The Day Speedrun.com Died

[@GTAce99]

Just wanted to explain some things I wish were mentioned in this video and clear up some misconceptions and other stuff I see in the replies: 1. Entering ms incorrectly. Yes, this is technically user error, but believe me when I say this happens ALL THE TIME when verifying runs. Most users don't understand how it works and will type something like 75 when they mean 59.75 and it turns into 59.075. This is more common in leaderboards were runs are retimed to the tenth or the hundredth, but src always defaults to the thousandth. That alone should be a change that has never been implemented yet (choosing the default decimal accuracy). Luckily I learned from this video that they did actually change this with the "did you mean...?" prompt, so honestly good on them for implementing that. 2. Ads. Ever since the change ads have just been plastered all over the site much more than they used to be. I know sites need to make money and all that, but the site almost looks sketchy with the amount they have in some cases, ruining the integrity of the site. If that wasn't bad enough, some of the ad content can be very inappropriate. There have been ads for products with nicotine (keep in mind many users of the site are underage) and ads for cheat engines (ADS FOR CHEATING ON OFFICIAL LEADERBOARDS). These are obviously not ok. Source: twitter.com/eBloodyCandy/status/1453735417979625483 3. Supporter. I know sites need to make money and all that, but the way this was done is just horrible. The way it used to be was you paid like 5 dollars one time and got some nice small perks and no ads (at least that's what happened for me). Great way to show support. Now you have to pay almost that every MONTH?!?! I think this ratio shows you just how the public perceived the supporter idea: twitter.com/SRCsucks/status/1514695589115617283. Please just use an adblocker, do NOT support this bullshit. 4. WR graph. The WR graph used to be a pretty cool feature that I would personally use frequently. One thing that was always annoying though is leaderboards with a lot of categories would turn them all on at once by default, making it look like a mess. Turning them all off by default and then selecting which category you want to see would be much better. Anyway when Elo took over the graph became completely unreadable in some cases. Not only does this problem still exist, but now if there are a lot of categories the graph shrinks to the point where even if you take the time deselecting all the other categories to see what you want, you still can't read anything. Use this as an example (it's at the bottom of the page): www.speedrun.com/smbce/gamestats. Let me know if you can read anything. This graph used to be readable back before Elo, but now it looks like that. Anyway I think that's everything I could think of. Sorry for the book report.

[@Storster]

Absolutely pinning this. This is for everyone who isn't as familiar with the site and ESPECIALLY the typical ignorant "I know everything I've never done before" crowd.

[@RaggedDan]

You're so right about the supporter cost, it's exorbitant but people have argued it's because the site needs to support more people than just Pac nowadays. I can understand but don't accept that idea at all. IF Elo had done an amazing job with the ownership thus far it MIGHT have seen a slightly more positive reception, but even in the best of cases, the whole model is horrible and it's depressing how little Elo have learnt, particularly since the comments fiasco.

[@endgamerplays]

Wow, look, a wall of text I definitely read from start to finish!

[@Darxide23]

I'm going to inject one thing about #2/3. Sites don't "need to make money." A site like SRC only needs to cover costs. It only "needs to make money" when a commercial entity buys it up in order to generate as much profit as possible. That's capitalism trying to turn everything into a commodity. It absolutely ruins everything. One last thing. Everybody should have adblock running. Do not use devices that don't support easy adblocking (*cough* Apple *cough). You should be whitelisting sites that you feel 100% behind supporting, but blocking ads everywhere else should be the default.

[@ninja_raven256]

@@endgamerplays low quality bait

[@isayahjenkins8922]

Bring back the honor system, I want a wr

[@alaeriia01]

Just run a game that nobody runs, like Senran Kagura Peach Ball.

[@Jammerocker]

Rocket league has a couple soft ones still I think

[@alien_man1669]

They should have a "recent posted" wr so everyone can get a screenshot of them with a wr lmfaoooo

[@JoeMama-pd4vv]

Want a wr? just speed run a game with no runners then its a guaranteed wr.

[@rizkybiz2859]

I second this suggestion.

[@ThaRixer]

Narcissa and jiano were gonna add a leaderboard section to SpeedRunsLive. I really wish it would have came to fruition because none of this would have probably ever happened. I think one of the most annoying thing about Elo is how corporate their social profile is. The fact that the site isn't in the hands of grass roots community members means we've lost some soul along the way. Hope someone makes a good replacement with transparent messages on their social media

[@catjesus812]

Super off topic but, I was just watching your mirrors edge vid and I love it. Are you planning on doing the other vid on it?

[@Redacted384]

King Furries

[@honorablejay]

