I've looked through a lot of games on the site, and there are some universal rules I have come across that make zero sense, so I'm curious, what rules do other runners think are pretty useless that are fairly standard across games? I'll give an example:

I personally think requiring audio for mobile games that have built-in timers is completely useless. The audio adds nothing to the run that the timer can't show, and often times mobile runners can't record internal audio for games, which just severely limits the possible player base for the game.

Some unnecessary rules that I often find:
- As you said, requiring audio in games that do have a reliable built-in timer (not just in mobile games). But for PC/web games it's much easier to record audio.
- No modifying the games
- No cheating
- No tool assisted speedruns

Specifying a rule for requiring video for all runs might also be redundant, but I personally decided to put that rule in all my games.

Yes, require audio in that cases is unnecessary, specially in android since it also records what you say
One that I also find from time to time is “need to have a timer on screen” in games where theres no need to. In some cases this means that the mod doesnt want to retime the runs and if you see it you should tell the mod about the problems with that rule
I think that it used to be a rule in src that only games that needed to remove load times could require a timer but it was removed

In my "amateur moderator" phase I also required livesplit in the videos for some reason, but I quickly removed it from everywhere.

@ViperViper Audio is useful for games without a built in timer and that are difficult to determine if a run is sped up or not. In both Crossy Road and Pou we have rules where only runs under a certain threshold require game audio (same with a hand camera for crossy road because of frequent autoclicker usage), the rest does not because we want to keep most of the leaderboard accessible to the average runner.

I do agree that games which are possibly subject to methods of cheating that can be prevented by requiring audio, should, but I'm not referring to these games. I'm referring to the games that aren't subject to these forms of cheating, or, have other ways built in-game to detect these forms of cheats, such as an in-game timer.

Personally, I try to not have excessive game rules, as I think accessibility is one of the most important things in speedrunning. I do like your alternative garsh that not every run requires audio, only certain runs under a threshold do.

@VyPrVyPr the reason the audio rule exists is that audio queues stop splicing (which CAN still be done w/ the use of cheats in mobile games and others with built in timers, and affects all games, and has been shown to have been done on even the smallest scale games). Also generally audio is not that hard to record if you already have video, so it barely affects accessibility (I believe there's some pretty simple ways to get android audio to record, and I know for a fact you can easily do it on iOS nowadays, and OBS + capture cards works on everything else). Also for @Oreo321Oreo321 the boards that have things like:
- No modifying the games
- No cheating
- No tool assisted speedruns
are there for a reason generally. People try to submit TASes as runs even WITH those rules in place, generally they're put there because a mod on the board had to experience something like that in the past. Also for no modifying the games, that is also often very important as there's a lot of games with mods that are OK to use such as optifine for minecraft or mastercomfig for tf2 that are generally seen as mods that just increase FPS, but can often times can greatly affect speedrunning specifically, so banning any external mods except those listed is often 100% necessary to specify. As for the 'no cheating' rule, I agree but I think that's just so mods can temporarily or permanently ban people from those boards if they're found to be cheating without any need for argument (as it is clearly stated in the rules).

For @skunk_hahahahahahaskunk_hahahahahaha
The reason BFBB has those rules is likely to minimize cheating. Allowing HDD and Disc, make the game much more accessible, if you care that much about the load times and placing high then you can look to swap from disc to HDD, but allowing both lets more people play. For requiring video and audio proof, that just makes sense to stop cheaters and really isn't that hard when literally everyone has a phone they could just prop up in the corner or something while they play, and even allowing runs without either is HUGE for accessibility as that means people can just do it on their own and not need to even record anything (which is normally the biggest hurdle). They even allow emulator runs, which is absolutely insane for those looking to run the game that don't have an easy means of recording (as recording an emulator is always 100% easier than a console). As for the capture card threshold for non-emulated runs, that's beyond me, I can't imagine any reason why a video recording of your screen wouldn't be accepted while capture cards are (I CAN think of reasons for the other way around despite personally loving capture cards), however nowadays capture cards aren't that expensive (the one I'd use for those consoles costs around $40-50), and if it's a big issue for you most computers can emulate GCN or Wii games nowadays. Overall, I'd say the capture card requirement is very weird, but most of the other rules you listed just now make the game far more accessible.

I disagree with most of that, but to each their own. Accessibility to a game is one of the most important aspects IMO, and especially in the case of mobile games, it can be impossible for mobile devices to record internal audio w/o external tools such as a capture card or video recording device. Unless its absolutely necessary for a game to record audio (such as cookie clicker, crossy road, clicking based games mainly) then I really don't see why you would want to limit possible community growth.

Can I say a rule that's not for speedrunning?

The global autofire ban at Twin Galaxies is the most insane rule I've ever seen.

Why? Because they even banned autofire IN GAMES THAT HAVE IT ON BY DEFAULT. The only way it's allowed is if there's absolutely no way for it to be turned off.