Outside the norm for it happen, but imagine it does.
If a good runner within a top 10 or 20 of a leaderboard has a friend, who is struggling to get anywhere, does a run for him, and puts him at 65th.
Not all runs are streamed live. No camera, no accountability.
I mean, there would be no reason to suspect the run is fake, so I'd just verify it. I think that forcing everyone to use a camera would be stupid.
Not fake, but done by someone else. Not suggesting runs "should" be done with cameras, only pointing out the issue.
A step further: Good runner approached with $100, guy offering money says "put me on the leaderboard, around 65th is fine. Send the video". Then uploads the run, like he did it. BUT, to save reputation, lets say its easier doing it among your buddies, low key.
Corruption exists. Even among fun, innocent speed running.
"Corruption exists. Even among fun, innocent speed running."
But this is like, a 1/10M thing. This probably has maybe happened, like once or twice in the entire site's history, and probably any of those times (if they even exist) haven't been caught. Assuming that 65th isn't a good place on the leaderboards (unlike MC and SMB1), having higher proof standards for those people is completely unnecessary.
Not to be flippant, but "who cares" kind of sums this up.
Getting on a leaderboard doesn't give you any monetary gain, or clout, or anything really in the "real world". You could fake a speedrun, or get someone else to do one for you, makes no difference. All it might do is get eyes on your Youtube/Twitch, but if you don't have the real skills to back-up your claim, your audience will find out soon enough.
It's just a leaderboard for hobbyists to have fun competing against each other. If someone wants to cheat this way or any other, that's on them and their sad life leading them to do such a thing. Not worth getting yourself worked up or stressed over something that "could" happen.
I respect that. Those being put there aren't good, don't worry about audiences - Bragging rights is enough, even if sad. 65th on a leader board of Super Mario 64, pretty good. Anyway, I won't continue with my sucky attitude, would prefer to be wrong
@ckellyedits well with that attitude you might as well allow cheaters on the board cause who cares, you dont gain anything in the real world.
Obviously you technically are not allowed to submit a run as your own if you didnt do it. From time to time people actually submit old runs from other people as their own and it gets noticed and rejected. but of course it's often impossible to know if you just get a friend to do a run for you. A lot of the speedrunning community/boards is build on trust since a lot of stuff is in the end hard/impossible to know if everything is legitimate.
There's no way someone could know that. But even if it did happen, where's the pride in letting someone do a run for you? In the end, you know you were not not the one who did it, so you won't feel any real pride for yourself.
@Laxxus don't get it twisted though - there is a big difference between checking runs for viability, and worrying about imagined scenarios that haven't happened yet.
We have a verification process. Vast majority of runs are videos that anyone can watch and critique/investigate. Nothing wrong with watching some runs, particularly WRs, and wondering if they have been faked in some way, and reporting your findings to a mod. But at the end of the day, even a cheated world record isn't something worth getting yourself upset about - there is a process to report cheating.
What @ckellyedits said about it not really mattering in the grand scheme of things is true -- you're not going to get a massive amount of views for being 65th. I'd add to that, that even if you did, with more views comes more attention, and with more attention comes an increased likelihood that you'd be found out.
Let's say someone pays for a SM64 120 star run that's above his skill level and posts it for bragging rights, hoping to drive views to his twitch channel. Let's say he succeeds, and now he's got 100+ viewers watching his channel for some solid SM64 content. "Hey man, why do you go for the owl in Whomp's Fortress? I saw in your PB you know how to get it without it." How long do you think it would take before someone noticed that the skill level in his PB was vastly different from the skill level in his streamed runs?
Generally speaking, the problem you're trying to address isn't a problem, because 1) The rewards are very small, as most of the time, your position on the leaderboard matters little, especially below the top 5 or so, 2) The risks are huge, when becoming branded as a cheater can destroy your credibility and haunt you for years, 3) It's a scheme that involves another person doing a run for you from the very beginning, which means at least 1 person in the community already knows you're a cheater, and 4) If you actually did achieve some popularity from it, the more you achieve, the more likely you are to be caught.
What I see is someone identifying a rare but lets say a problem that could in practice happen. So can we also present a reasonable solution and do something about it, or just accept that its out of our hands to realistically control this variable?
You identified a problem, great! Is it solvable?
I've had people submit runs that weren't theirs before. I rejected the run and reported the person that submitted it, end of story. Outside of WR or top times I don't see the point though.