It's been years since I've done any coding, but one of the first lessons I was taught was to avoid creep. Sometimes called code creep or feature creep, it's a problem that programmers face when the end users keep asking for more things to be added to a product/program/website. The easiest way to describe it is like this: Imagine you have someone build you a car, and it's made to your specifications. However, once you start using it, you realize there are things you want added to it. Maybe you want more horsepower, or torque. Maybe the wheels are too small. Hey, let's add in a new sound system that can really output some sound. So now the car has to be modified. A turbocharger will fit under the hood, there's your horsepower/torque solved. Need bigger wheels? Well now they don't fit in the wheel wells, so the car has to have special shocks added to raise the cab. As for the sound system, sure a new radio can be installed with all the bells and whistles. The only problem is your battery and alternator can't supply enough juice to run that and the speakers at the volumes you want. At this point, it's obvious you need the car to be rebuilt. But in order to do that, you have to stop using the car. How is the person building your car supposed to do that when you use it 24/7? The engine needs to be rebuilt, but you don't want to be stranded with no way to get around. The radio needs to be upgraded, but you don't want to reprogram all of your favorite stations in it. Not to mention all of the bluetooth devices you'll need to re-add later. That takes too long and is an inconvenience. The larger wheels will need the body to be cut for them to fit, which leads to more time not spent driving your car. In a nutshell: changes to a website fall into many categories. Some are trivial, but many require the entire site to be rebuilt from scratch to support the features people want. To do that properly means the original site needs to be taken down, the databases copied/mirrored/converted to the new system, and then testing needs to be done to ensure everything is working. Trying to manage that while operating a site on a 24/7 schedule is incredibly difficult, and disastrous if problems arise with the new system and causes more delays getting the new system in place. In this always-on connected world, having a few days to a few weeks downtime can destroy the traffic to a site and immediately destroy it's reputation, which includes the user base that keeps it going.

[@shgysk8zer0]

I have a few things to remark on as a web developer. First, the CC licensing absolutely makes sense. They should've communicated this better, but a CC license does not make something public domain, it only grants rights for other creators such as yourself to use and modify and share. They probably should have given users some choice in licensing though, if they didn't. Second, while I'm with you on the feel of ads and how shady that can seem, profit is essential to maintenance and development and longevity. Unfortunately, the donation model just doesn't work out well to pay the bills (I wish it did), and users are probably less likely to hand money over to some big business running the site than to an individual. Open Source developers who build popular tools used by thousands or millions are having the same issue recently - some basically rage quit and delete everything, others make protests, and others might even do some malicious stuff. If you take nothing else from the previous point, just be appreciative of and generous towards anyone who builds something out of the kindness of their hearts or love for a thing. Running that sort of thing for little to no profit can feel outright abusive. It takes a ton of work and can be rather expensive. Third, about the priority of issues... Not all things are as easy to implement/fix or have as clear a path. This is something that's difficult to describe to non-developers... You pretty much have to have the experience of someone asking you to do multiple different things that they think are of the same difficulty, but one of them is pretty trivial to accomplish and the other is either unclear what they actually want or is orders of magnitude more complex or both.

[@SkilletToast]

I agree with all of this

[@golden_scorpion3436]

These are some really good points. Thanks for bringing them up.

[@im-essi]

Yeah, this was pretty much my reaction as well as a web developer; pretty much nothing brought up in the video felt particularly bad, and if it did, it seemed really easily explainable. Complaining about ads/the subscription system is just... can a site of that size run for free and I just missed it..? Idk, maybe I just haven't used SRC enough to see the real issues here

[@xrefed]

Wasnt it working fine just with the donation thing?

[@shgysk8zer0]

@@xrefed the original developer decided to sell and the new owners added ads. Obviously not.

[@amberfarmer2869]

I've seen sites fall to pieces before. Most of what's mentioned here are minor annoyances if anything. Sure some of them should probably be fixed but nothing mentioned here is really site killing.

[@LazoGT]

honestly, the worst thing they did was changing tos, the rest are just minor offenses that they took care of within a week

[@drdiabeetus4419]

"Death by a thousand cuts" is a thing

[@amberfarmer2869]

@@drdiabeetus4419 sure. If most of said cuts aren't immediately fixed or actually anything worth noting.

[@patrickperot6296]

Agreed

[@LunaticJ]

6:20 Duuuuuuuude I feel you. These WR history graphs are a total joke. There’s no way to even resize the graphs at all, it doesn’t scale when you zoom in/out, and just doesn’t work on mobile. Mad annoying

[@abra238]

honestly that is the thing that i have the biggest issue with. I like graphs.

[@CyberBorg]

I didnt' believe it could be that bad until I saw GTAce99's comment with a sample... Its a 1D graph??? Insane.

[@vidvad]

I'm hoping a replacement will arrive soon. I used to spend so much time browsing leaderboards and user profiles, drilling down to the most obscure run I can find, like a sports fanatic looking at old baseball stats from the 60s and 70s. I miss that

[@kaspi644]

i know this is random but dungeon defenders is a childhood game of mine and seeing plastered like some shitty phone game makes me feel shame. it's a pretty solid game ngl

[@radojerkovic3059]

Unfortunately, the game has a fairly odd reputation in the wider community. I have my fair share of hours in it, but with how grindy the game is, it not being really open to interesting speedruns and being passed around so many developers, along with how dreadful DD2 was, the game has a reputation a lot worse than it deserves.

[@Youhadabadday2021]

@@radojerkovic3059 Wait, wasn't Dungeon Defenders II that one game that partnered with Terraria to add the horde mode and the infamous Betsy?

[@radojerkovic3059]

@@Youhadabadday2021 i personally like that crossover, but yes. This is before the game went downhill tho.

[@Dayoman]

I met pac at a gdq once. Back when he was the site owner. He was in the jacuzzi blasting chiptune music from a boombox. What a guy. Anyways at 3:52 that guy is cute

[@astrothelast4554]

I was just watching this video in my spare time, and I was so surprised to see my speedrun make it into background footage for one of your commentary videos. Thanks so much for making great content!

[@SuperSpruce]

For me, who just views the site, the worst change was the AUTOPLAYING VIDEOS unrelated to the content that takes up a huge chunk of the screen. Any site that does this gets the heaviest adblocking from me.

