So I submitted a 2 player run under NG but I had the AK unlocked for some reason. I deleted the save files and everything, as well as de-syncing the game from the steam cloud. My friend deleted the save files and it worked for him, but for some reason I couldn't get a fresh save on my computer. I know what NG and NG+ means but I was trying to run the NG category with my friend. Would it still count as NG even though I have the AK unlocked or would it technically be NG+?

Yeah. I'll talk to damagak about it, but since you didn't use the AK before you're allowed to, i'm not opposed to putting it into NG so I did for now