I have no dog in this race so I weighed up whether or not to say anything, but my level of disturbance at this decision, and your defence Sawken, is far too high to not say anything. I may not run the game, but I have a significant investment into the speedrunning community as a person and I shudder to think of the idea of speedrunning moving in this direction as a community, so wish to do my part in raising my voice to stamp this deplorable rubbish out before it becomes any more predominant than this.

I will run through and respond in general to different sections of your response Sawken in this forum thread:

• You say there's been a lot of 'confusion and misunderstanding. I can't say I've checked (and would love to get proved wrong here), but I doubt there was community consultation on a matter like this. It seems like it's been fired out of a cannon and been met with a repsonse the mod team didn't expect. I'll tell you for free, it's not confusion or misunderstanding, it's plain disagreement and antagonism.
• As someone else said, 30% off optimal is totally arbitrary. Why not 40%? It's pointless. More importantly though, there still isn't a valid reason as to why this is happening at all. For mod load, the suggestion here is that you're taking a fine tooth comb to every run? Even a last place run? Who cares if it doesn't follow a rule if it's last place! Just verify it and move on.
• You describe the three types of submitters. The first...who cares? They're having fun, they're speedrunning! Wouldn't you want to try entice them to run your game and grow your community? Instead, you shut them out now entirely. Don't say you don't, because you do. Submitting a first run onto a leaderboard to get it verified is a magical experience and you're taking that away from so many people who may not want to put in effort to beat these arbitrary benchmearks. The second just suggests that you have too many categories. If there's no interest for a category so that people can get a 'free one'...just don't have the category. The sheer audacity of complaining that people are running side-categories without putting in effort. Shame on you. The first category...again, just insta-verify with a quick skim 'bad' times, and take caution with good ones.
• Who cares about 'the integrity of a board' when it comes to non-competitive times? I promise you that there aren't people out there going "damn, those mods are so awful, they verified a 60th place run that breaks this weird rule on this board!" People want to speedrun, watch speedruns, and have fun. Why is it your role to gatekeep people's speedrunning? It's pathetic and petty. This isn't some pro tournament, it's a community affair and always has been, why disallow people from being a part of that community? Your decision harms the community aspect of RE4 speedrunning,and speedrunning as a whole.
• Of course people who don't take it seriously still want to have their name on the leaderboard! It's permanent, it's THEIR accomplishment, why are you taking that away from them, even if you don't deem it worthy of your precious board? How dare you.
• Again, why do you care about people's first run being down the bottom? Why do you care about people being in a 'nicer spot on the board'. Why are the mods watching all 4 PBs if they're at the bottom of the board? Who cares!?
• Laziness is the most obvious reason for people to come to as to why this is ocurring, whether that's true or not. Either that or ignorance of a strong variety of factors. Hanlon's Razor exists but still...
• Plenty of people totally agree that 'runs that don't look like runs' can get rejected. But your definition of 'run' is arbitrary and ridiculous, this 30% thing. It's not the specific number to be clear, it's the fact that you HAVE a specific number as opposed to whether someone is just putting in a good effort and trying to speedrun. What if they don't want to learn modern strats and deliberately use some old strats, hence getting a time worse than the 30% benchmark. Does that mean it's not a speedrun?
• "Insulting to our board" is the worst thing I've read, and shame on you for writing it. So if I want to learn the game casually (as a run, maybe during 12 Hour Challenge or something), put up the time I got and quit because I didn't vibe the run to continue, but want to have that record that I did run the game at one point, however poorly, I'm insulting your board? Disgusting and disgraceful opinion. Be better.
• Understandable that you love verifying people who work hard, and hate people who don't. But your opinion as people who 'take speedrunning seriously no matter what'...it is not your right to impose that view on the community as a whole. This viewpoint being imposed on the board is ACTIVELY going to discourage people from joining. The fact that you don't see that is surprising, shocking, and just unfortuate. You may not 'enjoy verifying' lower quality runs, and may not 'enjoy seeing [them] on the board', but it isn't your board, it is the community's. It isn't YOUR BOARD to impose your views like this.
• You said that 'neither me nor the other mods thought people would take this as some sort of insult'. In the most literal and non joking sense possible, speak with actual diverse human beings you absolute silo. You all agreed you would 'get motivated' because you're all invested in speedrunning. There are so many more people that aren't though.
• Saying you didn't delete runs but rejected those...that's disgusting pedantry. You removed runs from the board, they're deleted, whether that comforms with the technical definition of SR.com "deleted" or not. The idea of not grandfathering in the history of your game and community is extremely shameful, and is the most despicable abuse of power I have seen in my 10+ years of being involved with speedrunning. It's petty, crass and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Doesn't matter that you didn't reject old runs that 'didn't contain skips or strats that were discovered later on', the shame is equal, that you retroactively told people that they weren't worthy. That this most absurd fallacy of board integrity was more important than the members of your community retaining their history. Above all else, this element is the most pathetic and deplorable of the whole thing.

In summary, I find both the decision and defense of it deplorable. The fact that you can post Sawken with a straight face a defense of this is laughable. I have done my best to avoid getting involved in speedrun drama for almost my entire time in the speedrunning community. That stopped today because the situation made my blood boil so much.

Finally, the point that others made about Speedrun.com rules is pertinent. If you want to retain your position as mods, reverse this elitist position on leaderboard times. Somebody from SR.com will stand up eventually to rectify it with or without you. For the sake of your community, of which you and the rest of the mod team are obviously well respected Sawken and work hard for your community, please really think about this one hard, read everyone's points, and do better. Be better leaders, and better representatives of our community as a whole.

I've been (admittedly very) loosely following RE4 speedruns as a spectator for about 5 years, and been involved with speedrunning generally for just over 10 years.

This time limit rubbish is by and far the dumbest thing I have seen in my time, and I saw the SRL x MLG attempt. It is gatekeeping, elitist and actually just plain awful. Just have more moderators if effort is a problem and let people submit the runs they want to submit.

I implore the mod team to stop and actually think about this one a little longer. May have come out of the oven too soon.

I'm not going to write a thesis - short version is, it is NOT NG, it's NG+.

The Veteran background cannot be picked until the game has already been completed. Further, it's not just a random lore thing, it does give a VERY significant advantage to a runner (iirc about 30-50 AP, which can be distributed to any skill you want).

Whilst I congratulate the runner on their time, and am fully aware that I sound like a spurned lover (since yes, it was my time that got bumped) - Veteran in my view has no place being a valid NG choice.

If the category was "any%", sure, I'd cop it and move on. But the fact that it has been very specifically marked as "any% NG" broils me a little.