[@sulfarsandbox]

15:04 That's actually the entire reason I installed an adblocker. Even then, they still find a way to make the site look like a sketchy movie hosting site

[@G.Aaron.Fisher]

Honestly, this feels pretty par for the course. Maintaining and building upon a project this big is difficult and expensive. Improving overall functionality is almost always going to come with some localized regression, and this video essay seems to be overly focused on that.

[@PatSpeedruns]

I agree with everything. SRC has seriously gone down hill since Elo took over. They never fix the worst bugs, they don't think before implementing some features(like the comments system), and they also refuse to listen to feedback. They don't care about the site

[@killwillv2610]

This makes me wonder what other platforms are going through the same. ZWR is just as bad

[@shinygiveaways1920]

its leaderboard not a social media account

[@GMPranav]

It started going downhill long before Elo bought it tbh. It always had the "I am lucky to get the domain and managed to setup some basic features, now let's be stuck to 2011" vibes imo.

[@MDLuffy1234YT]

By popular demand, we created a solution to the problem that we lovingly created so that we could justify purchasing this obscure bunch of lazily programmed HTML to our investors.

[@johnmanfreda2738]

I think the quality in your videos is getting better than it used to be when I first subbed, and you are picking interesting topics to talk about. Keep up the good work!

[@plazasta]

yet another example proving some advice I read recently: if a service/platform/product you use gets bought, you gotta leave it as fast as possible, because without fail, its new owner WILL ruin it. this happens all the time: amazing product gets made by well-meaning people, gets popular, and then gets bought. However, since said product isn't profitable, the new owners start rendering the product more profitable. They rid it of its soul, identity, and anything that made it good in the first place, in an effort to milk as much profit from it as possible until the product becomes a dry and dead shadow of what it once was. Without fail, that's what happens every single time a product, service or platform gets bought

[@montgomerynovak2194]

Another thing that happens (usually in the entertainment industry) is that X executive/ producer/ manager was making or made Y, and then X leaves and is replaced by Z. Z decides that even though X's products are performing well (or is currently in development) so they decide since X's name is on it and not Z's they decide to kill it. "Well X isn't here anymore so check out my idea (now that I'm in charge)" -Z.

[@kartkibloczek]

yet you are on youtube, interesting... Edit: you posting this comment on youtube proves you have no idea what you are talking about.

[@plentyoflulu4694]

And then new client come in, start hating on you when pointing out. Example : Larian studios for too many People died a long time ago

[@nguyenvanquang876]

*cough cough* EA *cough cough*

[@plazasta]

​@@kartkibloczek does that make my statement any less wrong? No, Alphabet did ruin KZbin, so my point holds true as for why I still use it anyway? Cause I don't have another option. The content on KZbin for the most part is on KZbin only. Even though other services, such as VlareTV, have way better features, only KZbin has the content, so if you don't like it, well too bad! Does it make me mad? Yes it does does that mean I'm not trying to use other services? No, I am, don't worry I do pay for Nebula, but the content on Nebula is only a fraction of what I'd be watching on KZbin unless you want me to just give up my biggest hobbies altogether? Completely redefine my life as this would imply not just quitting this platform but also completely redoing my social circles and restarting my social life from scratch, along with finding all new hobbies that wouldn't make me want to use KZbin at all? Yeah no sorry but in my life, telling me to quit KZbin is kind of like telling a person in the rural southern US to try living without a car. Again it's not that I don't want to, I'd love to switch over to a competitor, but there isn't really another option (also apologies if you've received two replies saying the same thing, I'm making this one cause it seems my original reply didn't send, so if it did send, sorry)

[@neuro5261]

Backends can get pretty complicated, especially when they're designed for scale (which in this case seems like it wasnt). Adjusting that chart/table is probably easy: it's seems like on the backend, it's grabbing speed run numbers from a database, and on the frontend formatting them then adding them as html elements. Maybe they didn't have enough developers to be concerned about the frontend

[@RobotManiaSR]

you can just click on the little boxes that show the color for each category and it will cross them out and they won't be on the chart

[@trashboxbobylev9900]

> Maybe they didn't have enough developers to be concerned about the frontend then why the fuck buy this site if you have no clue how to support it

[@IEKevin]

so I heard from a Community Manager of ELO the reason why they removed the stuff in 9:26 was because of this `we had to restrict it to site staff only since its a big performance hog`

[@passtheyaoi]

as someone who's done some database work it really is though the site was probably not set up in a way to intelligently track that database request and massive search with an assload of joins is just absolutely brutal for a fun niche feature

[@iandakariann]

@@passtheyaoi it makes sense. The site was developed a long time ago and probably just pushed to fill a void. It might not have been designed to handle everything it's trying to do. As such it probably didn't need a new owner to maintain it. It needed a new site designed from the ground up.

[@LigerzeroGaming]

@@passtheyaoi I'm just imagining every leaderboard being its own separate table and...yeah, that'd have been number on their slow queries list from the moment they first ran it

[@fibbel7537]

The site didn't die, far from it. I experienced this all firsthand as a mod of a large series, and all these issues are being blown WAY out of proportion. The site was and still is an incredible tool for the community, even though there are sometimes minor issues (the WR chart does annoy me). When he says things like adding Supporter was "egregious" and "tone-deaf", when the site does needs to make money somehow to run, and it literally doesn't affect you at all if you install a browser extension with 2 clicks, its just really, really annoying to hear. People are making way too much of a big deal over the changes and people are constantly complaining. SRC gives us the power to run whatever we want, get the game a leaderboard, have anyone around the world submit runs, and have it all on a customizable leaderboard. I think that's a beautiful thing.

