Nobody owns speedrun categories. They are proposed by runners, written up as a ruleset by a game’s volunteer moderators, argued over in public forum threads and Discord channels, and then implemented as a leaderboard section people can actually submit verified runs to. In practice, how speedrun categories are decided comes down to a handful of moderators per game applying published criteria, usually after open community discussion and sometimes a formal vote.
There is no central committee and no industry body handing out categories. Every game on a site like Speedrun.com has its own small team of volunteers, and their authority comes from the runners who play that game, not from the site itself. Once a category exists, the same team keeps it alive: verifying runs, rewriting rules after a patch, and eventually closing it when nobody submits to it any more.
Updated October 2026
Table of Contents
- 1What Is a Speedrun Category?
- 2What Makes a Category Worth Creating?
- 3How Speedrun Categories Are Decided in Practice
- 4How Game Rules Shape Category Boundaries
- 5Why Communities Split or Rename Categories
- 6How Timing Methods Affect the Rules
- 7Who Has the Final Say?
- 8Examples of Categories in the Same Game
- 9What Happens When Category Rules Are Disputed?
- 10Frequently Asked Questions
- 11Who decides speedrun categories?
- 12Do speedrun categories require a community vote?
- 13Why can one game have several speedrun categories?
- 14Can a category be removed or renamed?
- 15How do rule changes affect existing leaderboard runs?
- 16Do all speedrun categories use the same timing method?
- 17Conclusion
What Is a Speedrun Category?
A speedrun category is a separate, separately timed objective inside a game. Any% and 100% are two objectives in the same game, and a run of one is not comparable to a run of the other. The category is the unit of fairness: it defines what a runner must complete so that two times on the same board mean roughly the same thing.
The rule that governs the whole structure is simple. According to the Speedrun.com knowledge base, categories describe what a player is doing, not how they are doing it. The goal goes in the category. The ruleset that constrains the route goes in a subcategory underneath it.
That produces the four levels most sites use, from broadest to narrowest.
| Level | What it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Game | Which title | Elden Ring |
| Category | What the runner is trying to do | Any% |
| Subcategory | Which ruleset or version is allowed | Glitchless, Restricted, Unrestricted |
| Annotation | Extra context that does not split the race | Game version 1.16 |
One practical consequence: a variable such as game version or platform often behaves like a subcategory for ranking purposes, because two runs on different versions or consoles are not really comparable. Rules about that live in the game’s written rules rather than in a category name.
What Makes a Category Worth Creating?
Moderators do not apply a single checklist, but the same questions keep coming up. Does the objective force a substantially different route? Do enough players want to attempt it? Can the rules be written so a moderator can judge a submission the same way twice? Is the game deterministic enough that two good runs land within seconds of each other? Will somebody actually submit runs, starting this week? And is it really a different goal, or the same goal with a different constraint bolted on?
The last question is where most rejected proposals fall down.
A subcategory is usually the right answer when the goal stays identical and only the route changes. A glitchless board under Any% competes for the same objective as an unrestricted board, so it belongs underneath. A category is the right answer when the finish line itself moves: finish the game fast, finish it with every collectible, defeat every boss, clear one level as fast as possible.
Communities also weigh fragmentation. Every new board splits the pool of runners, and a leaderboard with a dozen boards that each have two entries is harder to read than one with four that are busy. Boards that nobody runs tend to get archived later, which is why a demand test matters more than an idea’s cleverness.
How Speedrun Categories Are Decided in Practice
The real path, game by game, tends to look like this.
- Someone proposes it. Usually in the game’s forum or Discord, sometimes years before release, as a brainstorm about what the game should have.
- The objective gets scoped. Where does the run start, where does it end, and what counts as a finish? A 100% run needs a definition of 100%, which means working out whether the game measures by item, by quest, or by percentage of everything.
- Rules get drafted. Glitches in or out, assists in or out, emulator allowed or not, which patch or region counts, what evidence a run needs.
- The route gets tested. Someone runs it end to end so moderators know the rules are possible and can spot sequence breaks that break the category.
- Experienced runners are consulted. The people who would submit competitive runs get a look before anything is published, because they are the ones who would be stuck with the rules.
- A vote happens if it matters. Small additions may be a moderator call. Anything that changes existing records, splits a popular board, or settles a genuine argument usually goes to a public poll.
- The category is published and maintained. Rules go live, submissions open, moderators verify runs, and the board gets revisited after patches and again when it goes quiet.
Runners on r/speedrun describe the informal version of this as code is law: the written rules govern, and arguments get settled by discussing the text rather than by appeals to authority. That norm is why the process leans so heavily on publishing the rules and the reasoning behind them.
