Introduction: For those who have observed the speedrun leaderboards a bit, you might have noticed that there have been runs for Pre-Release, so why is that? Well, you may have guessed already, but we have allowed this build to be used for runs ever since August (about 2 months ago). (sorry for the REALLY LONG delay.)

More Info: Now, I want to state that I originally planned to make an update right after it was allowed and have everyone freely submit their Pre-Release runs, but there has been kind of an issue that has arisen, not since the day we allowed it but, since 2 weeks after we DID allow it. What is this issue, you may ask? Well, it has to do with the fact that you can NO LONGER obtain the build through Steam (which is how you obtained an old patch) due to it being privated by TinyBuild.

So what now? In that regard, there's not much we can do. The build has been publicly available ever since late July or so until the takedown, so it still lurks around the webs of the Internet. We, as moderators and runners for the game, will not share any method to obtaining the patch, but will only continue to allow people to play and submit runs on the build. With all of that being said, I hope you have a good rest of your day/night, and I'll see you in future news posts.

Before I begin to say anything, this post (at the time of writing) will not officially allow the build into speedruns but will only explain the reasoning behind the 3 big questions: Where are those runs? Why haven't the moderators done anything about it yet? Is it ever going to get added? Anyway, onto the questions!

• 1): As of right now, no runs on that build will be allowed onto any of the leaderboards until the Discord speedrunning community has decided on one of two things: Should those runs be under Any% (Lag Abuse) or the Miscellaneous tab? These two options (sides) have their own arguments behind it, but this post isn't necessarily to get you all into the Discord to decide with us because the poll that was initially held to declare the winning option has been officially tied. Now, onto question #2.

• 2): If anyone of you were to date exactly when the Pre-Release was given to the public, you would probably say around a month ago, which is to say that we have definitely taken quite a long time to decide on something. Throughout the entirety of last week to now though, the mod team has been hard at work to try to come up with a logical and non-biased way to decide where Pre-Release should be. (Keep in mind that the poll happened during this past week and the overall decision has yet to be made.)

• 3): Now, I'm not sure if you just skipped to this part or not just to see whether or not it WOULD be added eventually, but the plan IS to implement/allow the Pre-Release for people who want to speedrun it regardless of the option (read #1 if you haven't) that is chosen by the community. Once the final decision is made though, I will BE SURE to keep everyone here updated in the next news post! Until then, I hope you have a good rest of your day/night.

summary: runs should be getting verified around every Friday or Saturday, which should hopefully become the new standard in order to get runs CONSISTENTLY verified.

• update as of 7/26/24: I (AmazinCris) won't be actively trying to verify runs, but don't worry: the verifier team is still actively keeping up the grind. one more thing though: every run that's submitted will be assigned to a different verifier, so your run getting verified is dependent on their ability to do so. this is to spread the run queue to as many verifiers as possible and hopefully lower the amount of runs left by the way!

This post isn't going to be a long one or anything, but I would like to first mention that the verifiers have been extremely busy and/or inactive in the community, which explains why runs haven't been verified as of late. Another factor that contributes to this whole problem is the lack of motivation to verify in general.

As of today, however, I have devised a plan that will mostly guarantee that runs are verified:

• Every week around Friday or Saturday, I will make sure to verify at least 10 runs.
• I'm hoping to set this weekly verification thing as a new standard to not only make verifying less forced but to also give verifiers a chance to (mentally) prepare by the time the end of the week rolls around.

quick side note: if you are wanting/willing to become a verifier at some point for this game (and the category extensions), you need to understand that verifying is a pretty boring task at the end of it all. becoming a verifier also does not mean you get to verify your own run (if you happen to do this it WILL get reverted).

Having two different Any% categories was probably enough, but we've decided to make the latest patch available to run! Also, the way you submit runs that do or don't abuse lag/FPS strats should be more obvious now!