[@gamefreak2016]

19:35 to play devils advocate. They do need money to keep up with the giant “glorified spreadsheet” so they need donations and supporters

[@k1lldash9]

Going along with this, I find it ironic he's complaining about that, then at the end of his video, he has text stating "Discord, Patreon, 2nd Channel Below!" You don't want to spend the money for a site, but you mention your Patreon which is basically asking people to give you money. :)

[@jironamos7650]

@@k1lldash9 The thing is, the site has some many issues and problems that its not worth the money. 4 dollars MONTHLY to remove ads from a FAULTY site should have been a 1 time payment of 4 dollars instead.

[@k1lldash9]

@@jironamos7650 I am not saying it is right to charge the money, I was just pointing out the irony is all, it was meant to be taken lightly. I also would not pay 4 bucks for any site anyhow, I run pihole at home anyways so I don't see the ads.

[@noheffthing]

@@k1lldash9 youtubers are always like this and it's so damn stupid. They whine about devs making a living and do shit like "oh and BTW support me on my patreon because I definitely put more effort into my videos more than devs!! :)" it drives me crazy

[@cytrussToo]

Im so glad you talked about the defunked about page, with the most games and categories playes leaderboard. It really was a ton of fun grinding those back in the day Great video!

[@lordmuaddib]

over the years i've been administrating/moderating on websites that then sadly went corporate and it has been a dumpster fire. they all didn't care about the communities that were established, they hammer the staff, they make decisions with no logic or common sense, they push on advertisements without doing any maintenance... and so on. all those sites started bleeding and dying as they were milked dry. it seems sr.c is having the same fate, really sad pattern

[@rayvenkman2087]

Basically... Any community-driven sites that goes corporate, decline ensues.

[@lordmuaddib]

@@rayvenkman2087 without generalizing too much, if a company has got too many websites under their wing (which is often the case, they just buy a bunch of sites that seem profitable).. yeah it's usually like that in my experience. tho, i saw a couple of success stories when the buyer is someone that already has been running a similar kind of content. adding to my previous comment, site-driven communities will keep existing, because generations come and go, new people will slowly stop caring of what was before. and then.. usually when a paradigm shift occurs, "the old guard" simply moves on elsewhere

[@GODDAMNLETMEJOIN]

I still miss classic gamefaqs.

[@voliol8070]

With all due respect, I feel like this video could be better researched. Currently it is more of an opinion piece for those immersed in the speedrunning community and mostly know these facts, than the informative video the title hints at. Perhaps that was intended, but if it wasn’t, I feel like researching who Elo are is a pretty essential point, and it is harder to take you at face value when you are seemingly disinterested in this. That the rest of the video is largely anecdotal doesn’t help either. Are these errs on their side the end of the story, or is there more to it, I truly can’t know.

[@BenCowley111]

There’s also a huge deal of entitlement. Complaining that a free website doesn’t live up to your standards or have the right QoL feature but then bitch about ads or premium memberships to actually support it.

[@aurastrike]

It mostly has to do with how they handled the changes, not the changes themselves. I'm sure in a different, more proper world, the changes made would have been more useful than detrimental like it was in reality, and Elo being a corporate didn't help that regard. If Elo didn't do it, some other big company would have.

[@warderjack]

By 2001 I had been speedrunning Resident Evil for the PS1 before I was aware there was a term for it. Just competing against my PBs. It’s so great that there’s a broader speedrunning community out there now - wish I had been a little younger and had been in my prime game playing days when speedrunning became more popular

[@Storster]

Been wanting to chat about this for quite a while, so let's do it in video form!!

[@ItsMeYourRealDad]

@WindTheBrave first is good you just speedran this comment thread and absolutely destroyed it! Nobody else even came close to your time

[@dilzbradnock9bradnock892]

2001 wow mate definitely wiser than most im 31 and still speedrunning dont think ill ever stop

[@lombre9149]

thank you so much for including my little rb4 second im freaking the fuck out a bit lol

[@Jornker]

Complaining about bug fixes here (17:13) is kind of stretching it, different bugs take different amounts of time to fix, you cant just say "all bugs take 2 days to fix" when in reality some take 10 minutes and others can take months

[@Jornker]

Even if you know about a bug, whats causing it, how to fix it, some fixes can require entirely rewiriting systems to fix.

[@hefoxed]

On them removing the charts: those charts may have been causing site crashes/issues due to the load on the database to calculate that information. Course if that was the case, there is def ways to address performance issues like that without removing the functionality, but may have been deemed not worth it/not important enough. Not a speed runner or gamer, just a web developer that likes to listen to drama. Sounds like they def were not managing the site well.

[@nyakase]

I don't use the site that much, but one thing I did see here that I haven't seen anyone clarify yet: CC licenses cannot just be removed. New content will not be licensed under it anymore, of course, but if anyone has a copy of the old content, they can still distribute that content under the license.

[@RaggedDan]

I agree with a lot of this video, and I think you touched on a lot of key issues, there are some problems with the way this was made but it's about time someone made a list of it. But believe me, the MS entering problem happens an unbelievable amount, especially on games I've moderated. I've seethed over elo's failures for a long time and it's great to see this content being made, thanks a million

[@uppr]

Man, you are a content machine! Love it

[@landonDoulers]

I literally have heard anything about src being crappy or elo even buying the site. Obviously not the greatest site ever with crashes, but this site is in no way dying. I watch speedruns on a daily basis, and this whole video comes off as a large mess of complaints about a site that is literally there to post a time/video and nothing else.

