected. Thanks for the inspiration Sawken and the mods!