A few things to note though is that:

1. 100% is a category that can ONLY be done on latest patch because of Error World.
2. Latest patch runs will now (obviously) be moved to their respective leaderboards when submitted. The runs from the category extensions will be moved over here too, making that category irrelevant.
3. No, we are not adding this change to the ILs.

To put simply, we now have normal Any% and Any% (No Lag Abuse). These two categories can be seen here: https://www.speedrun.com/helloneighbor?h=PC-any&x=zd36w1rd-5lyj94gl.139xm8k1 and here: https://www.speedrun.com/helloneighbor?h=PC-any-no-lag-abuse&x=zd36w1rd-5lyj94gl.zqoyx951

Why did it split?

For anyone interested in knowing the cause behind this, we had a poll in the discord server deciding whether to keep the Any% category as one or two because of a discussion months prior talking about the same thing. Ever since allowing the use of lower FPS (like 23) and lag via clicking the white border at the top of the Hello Neighbor window, there have been enough runs to rightfully declare the split. Now runners can stick to the old route with the No Lag Abuse category without needing to learn anything extra (good luck on fear school though!).

The difference?

You can look at the rules in both categories to understand that one allows the use of lower FPS and lag while the other does not.

If you have any future questions about the game (speedrunning or in general), please join the discord server: https://discord.com/invite/hvAbaeC

Note: This announcement is visible in the Hello Neighbor speedrun server, but for anyone that can't or don't want to join then here you go.

Alpha 3 rules have been broken for like the longest time lmao, SO we are finally making a change in the categories. ~ ~ IMPORTANT ~ ~ The runs on the current leaderboards will continue to stay but as Legacy categories instead, and brand new categories will be made, allowing people to get new runs that are even with everyone else. Some runs would start with the player farther into the road than others, making it a unfair time save because of it, so here are the newly added rules:

1A) You CANNOT move for any reason before the cutscene is skipped nor can you move and skip the cutscene at the same time. All runs that don't follow this rule will get rejected. 1B) Some PCs may have cutscene lag, but if you find that you can somehow move during that time and still skip the cutscene, that won't be allowed either.

As some of you may have noticed, we have split the mobile category into two separate categories and have done something similar to the console categories. NOTE: This excludes the fear room individual levels in the category extensions as those aren't that different from each other. [You may skip to the end for the conclusion]

The reasons why it happened are listed below:

• Mobile

1. Connecting and using a controller on mobile allowed runners to instantly move after a loading screen or do tricks that were really difficult to do using the touchscreen. This made for controller runs to save huge time over the touchscreen runs.
2. To clear confusion on whether emulator should be allowed or not, we have combined it with the controller runs because PC emulators may have advantages over a mobile device.

• Console:

1. Any Xbox run is bound to save time over PS or Switch runs due to the smaller amounts of lag the game on Xbox has. In other words, runs using Xbox can easily save up to 10 seconds over the other two platforms.
2. The Switch can experience frame drops during runs which may lead to disadvantages or advantages. These include laggier gameplay or strategies done on PC Any% runs being possible. (Keep in mind that the two other platforms stay at a constant frame rate which means that these FPS abuse strats are LESS LIKELY to happen.)

Although it may seem like PS4 runs are in the lead, any Xbox runner can bypass them and be left unbeatable if it ever happened. If Switch runners were also able to pull off FPS-related strats, Xbox and PS players may never be able to beat their run, and if they could, it would take a very long time.

For quite a while now, anyone submitting console runs were limited to Xbox One and PS4 even though the game was playable on these new platforms. However, we have finally added them, so you no longer have to get confused about anything.

p.s. I do want to point out though that if you're playing on Xbox One S or Xbox One X, please mark your runs as "Xbox".

Because of the new changes SRC has put out, all miscellaneous categories have been moved and can only be seen if you click on the down arrow. As a result of this. all the categories for each alpha can be viewed by clicking on the down arrow that is to the very right of where "PC, Console, Mobile" is.

P.S. PLEASE submit your alpha runs to the alphas and NOT full game as we would need to reject the run every time we need to move them to the correct category.