[@deathmetallongsleeve]

You must not speedrun too much then lol, half the runs on my page say im 2nd for 4 different runs in 1 category, if you have no knowledge of the issues please dont try to make it sound like the site isnt being actively ruined lol, watching speedruns has nothing to do with using SRC, the biggest reason people are mad is because what used to be for just posting times/keeping boards is becoming more and more diluted

[@D_Winds]

"How can we make money off something good?" Elo has entered the room.

[@StrandedKnight84]

6:00 Formatting 20 to .200 makes no sense. You literally wrote 20 into the ms box, and the logic correctly interprets that as 20 ms. That's a user error. 6:28 Adjusting charts is actually pretty hard, especially when you're trying to combine a ton of categories. Making generic auto-adjustable charts that cover all the different games on the site is a not easy at all. 17:14 You're actually flaming them for announcing bug fixes? It's super standard to list all the minor bug fixes in product releases. That's a good thing. In general, I feel like most of the criticism here is way over the top. I mean, they could have just bought the site and tried to milk it as is, but they're actually trying to improve it, albeit with mixed results. Taking over an old legacy product made by someone else is always going to be tricky.

[@CalculatedRiskAK]

I was about ready to jump in on that complaint about the time formatting when it's actually user error... 20ms is 0.020s Thank you for beating me to it.

[@SpeckyYT]

I remember that ads used to be "Log-in to not see advertisements", which was extremely nice, but now, having to pay to hide ads makes me kinda vomit tbh

[@alaeriia01]

3:06 nice of them to redirect to what I will assume is a TrackMania site and not a place where you go to view pictures of naked women and also get a bunch of viruses on your computer.

[@PopADoseYo]

Nice! I was thinking of Stepmania!

[@DashRetro]

Why would you type in 20ms and expect it to know you meant 200? It's the site's fault you don't know the difference between .20 seconds and 20ms?

[@thebeanseller]

Many games have timers that display two digits for ms - in that case, a runner would type in what they see and the site would appear to misrepresent the time

[@Dragonatrix]

@@thebeanseller Maybe they should learn how to read their clock then? I'unno, just a wild thought.

[@Storster]

Refer to the pinned comment. All this tells me is that you've never moderated a speedrun.

[@thebeanseller]

@@Dragonatrix No, you don't understand - in this case a runner would input the time as displayed on the timer, and the site would display a different time because of the difference in decimal accuracy. This is not the runner's fault; even if it was, confusion over milliseconds is so common that more clarity is always a good thing for people submitting runs.

[@gridlocdev2023]

It's actually an interesting problem, and as a web developer I think the way that the Elo devs resolved the issue was a relatively elegant one all things considered. As far as I can tell, HTML5 has no reasonable spec for a time input control that represents an actual length of time; rather, the defined spec of represents a time of day instead. The alternative to the devs' quick and easy solution is either mucking about with creating a custom input control for this with event bindings to get it to behave nicely with leading zeros, or just using someone else's library which adds an additional dependency.

[@ShockwaveTLS]

2:06 You have alerted the horse 🐎

[@Decommissioned]

Nah he alerted the goat 🐐

[@adrianrhianna4017]

17:43 i like how "elo" is captioned as "evil" in the subtitles

[@adb95]

I'm a mod in a very small community (to give you an extent, our game's server has a decent 1000 members for a niche PS1 20 years old title, but in terms of speedrunning it the number of people trying runs don't get to two digits) and I had NO idea of this. As a graphic designer myself I don't see any issue with the mod layout change and the fonts (although I agree that tabs should be improved), but the comments and "premium version" issues really bother me. I'm half thinking of downloading all of the runs right now. :D

[@taffyadam6031]

What game?

[@adb95]

@@taffyadam6031 It's called Hogs of War, you'll find it all over the place if you open my channel. It's basically 3D Worms before 3D Worms was even a thing. Pure 2000s stuff.

[@PopADoseYo]

@@adb95 I remember when my buddy use to rent that back in the day. Very fun game!

[@adb95]

@@PopADoseYo Yo, we have an amazing Discord community on Hogs! We've got online pvp, yearly competitive tournaments, we got a few mods, all kinds of good stuff. And remember, we're talking about a semi-forgotten 22 year old PS1 game. It's pretty great 😅

[@FurMuzzleGames]

Quote"those adds are a middlefinger to all the users". At this point i got my 5th ad in a 20min video. Kinda ironic 😂

[@19seb85]

I'm a bit surprised that you talked about the megaman leaderboard without mentioning that at some point they just removed some of the games altogether from the site (before the acquisition it was a link to the proper leaderboard saying that this was where it was)

[@noThankyou-g5c]

6:00 this isnt a bug / issue! youre just typing in your time wrong! if you type in 20 ms instead of 200ms obviously its gonna report the time you typed in!

[@user-mp8ge4bx5v]

You misunderstand. Livesplit, the most common speedrunning timer, displays times to only 2 decimal places. So if your time is a 5:00.176, livesplit shows 5:00.17. So, when runners submit their runs, they very frequently enter their time as a X:XX.0XX instead of X:XX.XX0. This used to happen ALL THE TIME before the message was added. So while it is intentional, it is also a bug. This problem wasn't caused by Elo, when Pac owned the site this was an issue as well. Elo later added text under that part of the submission form which makes time formatting mistakes less common nowadays. It's one of the few improvements Elo has made to the site.

