United States
SupporterHandled (in some form or another), except the last post on the previous page (going to keep an eye on that for now).
Was there a need to necro a two-year-old thread? No.
Handled. Best is to link a user's forum posts page, a la https://www.speedrun.com/Habreno/allposts for me. This makes it a lot easier to find everything :)
I want to state that even prior to this thread having been made, this issue had been looked into by site staff. That said, we still have not come to a conclusion on what, if any, actions will be taken on this, though in light of a few more recent events I wanted to state that we were aware of this situation for a bit. Do not confuse inaction with inattention, I suppose. The mass-ping on Twitter was a bit much, really.
To those questioning why the lengthy process, there are a lot of factors at play, a lot of opinions and facts to consider, and there are also thoughts on past and potential future precedent to set. There is a lot of internal discussion and debate on the topic, for many reasons. And while I'd like to say that hopefully we can find a solution that will appease everyone, I can safely say at the end of everything there will be people unhappy with the decision made. Such is life, and you aren't going to appease everyone at all times.
While I have reached out to quite a few people myself for thoughts and opinions on this, I know I haven't reached out to everyone. So, I'd like to ask that if you have pertinent thoughts on the situation, to share them via site messaging. Be concise, please, though.
Thank you.
Speedrunning is inherently a solo activity. A player, a game, console, and controller. No other people, no other outside factors. You vs the game, trying to beat it as fast as you can, and this is how it was before recording runs came out. Over time, recording setups introduced themselves into the picture, but this was not something to affect the game itself, simply a way to record the game to either view later or to share with others. You might recognize SDA around this time. As time has gone on, we started uploading to video hosting sites directly such as YT and others, and then started simply streaming attempts to sites such as Twitch (yes, there are others, these are the most popular ones).
Note that in all of that above, there is no PvP element. There is no direct, in-game competition with another player. You can argue that leaderboards are PvP but that is honestly so flawed it isn't even funny. The leaderboard is not in my copy of the game actively playing against me. The leaderboard is not playing with the game trying to make me lose. The leaderboard is sitting there, a collection of times, dates, videos, and names. It couldn't care less how many people were playing the game it is tracking. It's non-sentient data.
And even if we go beyond and go to races, where two people are directly competing for a faster time, that still isn't PvP, since neither player can do anything about the other's progress. It's not like I can go into your copy of the game and lay down landmines for you to dodge, or attack you back as one of the bosses. My run has zero impact on your run directly, and vice-versa. I finish that doesn't give you a game over screen - you might have lost the race, sure, but your run still goes on just the same anyway.
So no, speedrunning itself is absolutely not PvP in any way. It's a hobby done by people by themselves, and honestly, an interesting one at that. A person, a copy of the game, console, controller, and some screen to view it on. That's... all you need. No PvP. No competition is required. That's it.
Now, Amoung Us. Amoung Us is 100% PvP. The game is a directly-competitive game where you play with and against other people to find out who is an impostor and who is crew. This is in the style of group games that have existed for decades, such as Mafia and various themed versions (I myself played Werewolf in college, which is simply a themed version of Mafia). These games are PvP at their core. This is why most of the submissions for this game will fail. Fastest X win is directly in the PvP space. As for the freeplay area that some have attempted to submit, this is an endless game mode with no defined ending, as the game will simply continually give you new task sets after you complete the existing set.
In short, speedrunning as a hobby is not PvP. Amoung Us is either PvP, taking it at face value and playing the intended game, or an endless game, if you take the freeplay mode intended for learning/training. Neither of these are things we are accepting, and while this has gotten popular, there is still no argument to be had for us making some form of exception. We have seen them all, your idea is not going to be the one that we change our minds about.
"... request being rejected (not Amoung Us btw)" Love that you put that in the title. Absolutely love that, thank you :D
Going to echo what Oreo said here: The standards we are using now are a fair bit more stringent than what we used in the past, and it is likely that those games were accepted in the past. We don't go back and retroactively apply standards (except in a few extenuating circumstances which we've mostly mitigated since and that I won't mention to avoid drawing any attention to it), so the games remain. Another possibility is that they were added by series moderators, which is why we are extremely strict on series moderation now. But having seen your request myself, I'd have to agree with it simply being not notable.
Indeed, two very different things. Runs have and (for the most part) will be editable. Note that any edit you do will cause the run to be flagged for verification again. If this means the run needs to be re-reviewed or not is up to the moderation team and your moderation status for the game. In most cases, the run will become a pending submission again, but if you're a game moderator or the game does not require verification, the run can remain verified (in the former case, you are able to verify yourself, though this will still keep the previous verification mark, and the latter, well... there aren't things such as unverified runs).
To be more precise: You can't directly edit an existing game submission. You can, however, create a new one (and then delete the erroneous one).
Due to issues with editing a submission currently being evaluated, we are unlikely to support editing of existing submissions in the future, either.
Ask the game's moderators in the game's forum.
@hahhah42 - that game was added by series moderators, and not as a game request evaluated by sr.c staff, though you are correct in that it was added recently. And this is an excellent example of why we are being incredibly restrictive with series moderation.
@Moosebones - Will let @Daravae finish handling this one. @Hakua - Handled. @SpaceByte - Declined. Reread the first post if you have questions why. @SHINIGAMI_N1NJA - Site staff don't typically verify runs themselves for games they don't moderate. If you read the first post you will see the steps you need to take to request moderation of the game (which will then allow you to verify the runs yourself). @Cliqz - You are still supposed to attempt contact regardless. In addition, your forum post here was less than four minutes after the submitted run. Not going to act on this now because you have done nothing to show any good faith towards the existing moderator. Perhaps if nothing has changed in a week, with you having attempted to contact the user, I would suggest posting in here again. @Zeilar - Would like to handle this, however, you do not have E-mail authentication enabled. Please enable this and post in here once you have done so (this is a requirement for any moderation on the site). @stormcrow56k - As with the other one @Daravae is handling, not intervening myself on this, so will let them continue to handle this. @Bob-chicken - Your contacts are insufficient for us to consider adding you as a moderator to anything. Please include at least two forms of direct contact (neither YT or your webpage are sufficient) and re-request. @callumbal - It's not strictly necessary to have a moderator on a game where there is no need. We aren't going to simply pick someone and give them moderation on the page. @XeBeC - Declined. There is an active moderator for the game, contact them.
"since PvP means player vs player, not players vs players"- um, isn't players vs players just a bigger version of player vs player? And besides, PvP is a known definition to most, namely, that you are competing against other humans and not simply AI (that said, usually just playing against AI in a PvP game is not enough to get around this and accepted). Not sure why there's any confusion here... unless you're going rules-lawyery in which case I point out the "Site Staff reserve the right to reject any game request even if it meets the minimum specified criteria." bit.
@SharpsDoubleRifle Declined, contact a site moderator with the changes you propose.
