Always up to the moderators of the games they moderate to determine the rules usually with the community and come to an understanding and acceptance of what should happen or be done.
But I do agree with you.
I think video proof should always be necessary, photo evidence is also sometimes ok. Only consoles that differ are handheld ones, these can be a huge pain in the arse to record, but still, video proof should be as necessary as possible in other cases.
Some games (Flappy bird) accept a screenshot. Some games required a video only for the WR or for a run that has a time lower than that of the moderator of the game. Some small communities where the members are very close (like a group of friends) accept the absence of videos since they all trust each other (friendly competition). Some games required a video.
It always depend on something (context, members, etc...)
It depends. For most games, I think video proof should be required. However, there are exceptions (example: any DS/3DS game due to the high price of a capture card).
I like that change on the smo board, and I'd like to see others follow this change. Video Evidence doesn't imply you have to record with a capture card, webcam/phone recordings will do just as well for way less money.
My own personal belief is that all runs should require some form of video proof. It depends on the game, though. Whilst video proof can be faked, it is significantly easier to fake a screenshot. My personal issue involving submissions without any proof is that you have no way to confirm the run actually occurred at all. In most cases it's worse than a cheated run, because there's zero way to confirm or deny the run legitimacy.
And whilst the common thought tends to be it doesn't matter unless the run without proof is relatively close to the top of the rankings, someone somewhere is gonna be caring about their rank if they're much further down the boards, and I feel this is a slightly selfish take on the matter.
[quote=Liv]without any proof you have no way to confirm the run actually occurred at all[/quote]
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Personal opinion, yes. It's 2018. Record your damn runs.
All runs should have some sort of proof. I think screenshots aren't suitable for proving that you actually did a run, so I think video proof should be used primarily, and I don't that's prohibitive at all. If you're running a PC game then all you need is some free software, so the barrier of entry is nonexistent there. For consoles, if you have any sort of digital camera, then there's absolutely no excuse for not being able to record your runs. If you (somehow) don't have any sort of digital camera, you can buy a suitable USB camera for like $20. And if you want to get more serious about it, capture cards aren't that expensive (with the exception of DS/3DS stuff). An Elgato is like $150, which is probably a lot less than what the console you're playing on cost.
If you're not even willing to put 20 bucks into your hobby, then I have to question how serious you are about speedrunning. And if you're not that serious about it, does it really matter to you if your possibly faked time isn't added to the leaderboard? And if you legitimately cannot afford to set aside 20 dollars for your hobby, then you're either a child (in which case, welcome to life, start mowing lawns, maybe ask for a birthday present), or you have MUCH bigger and more important problems than not being able to have your speedruns show up on the leaderboard.
Another thing I've thought of that I want to bring up, I think a possible issue with having boards that only require video verification for runs under a certain (usually somewhat arbitrary) time is that it can be seen as devaluing every run below the video requirement line. It can potentially come across as saying "your run doesn't matter and we're not gonna take it seriously unless it's a sub 30". Obviously that's not the intention, but nonetheless that's a dangerous message to send to newcomers.
I understand why rules like that are implemented, but personally I think all runs of a game/category should be held to the same verification standards (at least in theory), regardless of position on the leaderboard or if it's a "good" run.
@Angelaatje "I'm not running one of the games I want to run (KRtDL) because it's just too impractical for me to use webcam" While I fully sympathize with this as I'm in a bit of a similar situation, ultimately you don't need to have your runs listed on the leaderboards to be able to do runs. You can do them for yourself and just improve on your own without worrying about leaderboard standings or proof or anything like that. That said, if you want anyone else to care about your runs you need to be able to show them to people, and there's really no way around that.
SMO is on switch capture cards can be quite cheap for that I defiantly have more give with ds and 3ds but most ds and 3ds boards allow cameras anyway so not to much of an issue in the recording department there. imo ^_^
I think the 'no video is allowed below a threshold' clause is perhaps one of the more sillier rulesets leaderboards bring in. If you have a leaderboard then you want the entire thing to be accurate, not only 10% of it.
This might also encourage laziness amongst moderation verification. If the consensus is "nothing below the top 10 runners really matters", it's likely verification of runs is going to become lax in general for any run that does not hit a particular time threshold.
Perhaps a 'Hide by Default' option for submissions without video, similar to Emulator, would become a thing later down the line and then games can decide to utlize that over totally requiring video evidence? Who knows.
It has been stated a lot already but here is my opinion. If there is no video, it did not happen. This is how I see it. Of course it might be that it happened but you just did not record it. But if that is the case, please don't submit this to any leaderboard. Even if it is about a casual time, we try to rank people by how fast they completed the game. We can only do this in a fair matter if all runs have been recorded. If you don't have video proof, fine, you can still tell everyone about it but please for god's sake, do not submit it to any leaderboard.
It is 2018. Everyone has a cam or some shit, there is free recording software for the PC and the cheapest capture cards for console are like 15$ or something. No excuses please.
Before someone tries to shoot at me. Yes, I have like two or three runs without video evidence, however those are abysmal times on games I don't run seriously and if a global rule would occur, which states that every run on this site needs to have video evidence, I would be so happy and I would gladly delete those few runs of mine which don't have proof.
