This is hilarious. The developers watched a speedrun and they do consider skipping the hope to the sun a real ending.

ok, thank you. The definition of completing a game is more complex than I thought. Games like Mario had only 1 ending, so it was obvious when you reached it. Now they are more complex and so require some judgement. Reaching the credits is a valid reason to conclude you've completed the game. This was merely a philosophical argument anyway. I completed the game, got all the achievements, and enjoyed it. Thank you to the speedrunners who discovered the skips.

Is there a place to find where the active community decided what is considered beating the game? I think it's more likely that someone found a quick way to end the game without completing it and submitted that run, which became the basis for all other runs. I'm not a speedrunner myself, but more of an achievement hunter. Often I steal the speedrunners tricks to get achievements faster, and I found myself confused on what consists of a speedrun.

In case you hadn't figured it out, I'm talking about Outer Worlds. Skipping the hope to the sun, like all of these speed runs do, doesn't reward achievements for completing the game. So do they count as legitimate speed runs or are they really just reaching permadeath as quickly as possible?

Consider this example: A hypothetical game exists which has a very hard difficulty mode that has a permanent death mechanic. If you play on this mode and fall off the first ledge you see, you will see a short cinema of how the world is doomed because you died, then you see a "The End" screen and must start a new game. Any achievements for completing the game are not unlocked by doing this. Does this count as completing the game in a few minutes for a speed run? Is there a difference between reaching a permanent game over screen as opposed to completing the game?

If the game doesn't reward achievements clearly labeled, "Complete the game," does it still count as completing the game?