What is speedrunning? A plain-English guide to finishing games fast

A race against the clock, not against a friend on the sofa

Speedrun.com, the largest leaderboard site for the hobby, describes speedrunning as attempting to beat part or all of a video game as quickly as possible. That can mean the whole story from the title screen to the credits, a single level, or a specific objective such as defeating every boss.

The key difference from simply playing quickly is that a speedrun follows a written ruleset. Everyone chasing a time in the same category plays under the same conditions, so times can be compared fairly. Without shared rules, one player could use a cheat code and another could not, and the numbers on the board would mean nothing.

Most runs are solo. The opponent is the clock and, over time, your own previous best. Races between two or more runners do exist and are popular on stream, but a typical leaderboard entry is one person, one attempt, one recorded video.

Why people replay the same game hundreds of times

To outsiders, repeating the opening ten minutes of a game hundreds of times sounds tedious. Runners tend to describe it differently: the game becomes a puzzle about efficiency. Which path is shortest? Which enemy can be skipped? Which menu can be avoided?

That planning is called routing. A route is the full plan for a run, including the order of objectives, the items to pick up and the tricks to use. Routes change as players discover faster strategies, so a game released decades ago can still have an active community finding improvements.

There is also a performance side. Executing a long route without mistakes takes the same kind of practice as learning a piece of music. Many runners practise individual sections, often called segments or splits, before attempting full runs.

How a leaderboard on Speedrun.com is organised

Each game on Speedrun.com has its own page with leaderboards, rules, guides, forums and a list of moderators. When we checked its About page, the site listed around 3 million registered users, 6.4 million speedruns and roughly 54,800 game communities.

Leaderboards are split into categories, which describe the goal of a run, and often into sub-categories or variables, which describe the ruleset. Speedrun.com's own beginner guide explains it as two parts: a goal (what you are trying to accomplish) and a ruleset (what restrictions apply). Our guide to run categories covers these in detail.

Every category's rules must state when timing starts and when it ends, according to the site's moderation rules. That might be the moment you select a new save file, or the frame a final boss disappears.

• Full-game boards cover runs from start to finish.
• Individual level (IL) boards cover single stages or missions.
• Category extensions hold extra, less mainstream categories on a linked page.

Who decides the rules: volunteers, not publishers

Leaderboards are run by volunteer moderators from each game's community. Speedrun.com's moderation rules say leaderboards should be viewed as owned by the community and curated by moderators, and that people with a commercial interest in the game, such as developers, publishers or marketing partners, are not permitted to moderate. The site suggests moderators be at least 16 and recommends that each board has at least three active moderators where possible.

This structure matters for understanding the hobby. When a new glitch is found, the decision about whether to allow it, ban it or create a separate category is made by the players, usually after discussion on forums or Discord. Speedrun.com's staff only step in when a board drifts far from the site's general expectations.

Because so much depends on volunteers, runners are expected to be patient. Moderators are generally given 21 days to process a submission, and the site asks runners to treat them politely.

Glitches, skips and the art of breaking a game on purpose

Many famous runs rely on glitches: bugs in a game's code that let a player clip through a wall, warp to a later area or skip a cutscene. When a trick lets you complete objectives out of the intended order, runners call it a sequence break.

Not every category allows glitches. A glitchless category bans tricks the community classes as glitches, while still allowing advanced but intended techniques. Some communities also create "No [X]" categories that ban one particularly powerful trick, so the run stays interesting.

Glitch-hunting is a hobby within the hobby. Some community members never submit a run but spend their time studying game behaviour, testing ideas frame by frame and writing guides. Speedrun.com's introduction specifically mentions people who help route and find game-changing glitches as part of the ecosystem.

Where speedrunning shows up beyond the leaderboard

Speedrunning has a public face that many people meet before they ever see a leaderboard: charity marathons. Events such as Games Done Quick in the United States, the European Speedrunner Assembly in Sweden and the UK Speedrunner Gathering in Glasgow stream runs for days at a time while viewers donate. We cover them in our guide to charity marathons.

Day to day, most speedrunning happens on live streams. Runners broadcast their practice and attempts on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube, and viewers watch for the tension of a run that could beat a personal best at any moment. Our guide to watching live explains what to expect.

There is also the separate world of tool-assisted speedruns (TAS), where creators use emulator tools to build theoretically perfect inputs. These are presented openly as tool-assisted and are not compared with human runs.

Is speedrunning a sport, a skill or just a quirky pastime?

It is a bit of all three, and the answer depends on the game. Some boards are highly competitive, with top times separated by fractions of a second and runners practising for hours a day. Others have a handful of entries and a relaxed atmosphere where any finished run is welcomed.

Speedrun.com's beginner guide is clear that you do not need a famous or competitive game to start. Its advice is to pick a game you love, know fairly well and want to see how fast you can finish. Our step-by-step starter guide follows that approach.

Parents often ask whether the hobby is suitable for children. The gameplay is the same as normal play, so the age rating of the chosen game still applies, and the social side (streaming, chat, Discord) needs the same care as any online community. We go through this in our guide for families.