How Game Rules Shape Category Boundaries
Category rules are not decoration. They decide who is allowed to compete against whom, so moderators write them around the things that would otherwise distort a time.
- Allowed actions. Some boards cap movement speed, cap frame rate, or forbid tools that make the game easier. Where the game can be modified, a rule either names the permitted modifications or bans them.
- Glitch tiers. No Major Glitches, NoMo, glitchless and restricted all exist because communities disagree about what a fair run is. A glitchless category says the route is legitimate; a No Major Glitches category says specific skips disqualify, and the written rules have to define which skips those are.
- Assists and player count. Whether in-game assists, co-op help, or extra players are permitted changes both the difficulty and the time, so it belongs in the rules rather than left to interpretation.
- Scope. Full game, a single level, a boss rush, and a progression category all end somewhere different. Individual level categories are common on older games, where communities wanted per-level boards as well as a full-game board.
- Loadout and item restrictions. Monster Hunter World’s Time Attack board is a clean example of deliberate restriction. Its rulesets ban things like bombs, Heroics, Clutch Claw Wall Slams and locale-specific weapons, and the stated reason is to favour fight skill over one exploitable trick. A different set of bans would have produced a different, slower board, so the rule set is what makes the times comparable.
- Version behaviour. Patch notes can quietly break a route or open a faster one, which is why most games publish a version rule and an obsolescence policy.
None of this is exotic. It is ordinary competitive housekeeping, and the test a moderator applies is simple: could two careful runners read the rules and agree on whether a given run counts?
Why Communities Split or Rename Categories
Boards change long after they launch, usually for one of a handful of reasons.
A patch can add a shortcut that turns one route into the only route, which is when a community may split a board to preserve the old category for historical records. A glitch that turns out to be far stronger than anyone expected can push a category toward a new version of itself. Rules get clarified when a submission exposes an argument the text did not cover. Names clash, so a category gets renamed for clarity. And a board with two entries and no plans for more is archived so the active boards stay readable.
Splitting is not the same as deleting. Archived categories usually stay visible in a separate section, because a runner’s old time still counts as something they did, even if the route it used is no longer possible. Communities that archive rather than delete tend to keep more trust from the runners who cared about that board.
Renaming is quieter and sometimes controversial, because a name carries a claim. Any% means any ending, whatever the fastest method. If runners start finishing through a different route, a community may rename the board or narrow the name so the label still describes what happened.
How Timing Methods Affect the Rules
Timing is the part of the rules runners argue about most, because a timer is a measurement standard rather than a preference. Real Time (RTA) is the default on most sites, and it includes loading. Loadless timing, often called Real Time Without Loads, is used where a long load or a heavy menu screen would distort the result, such as individual level boards with heavy transitions. In-Game Time uses the game’s own internal counter, which matters in older or arcade-style releases that pause on their own.
Because the methods are not comparable, moderators sometimes set them per category or per level rather than per game. A game with individual level boards may run those on loadless timing and the full-game board on RTA. Where that happens it is written into the leaderboard settings and the rules, so a runner always knows which clock their time came from.
Millisecond display is a cosmetic choice on top of that, and it has a habit of causing confusion: turning on milliseconds does not remove them from the submitted time, it only changes how the leaderboard shows it. Knowing which setting you are actually looking at saves a lot of pointless argument.
Who Has the Final Say?
Authority sits with the game’s moderators. On Speedrun.com, game moderators are volunteers drawn from that game’s own scene, and the site gives them graded permissions: a regular moderator can manage runs and much of a game’s board, while higher permission levels cover the settings that change the structure, such as adding or removing categories and editing the rule sets.
Site staff can step in, particularly for disputes that span games or for conduct problems, but they are not the ones writing a game category’s rules. For official tournament events, organisers may impose their own rules on top, sometimes banning emulator or loadless runs regardless of what the community board allows. That gap between community rules and event rules is a regular source of confusion for new runners.
The real question is not who has permission but who has legitimacy. Runners on r/speedrun put it as a choice between moderator discretion and a community vote, and that was the core of the well-known Super Mario Odyssey dispute over a minimum cap, where one side argued the moderator’s call stood and the other argued for a public poll. Nothing in the site’s structure forces either answer. In practice, moderators can act alone, and the communities that trust their moderators most are usually the ones who open a vote before changing anything that affects existing records.
