Before you start reading below, yes I know that game requests are a little backed up recently and people say I have to be patient with the game requests, but when it gets really backed up, I’m getting concerned as if my game will take 2 months to get to.

Some of my friends have had game requests go on for more than a month now and have had no motivation to run the game when it takes forever to be put on the leaderboard. Not that I hate the moderators, because I respect everything that I do, but I’m just worried that others might leave the site if the game they requested isn’t be verified in the 1-2 week timeframe.

This isn't about my game requests so I’m completely fine with mine taking a while. In particular, I’m worried about others getting their game done whenever it happens just so they can feel pleased with the SRC mods. But when it takes more than 1 and a half months to get a game verified, there must be something wrong and we should help out. I know I haven’t been particularly nice about this thread, and I know people are going to disagree with me on my opinions about this.

All I have to say is, I feel like I want to help out people who want to speedrun one of their favorite games and put it on a leaderboard for them to enjoy, but when you have to wait a long time for that to happen, you lose interest in that game, and probably don’t want to speedrun it. If we can get some updates on this, that would be great. Thank you.

Without going too much into details (because details aren't super-relevant, the overall view is enough), 2020 has been a busy year. We have what we like to keep the queue at and we internally know the details on that. Even prior to C19 really hitting we had an uptick this year from the start, and then C19 really swung out. More people staying indoors = more people bored = most of those people turn to a new hobby = some of those people pick speedrunning as their hobby. Makes the site much busier as a whole, and it has shown.

We added on two more Content Moderators fairly quickly when it was obvious that there was that need. We still keep our eyes out for people, frankly (we always do, that way if we ever do feel the need to bring someone on...). It's not that easy, though. There is a lot of potential for harm from someone in the position, so we have to have a lot of trust in who we bring on. Looking down the list of applications... the list may be long but the list of quality ones is fairly short.

When it comes to the game request queue, that list is long. We know it, we don't like it, but we're doing what we can to handle it. One of the most obvious issues with the queue that has existed since the start is people that just do not read the game request rules. I cannot begin to count how many requests I personally have rejected for obvious, glaring issues, and there are eleven other current staff members (between Content Moderators and Full Moderators) who do the same. Even if we don't get to catch it for obvious and glaring issues, there are still a not-insignificant amount of requests that get rejected for issues that the person submitting could have avoided if they simply read the game request rules.

Every time we reject a request for obvious and glaring issues (either right away or when we review it normally), that is time we aren't putting to reviewing other, more meaningful requests. This wouldn't be so bad, except a lot of the time, we reject something, fill in the obvious and glaring reason why, and we see it again in the queue a day or two later. Entirely unchanged. So these garbage requests (and yes, I'm going to call them garbage requests), aren't just being handled once. Almost all of them get handled at least twice, and a large majority more than that.

This still hasn't even factored in the requests for games which aren't ones we're taking. Your short, generic itch.io games with stolen assets. That visual novel you insist on speedrunning. A weird 1995 computer game for teaching math. These get seen time and time again, and the people who submit them tend not to take "No" for an answer for several tries.

Add everything up and you get a lot of users who waste our time by submitting garbage requests which bloat the queue. And then you get users who complain about the queue being big - which, spoiler alert: I spent roughly an hour on this post - users who complain about their reject reasons in forum threads (including some users who got rejections for obvious and glaring issues, so yay, more time wasted because not only do they not read the game request rules, they aren't reading the rejection message either), users who complain about "We're not taking X", and then they have to double-down on their complaint sometimes. All of which also wastes staff time handling, because (and we've tried this) ignoring it and doing the work that is necessary is not enough as people will then complain to us via direct contacts that we aren't responding to their thread.

So if you want to know: Yes, the game request queue is big. We'd be doing a lot better at it if we didn't have to deal with so much nonsense. Including this thread.

P.S. I wish this issue of, frankly, garbage requests, was limited to just the game request queue. It's not; shows up in runs to verify which affects the game moderators, shows up in the game request queue, shows up in the moderator request thread, and it shows up in staff applications. Shockingly large amount of people that just do not care, so yes, you can blame your fellow users for being part of the problem.

P.P.S If your friends are that impatient, perhaps speedrunning is not the hobby for them. You need a lot of patience to practice or do countless runs to better yourself at your game.

I totally understand that you have a very important job on this site, and I respect that. You work so hard just to take care of garbage game requests(and yes, I know some games that are requested are garbage) and people need to realize that they’re not always going to get what they ask for. All of the work you put in is incredible and I completely understand that you need to deal with people who just keep trying to mess up the queue. Thank you for everything that you do to support people who use Src for the most important speed games(Resident Evil, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 64, Wii Sports, etc.)

And yeah, I’ll have to talk with some of my friends about submitting friend requests. Even if it takes 2 months or so, they need to be patient and just let life go as planned.

P.S.We all need to make sure that people can fully understand when requests are right and wrong. I just hate it when others take their 5 minutes of free time, and just waste all of your time rejecting those requests. Thank you for handling everything that needs to be handled.

P.P.S Game Requests do take a while, especially when I have requests pending. After my second game was pending, I was furious that nothing was happening. Now since I understand how Src actually works, it completely makes sense to me that we just need to handle garbage requests, and for the users, just keep calm and carry on. And thank you a lot for addressing this to me and other users on this site.