I know not a lot of people might read this because the boards are almost dead (and for a good reason), but I'm happy to announce that I have officially taken the position of head moderator of the boards after the previous one was forced to stepped down due to unanimous request from community members.

As we all know, back in 2020, he singlehandedly banned unseeded runs as a whole from being ever accepted, choosing to abandon what most people are interested in watching (due to concerns over potential cheaters) rather than doing what a moderator should do, which would be to reach a consensus with the community to decide what is healthiest for the boards. He also instilled unnecessary arbitrary rules that didn't do anything to prove the legitimacy of a run and only served to further discourage runs from being submitted at all.

This all lead to speedrun.com becoming a laughing stock for anyone who took DST speedrunning even remotely seriously, culminating in the miserable state that the boards are in right now, where not long ago there was a 6 month period without a single submission. I witnessed many newcomers get turned away from the idea of speedrunning DST specifically because of the convoluted and annoying rules that the previous moderator implemented. It also didn't help that he would randomly accuse prominent players of cheating with no evidence and refuse to take their runs into account. But thankfully, this no longer has to be the case.

Contrary to popular belief, interest in DST speedrunning is actually on the rise as the game increases in popularity, and these leaderboards are essentially only holding it back. That's why I'm glad to announce that some major updates are coming to these boards in the near future in hopes of motivating more players to give it a shot.

Of course, I can't simply decide on every change on my own, not just because of how much there is to do but because doing so would be hypocritical (as that is exactly what our previous moderator was guilty of). I firmly believe that the community should be able to collectively decide on these changes, so for this purpose we've crated an official discord server where you can discuss all of these changes with us directly. Our goal is to eventually have a single place that everyone who's interested in DST speedrunning can be in, since the already small speedrunning scene for this game has also been very split across multiple communities. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion or know someone who might be interested, come check out the discord server with this link: https://discord.gg/HhGVQ3puyF

As for the rules: The exact details need to be discussed collectively by the community, but the rules are definitely receiving a major overhaul, seeing as they've been arguably the most problematic aspect of the boards in their current state. The rules should be reliable enough at deterring cheaters without making the idea of speedrunning this game unattractive altogether. The unseeded category is coming back, with proof standards that don't feel intrusive and unnecessarily punish legit players. Some arbitrary rules that could easily disqualify a run, such as having to show the main menu and having to show the seed in the recording, are most likely going to be removed entirely, as these serve no real purpose in proving the legitimacy of a run and only serve to inconvenience everyone else.

The rules surrounding the use of client mods are most likely going to become more lax in the future, as long as the mods used in the recording don't provide any tangible advantage, in hopes of allowing more runs to be accepted. We're also planning to allow runs from any version of the game to circumvent the issue of updates breaking certain strategies, although this will depend on streamlining the process of downpatching DST to make it feasible for anyone to play on any version they want. This is all yet to be discussed though.

As for the categories: Since most of the categories the previous moderators made are pointless, most of them are (unsurprisingly) going away. Don't worry about your existing records though; we will make a conscious effort to keep any categories that weren't empty, because we believe categories should exist to accommodate what players are interested in running (as opposed to just forcing them to run whatever we decide is a "valid" category). This means we might even see less conventional categories added, such as death% or all bosses, but once again, the details have to be discussed with members of the community, so don't be afraid to join the discord and help us reach a consensus.

I'd also love to make the speedrun.com page itself look nicer, since the way it's formatted ATM is very unpleasant to look at IMO. The "level leaderboard" look is most likely going to be condensed into a more standard look like what other boards have. I'm also thinking of commissioning background art so we can get rid of that dull color scheme that we have right now.

The tl;dr is that major changes are coming, but we need your help. Your old records are not going away; we're only trying to fix the major issues and hopefully nurture an environment that encourages people to give DST speedrunning a go and who knows, maybe even reignite interest in those who have already done so previously but were turned away by the strict rules and authoritarian behavior of our previous moderator.

Don't forget to join the discord: https://discord.gg/HhGVQ3puyF