[@charlottearanea7507]

@@user-mp8ge4bx5v this is true but it's still not a bug. Livesplit shows centiseconds, and the website requests milliseconds. Inelegant design choice leading to easy user error? Sure. Bug? No.

[@user-mp8ge4bx5v]

@@charlottearanea7507 That's just nitpicking though. The point is is that it was a bad design and it got fixed.

[@charlottearanea7507]

@@user-mp8ge4bx5v Sure but I don't think it was dumb of them to think from the outset that a community of people who cares deeply about precisely timing things would understand what a millisecond is.

[@user-mp8ge4bx5v]

@@charlottearanea7507 people had been complaining about this for years before Elo bought the site.

[@kylekonopka8292]

TLDR: Privatization happened

[@egonode4767]

5:59 isnt that correct though? 20 milliseconds is = to 0.020 seconds

[@SilentOnion]

yes but the problem is many games such as racing games show your in game time as X:XX:XX so thats what the user puts on the submission which will then be incorrect

[@LotsOfS]

@@SilentOnion this is why you dont have time submission form fields the way SRR does it. Why the fuck are hours, minutes and seconds separate dropdowns? Just let people type in the time...

[@egonode4767]

Yeah I suppose

[@ce7.0]

@@LotsOfS if the site's users can't even figure out what a millisecond is, then making the time entry just a plain text entry field would be an utter nightmare; you'd need a human to manually read every submission just to try and parse out what they even meant -- some people would use colons to divide all the numbers; some would use hyphens; some would use their own mixture of colons, periods, quotes, and double quotes; some would leave off milliseconds or even seconds in long enough runs; some would just put an undivided string of numbers and expect the website to know how many digits they meant to go to -- and on top of all that you'd still get people putting in 20 when they mean 200. One solution would be to require the milliseconds field to be three digits, so if someone just puts in 20 an error message comes up and asks "hey, did you mean xx.200 or xx.020?" but ultimately people just need to read and do basic math.

[@egonode4767]

@@ce7.0 I agree

[@or3213]

I personally disagree with your take on the "new moderation hub" update in 12:46. One of the MAJOR issues with the old "pending runs" page was that it was limited to 50 runs only, sorted from new to old. If a moderator had more than 50 pending runs, they could never verify the runs in chronological order of submission dates. That was probably the important thing to solve right away. While the new moderation hub was pretty bad at the day it came out; in the following few days the new settings and improvements were introduced to allow you to adjust the layout of the page, and you could make it somewhat similar to the previous page layout. You could see in the relevant forum pages about the new moderation hub from that time - most of the users were satisfied with it. I do agree that the old page should be easily accessed for people who still want to use it. As for everything else, I completely agree. I was inactive in sr.c for the last 2 months, and I was shocked to see the boosts/supporter stuff when I came back. Especially when you can modify the CSS of the site and get rid of the ads for free ^_^

[@GutBombTech]

So... they respond to complaints and fix them and that's somehow bad?

[@bunny_dudette]

idk whats with everyone changing layouts on their website. the usual saying is if it's not broken, don't fix it

[@valletas]

This reminds me of how muse group bough audacity and added spyware into it Thing is audacity is open source so people INSTANTELY made forks of it and thanks to that audacity lost a big chunk of its marketshare

[@RobotManiaSR]

just fyi about the wr history chart: you can click on the boxes that show the color for each category to make them not be there anymore

[@YummyBacon]

Clicking all of those boxes when there are tons of categories is tedious And the actual graph isn't even visible because all of those boxes are in the way

[@SWinxyTheCat]

I find it a little frustrating that people will type 20ms for .2 seconds. My solution to users being dumb is to have the text box start out with '000' and move each digit left when a new one is entered.

[@bigal2731]

It surprised me to hear Puyo Puyo music! My ears perked up straight away - Excellent choice!

[@SFtheWolf]

the intro made it sound like this site was full of billy mitchells, but it amounted to some annoying UI updates...? okay lol, I think calling it SPEEDRUN ARMAGEDDON is more than a bit dramatic

[@concrete_enema]

Src died when it banned mr krabs overdoses on ketamine :(

[@colinmunro3158]

The only Elo I'm familiar with is the skill based ranking system originally devised for chess, but has been adapted for everything from professional tennis to esports.

[@woopslap]

I thoguht the mod layout think was a big upgrade tbh. Otherwise I generally agree(especially w/ the history thing).

[@madokalover]

i like ur style. u don't fuck around until they drive the site into the ground, u already see it happening from miles away n r building alternatives. i hope they work out!

[@LigerzeroGaming]

Good video. I will say, some of your bug fix gripes come from misunderstanding how long different bugs take to fix. All those bug fixes are probably "quick kills", ones that were open that were easy to fix. Just because they were fixed doesn't mean other things aren't being worked on simultaneously

[@MagikGimp]

It was inevitable. Speedrunning got huge.

[@sonict2241]

15:29 i knew this would happen, you knew this would happen, HOW DID THEY NOT?

[@xHKCx]

The website used to be for runners but they are changing it to become a social website for fans. fans = more people = more money.

[@moldorm30]

While I agree about the technically stuff and sneaky shit they do, in terms of the site/UI/layout changes, it sounds like you're just whining about change because you like things staying the same forever and now you have to get used to something different, even though it's not terribly different. The layout and UI is completely fine. It's not "too small", it's not "hard to navigate". Also, literally everyone has adblock. Even browsers on ios and android have that shit built in at this point. What are you browsing with, Edge??