Examples of Categories in the Same Game
These are category types rather than one game’s board, but the distinctions are the same ones moderators apply everywhere.
| Category type | Objective | What makes it a separate category |
|---|---|---|
| Any% | Finish the game as fast as possible | The baseline goal; the finish line is the credits or an ending |
| 100% | Collect everything the game counts | A different finish line, and often far more playtime |
| All% | Everything, including things 100% ignores | Defined only by how the game calculates completion |
| Low% | Grab the smallest amount of progress needed | Endgame-gated without finishing; a different destination |
| No Major Glitches / NoMo | Finish the same goal without the banned skips | Often a subcategory under Any%, since the goal is unchanged |
| Glitchless or Restricted | Finish using only intended mechanics | A ruleset change, so usually a subcategory |
| All Bosses | Defeat every boss | A different goal that ignores story progression |
| Individual level | Clear one level as fast as possible | Scope narrows to a single stage, often on its own board |
| Progression or boss rush | Advance through a fixed gauntlet | End state is a position, not a completed game |
| Meme | Something silly the game permits | Goal exists for culture, not competition; usually kept separate |
The percentage categories are the ones that need the most care at proposal stage. Whether a game should have a 100% board or an All% board depends on how its completion math works, and that is exactly the kind of question a category thread is for. The Silksong discussion on r/Silksong is a good example of runners working through endings and percentage definitions publicly, long before a board existed to argue about.
What Happens When Category Rules Are Disputed?
Disputes happen because the rules are short and the games are large. The usual sequence is calmer than the arguments people have about it online.
First, the runner submits the evidence, which on most sites means a video link with a clear run start. Then they ask for moderator review rather than announcing a record, because a moderator cannot verify a run they have not seen, and an unverified submission is not a record for anybody. If review confirms the run but the rules are ambiguous, the runner can propose a clarification, and if the ambiguity affects existing times, the moderator team will normally weigh whether the leaderboard should split.
Until that process finishes, a disputed run is treated as pending. It is not counted, it is not deleted, and it is not announced as a world record. Runners who skip this step and call a disputed time a record tend to lose the room’s support quickly, because it makes the leaderboard useless to everyone else.
Most sites also keep an audit log of moderator edits, so a changed rule or a removed run leaves a trail. That is the mechanism that lets a community audit a decision after the fact instead of trusting that it was made properly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who decides speedrun categories?
Each game’s volunteer moderators decide its categories, using the permissions the leaderboard site gives them to add, remove and reconfigure boards. Site staff handle cross-game disputes and conduct issues, and tournament organisers can impose extra rules on top for their events. Authority is not automatic, though: moderators who change existing records without consulting runners tend to lose the community’s trust, which is why many open a public vote first.
Do speedrun categories require a community vote?
Usually not formally. Most proposals are handled by discussion in a forum thread or Discord channel, and a moderator approves the category once enough experienced runners agree it is workable. Votes become common when a change is contentious: splitting a popular board, invalidating existing times, or settling a dispute between runners. In those cases the moderator team normally runs a poll and publishes the reasoning behind whatever passes.
Why can one game have several speedrun categories?
Because players do not agree on one interesting objective. Some want the fastest possible finish, some want every collectible, some only want one hard level cleared quickly, and some want to do it without glitches. Each is a genuinely different goal with a different finish line, so each gets its own board. When the goal stays the same and only the rules change, the community splits it into subcategories instead.
Can a category be removed or renamed?
Yes. Moderators rename a category when the name no longer describes the goal, and they archive one that stops receiving runs, usually moving it into an archived section so old times stay visible. Straight deletion is rare precisely because it throws away history. Rules about this are set per game in the leaderboard’s obsoletion rules, and archived boards are often kept rather than removed as a trust signal.
How do rule changes affect existing leaderboard runs?
That depends entirely on the change. Tightening a rule can retroactively invalidate a time, which communities treat as a serious event, so a good moderator team announces it, opens a vote, and splits the leaderboard rather than quietly wiping records. Loosening a rule just makes more runs valid going forward. Patching a version usually triggers an obsolescence policy that decides which records keep their place.
Do all speedrun categories use the same timing method?
Not always. Real Time is the common default, but games with heavy loading or slow menus often use loadless timing, also called Real Time Without Loads, and older or arcade-style releases may use the game’s own In-Game Time counter. Some games set timing per category or per individual level board, since a method that suits a full-game route can distort a short level run. The method is always stated in the leaderboard’s rules.
Conclusion
Speedrun categories are community-defined standards. A runner proposes an objective, the game’s volunteer moderators scope it and write the rules, experienced runners check the route, and the community votes whenever the change touches existing records. After that, the same moderators verify submissions, rewrite the rules after patches, and archive the board when it stops being interesting.
So if you want a category, do one thing first: open the rules page for your game and read it properly. Nearly every rejected proposal I have come across failed because the idea already existed as a subcategory, or because nobody had actually run the route yet. Run it yourself first, bring proof and a second runner with you, and the conversation starts a lot further along.
