Speedrunning is one of the most fascinating corners of gaming culture. What started as players casually racing through games as fast as possible has grown into a dedicated global community with its own terminology, categories, and record tracking. At the heart of a lot of speedruns are exploits, and understanding how they work makes watching or attempting a speedrun a completely different experience.
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What is Speedrunning?
Speedrunning is the practice of completing a game, or a specific section of it, as fast as possible. Runs are timed and submitted to leaderboards on sites like Speedrun.com where they can be verified and ranked against other players worldwide. Some runners compete for world records while others just enjoy the personal challenge of beating their own best time.
What makes speedrunning interesting is that it approaches games from a completely different angle than a normal playthrough. Instead of exploring and experiencing the content, a speedrunner is looking for the fastest possible path through it, and that often means finding ways the developers never intended.
What is an Exploit in a Speedrun?
An exploit is any technique that takes advantage of unintended behavior in a game to gain an advantage. This could be a glitch in the game’s code, a quirk in the physics engine, a collision detection error, or a flaw in how the game handles certain inputs or sequences. Speedrunners spend enormous amounts of time studying games frame by frame to find and understand these behaviors.
Exploits can range from small time saves of a few seconds to massive skips that cut hours off a run. Some of the most famous examples in the speedrunning community include entire sections of a game being bypassed completely through a single well-timed action.
Common Types of Exploits Used in Speedruns
Sequence Breaking. This is when a runner skips a section of the game that was meant to be completed in order. By exploiting how the game handles triggers or boundaries, a runner can access a later part of the game without completing the earlier sections. The Legend of Zelda series is famous for having numerous sequence breaks discovered across almost every entry.
Out of Bounds. Some games have invisible walls that are meant to keep the player within the intended area. Exploits that allow a player to pass through or clip past these walls can open up massive shortcuts. A runner who gets out of bounds can often reach an exit or trigger a cutscene that normally requires a lot of gameplay to reach.
Wrong Warp. A wrong warp occurs when a player triggers a transition to a completely unintended location in the game. This can happen due to how the game handles level loading or checkpoint data. In some games a wrong warp can send a runner near the end of the game from very early on.
Arbitrary Code Execution. This is the most technically complex category of exploit. In older or less secure games, it is sometimes possible for a player’s inputs to manipulate the game’s memory in a way that executes unintended code. Some runners have used this technique to literally write new instructions into a game’s memory mid-run, effectively controlling the game at a code level through nothing but controller inputs.
Are Exploits Considered Fair in Speedrunning?
This is something the community handles through categories rather than rules. Most games on Speedrun.com have multiple categories that define what is and isn’t allowed. The two most common are Any% and Glitchless.
Any% means the runner can use any exploit, glitch, or technique available to finish the game as fast as possible. The only goal is reaching the credits in the shortest time, by whatever means necessary.
Glitchless means the runner completes the game without intentionally using any glitches or exploits, relying only on optimization of movement and decision making.
This system means nobody has to argue about fairness. Every runner chooses the category they want to compete in and the community manages its own standards from there
Why is Speedrunning Worth Watching?
Even if you have no interest in running yourself, watching a skilled speedrunner tear through a game you know well is genuinely entertaining. Seeing someone finish a 40 hour RPG in under an hour, or watching a runner clip through a wall you’ve walked past hundreds of times, gives you a completely new perspective on games you thought you already knew everything about.
Events like Games Done Quick, which are charity speedrunning marathons, have brought the hobby to millions of viewers and raised tens of millions of dollars for charity over the years, showing just how far speedrunning has grown from its humble origins.
