Hey guys.

I hope you have been enjoying speedrunning TJ&E BITG! I know when the game launched in March there was a buzz around it, with lots of submissions and the meta being explored in new and interesting ways.

Things have cooled down in the past couple of months, in my mind because of two things:

1. the game entered into a volatile phase; many patches were released in rapid succession which caused drastic shifts in the ways we could play. We were finding creative exploits & strategies, only to discover they were being patched out. Many of you simply want to wait for the game to reach maturation before devoting your time to learning it. You don't want the rug pulled out from under you.

2. the developers soured your opinion of the game through tone-deaf comments directed towards members of this community. I apologise to anyone affected by that. This is your leisure time & I encourage you to spend it however you please. When it comes to playing a video game: there is no right, there is no wrong, your enjoyment and the enjoyment of your viewers is of paramount importance and must always be respected. We are speedrunners, not a free marketing tool. In an ideal world, free of interference, we could be both. I am in full support of the devs controlling the image of their game by any legitimate means within their boundries, but we control our content and our time.

It saddens me that I even needed to address that last point. If TJ&E devs read this: don't worry about what we are doing in our own little niche, and how that might reflect on you. You are doing enough damage to your brand with that appalling Twitter account. We can't possibly be doing any more harm than all that YEET and BRUH nonsense.

With all that said: I would love to focus on the positives, the future of the game & how we can enjoy it. We have a FUN game to play! physical editions are going out this week and next, and 1.5 is out July 1 on PC. (Consoles shortly after. They have to go through the quality checks of the individual platform holders)

1.5 brings with it two new modes: EXTREME difficulty, and ENDLESS mode. I look forward to seeing how quickly you guys can beat Extreme, and how far you can take Endless! To create a fair environment, I am proposing we archive all the existing runs into the 'Legacy' category for each difficulty, and start fresh. Are there any objections to this? If not, I will do this on July 1. The reason is: you cannot compare the existing runs fairly against a run you can complete on 1.5. I want you guys to contest the top of the leaderboard, not chase an impossible target. I cherry picked out the MITB glitch runs previously, but now there are too many changes to present spawn rates, present durations, enemy damage, backer island presents, etc etc - the list goes on. Your previous runs will still exist in the Legacy categories, and could be filtered down if you were ever interested in seeing who had the best times on specific versions etc. No data will be lost.

Please give your thoughts, and if you are considering running this game again: Welcome back! I look forward to a healthy leaderboard full of new and interesting runs. Good luck! Have fun! STAY FUNKY!!

This is completely reasonable. And for those worried about not being able to run on legacy patches anymore, don't worry, as myself and I'm sure many others have data from previous patches backed up. I'll make a forum post about it with a download link following 1.5.

Thanks Mandals.

I have archived all existing runs into the "Legacy" categories, and added an option for Extreme runs.

1.5 should, I understand, be out later today for you to attempt to place on the newly purged leaderboards.

GLHF!