[@jordanleviathanthwaites6501]

Mobile

[@avasam06]

6:23 oh hey that's the quick addon I made in an afternoon because I was tired of not being able to read one of my leaderboards. I didn't realize Elo made it even more unreadable now, maybe I'll go and update it.

[@raneemacintosh6842]

12:49 Depending if "after celebrating" means the day of or day before, we either have the same birthday or adjacent birthdays :) (I turned 27 on 9/20/21)

[@GlitchedVision]

first off, Dungeon Defenders is a good game actually, but still the random adds should not have shown up the way they did, and I just hope ELO didn't design the add because if they did I feel sorry for the developers who poured their heart and soul into a decent game only to have it advertised like a scam.

[@CamerTheDragon]

Wow didn't know about this, haven't been on that site in a while Also oof at how "we're getting rid of the 1 time donation so everyone can have name perks" then goes to "pay $4/month (or whatever it is here in GBP) to remove ads" lol But yeah I wonder what will replace it if it gets replaced

[@NitrosTwitch]

is liquidwifi's chat that degenerate that you had to blur it lol?

[@Storster]

Had a swear everytime I used a clip haha

[@MrMegaManFan]

To answer your question 🙋‍♂️ EVERYTHING makes me feel old. I’m so ancient you could give me a speed run for “fastest to remember when the only home consoles were Pong clones.”

[@Tawnos_]

I was thinking "2001? Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal was coming out, concluding the story that started 3.5 years prior" And now I'm considering just how amazing it is to go from BG1 in December 1998 to Throne of Bhaal in June 2001 with so much game content across the games and such a huge increase in playability between them as the engine got upgraded.

[@DeltaNrOne]

If i di this to my customers i would be out of a job!

[@megakidicarus4647]

I'd like to see a similar video for speedrunslive.

[@phooey1401]

dude i'm sorry but so many of these points just feel so whiny and self-entitled. the title never really comes up at all and with how often you say "CaN iT gEt AnY wOrSe ThAn ThIs!?!?" over really minor things just makes this video feel like a clickbait hit piece. Chriz Zuber explains this way better than i could, so just read his comment instead

[@DeaDGoD_XIV]

I dunno about GDQ weeks being the best time to hope to sneak changes in at. I don't know about anyone else, but I find myself visiting the site multiple times a day during them...but that could just be me...

[@blazingraven4959]

Solid summary! SRC has sadly met a fate a lot of other great sites have. The OG owner Just not having the resources to manage it anymore and selling it off to a company that probably literally doesn't know, or much less care, what speedrunning even is. It would be a dream if the whole speedrun community just came together and bought it back from ELO, but unlikely. That would be an epic GoFundMe though.

[@SkilletToast]

I disagree with a lot of the takes in this video, but appreciate the effort put forth to make it.

[@ChewyMovesQuick]

What do you disagree with? the website has clearly gotten worse

[@bes03c]

I agree.

[@abumonke118]

@@Cainb23 if it's one time most people can understand, but this is MONTHLY we are talking about here

[@lukebytes5366]

"FoUR DoLLArs A mONtH"

[@noheffthing]

Devs put a lot of effort too

[@Pixiuchu]

It seems literally everyone forgot that Elo said they weren't going to add donations back to the site. I dont know where to find this, but I swear they said this. They of course added donations.

[@wish]

sup sno

[@Pixiuchu]

@@wish Hello Val, havent seen you in a while

[@XerShadowTail]

The site will be successful only as long as the shareholders believe it is successful and they keep getting money from it. Happens so many times before where things just go to the trash when a company that just cares about money buys things.

[@lombre9149]

cant believe im in this video 10:57

[@tacopinky]

W

[@fanpug_]

So you're literally just angry at the fact that a "big bad money-hungry" company bought the website, that is pretty much it. You do nothing but demonize every little thing that they do (that is the tl;dr btw); They update their TOS, the community realizes it changed and doesn't include the creative whatever part about the leaderboards, there is an outcry, and they put it back in... THAT'S GOOD, it means that they ARE willing to listen to the community. And like you yourself said, the site is a glorified spreadsheet, the community can decide to just not use it if they don't want to and make their own site like in the Halo community so I don't really think it was that big of a deal (like pretty much every other complain in this video). You say all throughout the video that "there are bugs! there are bugs!" but only one time you show anything like it (and it basically was just the page not loading correctly). The things YOU DO show is them fixing bugs and trying to make things easier for the people using the website. And even if the result wasn't great they've shown that they CAN listen to the community to make things better. The funny thing is that when they did ask for feedback on changes they made, you imply that you and everyone else just made fun of them and insulted them instead of actually giving ANY critiscism. I don't want to make this comment bigger than it already is so I'll just stop there and advice to everyone to use the report a bug button on the support tab when they encounter one and to download adblock I guess (even though I'd be willing to bet that speedrunners are internet power users and a vast majority already has it, god that ads part was just not good)...

[@N12015]

At least he said why he thinks that way: He was born in 2001 AKA has 20-21 years. Does it sounds like a person who knows how to manage a company? Because to me it doesn't. All I get here when hearing about Elo is the same vibes as with Riot Games. Disclaimer: I DESPISE LoL as a game because it's driven by addiction instead of enjoyment. That being said, they might have incidents, get out of touch and be "too Californian" at times, but they are also one of those companies who have mastered feedback filtering, they're good at personal communication and are transparent to a fault; overall a good company who directs a bad game.

[@leeartlee915]

Uhh, who cancels their Spotify subscription? That would probably be the last thing I got rid of. Music is amazing.

