Twitch recently announced a 100-hour storage limit for Highlights and will be deleting anything outside the limit on April 19th, 2025.  This is, of course, alarming as many speedrun submissions make use of Twitch highlights.

Downloading Runs At Risk

Before I dive into the rest of the article, I would like to spotlight a community effort to mitigate the damage caused by Twitch’s actions here. A sincere thank you to @Matse007 and the team behind the Speedrun Rescue Script which detects runs submitted with Twitch Highlights and downloads them for you. With your footage safely preserved, you can re-upload your runs to another platform and update your submissions as needed. At the very least, this script ensures that the valuable content you’ve worked hard to capture remains accessible to you.

You can get it from the Github page here, alongside the installation instructions.

The Speedrun Rescue Script requires installing Python and some other dependencies, so it might not be the most beginner-friendly - but if you’re comfortable with a more technical setup, it’s the best option for backing up all of your runs that are potentially at risk.

If you’re not comfortable with the more technical approach, Clipr.xyz offers a web-based option for downloading individual VODs. This tool works in a pinch if you only need to save a handful of VODs.

You can also export VODs directly to YouTube right from within the Twitch Video Producer, although it’s worth noting it’s only one at a time and quite slow.

If you have any other suggestions or know of alternative tools, please share them in the comments - I’ll review them all and potentially add them to the article.

Highlight Lock

Adding to the urgency, Twitch is preventing users from creating new Highlights until their stored content is below the 100-hour limit - meaning many runners with hundreds or even thousands of hours of archived footage are currently unable to save their runs. For many, sorting through that amount of content is completely unreasonable.

A Troubling Pattern - Long-Term Solutions

With the short-term stuff out of the way - let’s talk long-term. Those of you who have been around for a few years may remember similar previous events with YouTube’s unlisted videos and with older Imgur content (frequently used for guides). This is a disturbing pattern that is repeatedly threatening the history of our community.

While we don’t have immediate answers, I wanted to let you know that we are very well aware of the situation at hand and are actively discussing long-term solutions to protect speedrunning history from similar issues in the future. If you have ideas you would like us to consider, by all means, feel free to drop them in the comments for me to review.

A message to Runners and Moderators 

We understand that many runners will be re-submitting potentially dozens of runs in the near future. Please be patient with your moderators, as they will be handling a significant influx of submissions while also balancing the rest of their responsibilities outside of speedrunning.

Moderators, once things have settled, we kindly ask that you refrain from deleting any run submissions that were previously verified with video proof, even if the footage was later removed by Twitch.

Conclusion

This situation is frustrating as hell - but it’s also a reminder of how resilient and resourceful the speedrunning community is. While Twitch’s changes put years of history at risk, efforts like the Speedrun Rescue Script show that we’re not powerless. In the short term, take action to back up your runs, and in the long term, let’s work together to find solutions that protect our community’s archives.

Please be sure to thank the team behind Speedrun Rescue Script personally or in the comments.

We’ll keep you updated as we explore better ways to safeguard speedrun history. In the meantime, if you have any other tools, insights, or ideas, drop them in the comments - we're all in this together :)

Cam // Meta - Speedrun.com Community Manager