So you’ve finished your first run. Congratulations! Now it’s time to actually submit your run to the leaderboard.

Submitting Your Run

First, you want to find the leaderboard page of the game you want to submit to. There is a search tab at the top of every page on the site. You’re going to find the leaderboard by inputting the name of the game in the search tab. The more specific, the better. Instead of putting just “Mario” in, you should put in specifically “Super Mario Odyssey”. If it doesn’t show up, don't worry! Click Enter on the search result, and a full page of all queries with the relevant name will appear for you to search. If it still does not show up, there is a chance that the game does not exist on the site yet, in which you can submit a game request. You can find more information on how to do this here.

Once you have found the leaderboard page of the game you want to submit your run to, there will be a lot of information available on the page. You can learn more about this here. What’s important for submitting your run is the “Submit Run” button on the page, which will look something like this.

You’ll click the “Submit Run” button, which will lead you to another page. There is a lot of information that you may be unfamiliar with, so we’ll break it down step-by-step.

The first option you will see is related to categories. If you are unfamiliar with terminology such as Any% and 100%, you can refer to our guide here. Categories will differ depending on the page, but most of the time it boils down to Any% or 100%. You will put in the category for the run you completed.

There may be an extra section to input your category as shown below. For Super Mario Odyssey, this indicates how many controllers you used for the run. This can include options such as whether the run was done on a fresh save file or done on New Game+, whether the run used Turbo, or more. It is recommended you follow up with the moderators of your chosen game’s community if you are unfamiliar with these terms or concepts.

Once you have put in the relevant information, the next section will contain the amount of players the run contains. Most of the time, you will be the only runner, and you will be there by default. However, if the run is co-op and contains 2 or more players, you will have the option to enter them below.

The next section is the most important part: your actual time! Generally speaking, you should have used some time of stopwatch or timer to record the length of your run. If you haven’t, no worries! As long as you have recorded the run in full, you or any of the moderators will be able to retime the run accurately. It’s important to check the rules page or follow up with a moderator of the game to understand the timing rules for the game you are submitting for. Once you have your time, you just need to put it in.

The next section is where you put the video of your time. While this is not always applicable as some leaderboards will accept no video or photo evidence, most of the time, video or photo evidence will be required in some way. You can link your video or photo in this section. Common video formats include Youtube, Twitch, Vimeo, and Dailymotion. You can upload your video to any of these platforms, and then link the video in this section.

The next section is dependent per leaderboard. Super Mario Odyssey asks that you input what kind of copy your game is, whether you have a physical copy of the game or you bought it digitally through the Nintendo e-shop. This is generally only relevant for console games, and may not appear on the leaderboard at all.

The second section is dedicated to the timing method. This appears more commonly on leaderboards. In Super Mario Odyssey’s case, there’s an option for RTA (Real Time Attack) or TA (Time Attack). In short, RTA is doing the run in one setting from the beginning to the end, while TA allows you to take breaks in between or do sections of the run separately. One of the more common additions is IGT, or In-Game Time, which is a system where the game itself times the run, usually not including load times. Another example is LRT, which is a load remover. It’s similar to IGT, but is done by an outside program rather than the game itself. All of these can show up on any given leaderboard, but RTA is the most common and what you will generally be putting in if applicable.

The last section in this image is its version. Many games have multiple versions of its release - 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and so forth. You will put in the version that your game is currently running in, which is typically the latest version of the game.

The next section is the date. It’s pretty self-explanatory, you just put in the date you did the run. This may be different from the date you actually submit the run, so make sure it’s the date you actually did the run on.

The next section is the platform you did the run on. For Super Mario Odyssey, it only exists on the Switch version, so that’s the version you will put in. Leaderboards can have multiple platforms, such as PC, Xbox, Playstation, and more. You just need to put in the platform you did the run on via the drop-down.

The next section is not mandatory. It’s a description of the run you can put in. Many people discuss where they lost time, potential time saves in the future, whether the run was good or not, etc. You can generally put whatever you want here as long as it abides by our ToS.

The last section is also not mandatory and may be removed soon. Splits.io has recently shut down, making it irrelevant. You do not need to put anything here.

That’s it! Now you just need to click the Submit button at the very bottom, and your run will have been submitted to the leaderboard!

Having Your Run Verified/Rejected

Once your run is submitted, it goes to a queue of other pending runs.

Here, the moderators of the game will watch your run. They will check to make sure the run is legitimate and follows all of the rules of the game. Once they have done so, they will either verify or reject the run. If it was verified, congratulations! Your run is now on the leaderboard.

If it was rejected, you may have accidentally broken some rules when submitting the run. The most common rule breaks are not showing the complete run, not posting a video of your run, or some game specific rules, such as in Super Mario Odyssey’s case, using Assist Mode. You can find the exact rejection reason in your notifications on the site, which is the little bell icon on the top right. You can also find out if your run was verified this way as well. You are welcome to resubmit your run for review again if you are sure you have fixed the problems with the run.

Moderators are generally given up to 21 days to verify any given run. Some larger leaderboards, such as Minecraft, have more runs coming in and may have a longer wait time. If it has been 21 days since your run has been pending and no one has looked at it, you can contact the moderators of the leaderboard and ask them about the status of your run. To do this, first go to the leaderboard of the game you submitted to. If you scroll all the way down, you will see people on the right side with swords next to their names.

Click on any of their names (it’s generally recommended to select those with a red sword next to their name), and it will lead you to their profile. On their profile there’s a button on the top right that says “Message”.

If you click on this button, you can now message the moderator and inquire about the status of your run! Please be polite, as at the end of the day these users are volunteers and are willingly giving their free time to verify runs.

Inactive Moderators

There are some rare cases where it’s impossible to get in contact with any of the moderators. They may be inactive for several months or even years. If they are inactive for at least 21 days and your run has been pending for 21 days, you can request moderation status for the leaderboard. You can do this here.

Select “New Ticket” at the bottom, and then “Become a moderator for an existing game” to get started. Make sure you read through everything on the page before continuing. At the bottom, you will see this form.

First, select the game you want to submit a moderation request for. You can then request the action you want taken, whether that’s adding you as a moderator, removing someone else as a moderator, etc. Finally, there’s an additional notes section, where you can provide more details on what is going on, such as how long the moderators have been inactive. We generally request screenshots to prove that you have attempted to contact the moderator, and this screenshot would go in the additional notes section. You can use a link to a screenshot from a site such as imgur, and then copy paste it here.

Once you have submitted this request, a site moderator is generally given up to 21 days to check your request and manually take the action requested. If the request is accepted, you will be added as a leaderboard moderator to the game and can now verify your runs! If the request is rejected, make sure to check your notifications, as the rejection reason will be there. You can then resubmit the request with updated information.

And that’s it! Now you know how to submit your run to a leaderboard, how to contact the moderators of a given game, and request moderation status for a given leaderboard. Now go out there and do some runs!