[@azaza1018]

Is adding comments really that bad? It sounds like it could be a neat feature, did not understand all the rage

[@notverygood6817]

when it was added it was without any ability for moderators to, well, moderate them. for at least 4 days they were used for targeted harassment before they actually added a way to disable them

[@patrickperot6296]

I'm SURE that all of these changes are very frustrating to you, a mod. But for a layman like myself, most of this seems trivial, and I've never had a problem with the site.

[@ironyelegy]

speedrunning can never be your job bc speedrunners are poor, the movie

[@charlesw7397]

You being born in 2001 makes me feel old. I was born in 96 and always grew up thinking that anyone born in the 2000's were like babies compared to me. Clearly if someone born in the 2000's can be 22, they're not babies so it's really just something I need to change my mentality on lol

[@OmegaSaurus]

Fun fact: Ez Scape hasn't uploaded in 2 weeks, so in internet time, he ded 💀

[@corr6400]

i think i am seeing a youtuber become legendary slowly before my eyes keep this shit up 💯💯💯

[@noheffthing]

KZbinr and legendary don't go well together

[@BlueTurn]

Been loving this channel ever since I found it recently keep the great videos up. Love hearing the history of spedrruning and the things around it.

[@wafersmash338]

I haven't been a big part of that websites community, but a good bit of the complaints seem a bit overblown. Why would they not do Ads? And 4$ for ad free is cheaper than a lot of mobile games. That doesn't seem that intrusive or outlandish. They're fixing bugs but not the ones you want fixed, I guess? That's a whole lot better than complacency. What is the big bug that's causing you issues, maybe I missed that. A company heard feedback and rolled back changes on two separate occasions that you cover. That's not common, and I think you're dismissing it. How is that not a good thing? They also seemed to do it quickly. Use twin galaxies as an example. It took like 2-3 years to remove Todd Rogers once he was completely proven. I get you got some real gripes, and I liked your video, I always do. This one just seemed... overblown a bit?

[@whistler5223]

Yeahhh so much of this is blown way out of proportion XD

[@Dragonatrix]

Yeah, but didn't you hear? They changed the UI for the moderation hub! A thing 99% of people will never see? SIte's dead forever now!

[@N12015]

@@Dragonatrix And apparently an UI a lot of moderators do appreciate, so i would call it more of a mix-up somewhat positive change, and no, making the UI flexible is too expensive to be worth it.

[@btf_flotsam478]

I remember my first reaction upon seeing them buy it was to ask why they bought it and deducing they had no real idea what they were doing.

[@GHeinz]

i am a second-gen speed-boomer, that shit make me feel old

[@ShamanJeeves]

I'm 33. Your age makes me feel old, but your voice makes me sound young.

[@grandmastermario3695]

Yah I'm older than him to but yet he's still probably better at games then both of us so age is just a number.

[@ShamanJeeves]

@@grandmastermario3695 I have no doubt he's better at games than I am. I'm not great at speedruns myself, but I'm fascinated by the dedication of top level players. I do like to run the original Donkey Kong Country for fun, but I'm not quite fast enough to want to join the competitive scene. Maybe someday. As far as age goes, I feel the same. If a person seems genuine, and produces great content, I don't care if they are way older or younger than I am.

[@grandmastermario3695]

I also speedrun popular games like donkey Kong and mario for fun, I'm not that good but I love doing it, I also have WRS in much less Competitive and much less popular games like dadish, wwe wrestling and other fighting games, but I will never have a wr in a game like dkc or the original super mario or sm64, but I love to run and I'm very dedicated to doing it, it's been my dream to record my run on KZbin for well over a decade.

[@vidlonc3936]

Damn boi in 2001 I was watching the twins fall down while eating a donut, of course i feel old

[@tronics0504]

First off, if you’ve never played dungeon defenders, you are missing out. Just the first one, not the second

[@WoddCar]

How did I not know of this website purchase? I even follow speed running semi-closely

[@chanceneck8072]

I´m old. I was born in `85......

[@crizzonet]

you can’t really complain about the site having ads, while you have ads in this video, lol The rest is on point though

[@ZeroKitsune]

100% agreed with this

[@noheffthing]

KZbinrs sadly

[@oledakaajel]

What lol no. SRC ads made the site borderline unusable. It literally made me start using an adblocker. This is not a good comparison

[@deeeenisttv]

@@oledakaajel I don't use adblockers and I don't even notice the ads

[@YoloMenace001]

In my opinion is hasnt died. It just dipped. And that kinda putting it lightly

[@YoloMenace001]

Also sometimes the ads dont even load.

[@caiolopezcomz]

Great doc, as usual. I'd like to suggest that the video footage at least try to match what's being said. I personally found myself constantly paying a lot more attention the the awesome speedrun feats in the video background than the text. Perhaps you could video yourself talking during these moments?

[@markacevedo4616]

Congratulations on the KZbin career, you are gonna go far here. Remember the little people like me. Proud to view your videos soo early!

[@adamnielson42]

7:56 Apparently I'm the same age as you, this makes me feel kind of old, but makes you seem young. (Also the acquisition happened on my birthday so I was already thinking of that topic lol)

[@idontwantahandlethough]

Holy crap, has 'pogchamp' really been a word since [at least] 2014? That kinda blows my mind. Get off my lawn.

[@deeeenisttv]

It's been the name of a twitch emote for years. But since Twitch has become more mainstream in the last few years and that emote kinda became a meme it became general internet slang instead of just twitch slang