How to run a speedrun competition for your game

A committed speedrunner may replay your game dozens or hundreds of times and publish the best attempts.

That is the trade a speedrun competition offers. You put up a prize pool and a clear ruleset. Runners put in hours of practice, produce hours of video, and compete in public. The resulting content is dense, rewatchable, and made by people who genuinely understand your game.

Publishers have noticed. 505 Games ran a $10,000 speedrun challenge for Ghostrunner 2, and Speedrun.com now hosts official challenges with prize pools from studios of every size. The format scales down, too: solo developers have run meaningful competitions on prize pools of a few hundred dollars.

This guide covers how to design one that works, what the published rulesets get right, and the mistakes that leave you with too few entries.

The direct answer

Pick one category and one submission window. Freeze the game version for the duration. Require a full, uncut video of every run. Publish written rules that cover timing, glitches, resubmission, and tie breaks before the first entry arrives. Spread the prize pool beyond first place so runners outside the top three still have a reason to enter. Fund the prizes before you announce them, verify runs by watching them against the rules, and pay winners quickly once the ranking closes.

Everything below is detail on those decisions.

Why speedruns work for small games

Most creator coverage is one video per creator. A speedrun competition can invert that: entrants can produce attempt after attempt, share strategies in your community, and stream practice sessions.

The prize pool does not need to be large to matter. The developer of Demon Lord: Just a Block ran a championship on roughly $250 in Steam gift cards plus Switch codes, spread across the top 50 finishers. Not Yet Games ran a competition for the free prologue of WarriOrb where the top prizes were Steam games worth up to $40, and every entrant was added to the full game's credits with in game trophies bearing the winners' names and times.

Recognition prizes like those are cheap for you and durable for the runner. A name in the credits outlasts a gift card.

There is also a fit argument. The strongest fit is a short, replayable game. A 3 minute world record is watchable by anyone; a 4 hour one is watchable by fans.

Design the competition before you announce it

Four decisions define the event. Make them first, in writing.

One category. Any% (finish the game by any legal means) is the default and the right first choice. Save 100% and glitchless variants for a second event. Multiple categories split a small entrant pool into leaderboards of two.

One timing method. Real time attack (RTA, wall clock from start input to final input) is simplest to verify from video. An in game timer (IGT) is better if your game has one, because it removes loading time differences between machines, a problem the speedrunning community usually solves with load removing autosplitters that you should not expect casual entrants to set up. State the method and exactly when time starts and stops.

One version. Announce the version runs must use and do not patch it during the competition. A balance patch that changes movement speed invalidates every existing entry and every practiced route. If you must hotfix a crash, say explicitly whether old runs stand.

One window. Two to four weeks is a useful starting point. Shorter windows favor whoever saw the announcement first. Longer ones lose urgency. Speedrun.com's challenge format likewise uses time-limited submission windows.

Write rules people can follow

Useful public rulesets are boring, specific, and short. Two worth studying are the Arzette speedrun contest terms from Limited Run Games and the OvO speedrun contest rules from Coolmath Games, which is notable as a browser game running the same play.

Between them they cover the clauses you need:

• Video proof, uncut. Every submission is a single unedited video showing the full run, uploaded to YouTube or Twitch. No video, no entry.
• Resubmission allowed. Entrants may update their submission to a faster time any number of times while the window is open. This keeps your best runners grinding instead of sitting on an early time.
• A glitch policy. Either "anything the shipped build allows" or a short named list of banned techniques. Do not write "no glitches" without defining one; runners will find the edge cases within a day.
• Tie breaks and audit rights. Arzette's rules resolve ties with a private live head to head and reserve the right to request a live rerun if a submission looks suspect. Both clauses cost nothing to include and save the event if you need them.

One more clause worth adding: publish how and when winners are announced and paid. Slow, silent judging after an energetic competition sours the exact community you were building.

A brief note on the legal side: a competition decided purely by skill is generally a contest, not a sweepstakes, which is a meaningfully lighter regime in most US states, though some states restrict entry fees and large prize pools can trigger registration rules (Enns & Archer has a readable primer). Keep entry free, keep winners decided by skill, publish official rules, and talk to a lawyer if the prize pool gets serious. This is not legal advice.

Spread the prizes past first place

Winner takes all is a risky default. If one runner pulls far ahead in the first week, everyone else's reason to keep improving gets weaker.

Structures that keep the middle of the leaderboard engaged:

1. A payout ladder. Something like 50/25/15/10 across the top four keeps second through fourth contested until the final day.
2. Depth prizes. Game keys or small gift cards for the top 10, 20, or 50, the Demon Lord model. Keys cost you almost nothing and give casual entrants a realistic target.
3. Recognition prizes. Credits placement, in game trophies, a named leaderboard on your site. The WarriOrb model, and often the prize runners talk about most.
4. Participation floors. Some Speedrun.com challenges give every entrant a small perk just for submitting a valid run. Any verified-run reward works.

If your budget is one number, a useful default is: 60% across the top three, 25% in depth prizes, 15% held back for a highlight bounty on the best clip or commentary video after the event.

Make your game runnable first

The Speed Demos Archive checklist for speedrunner friendly games is old and still correct. Before announcing anything, check that your game has:

• A fast restart. One input from anywhere to a fresh run. If resetting means quitting to the menu and sitting through logos, practice gets harder and fewer people will stick with it.
• Skippable cutscenes, or better, a settings toggle that disables them entirely alongside a visible timer.
• A stable, identifiable build. A version string on the title screen makes video verification trivial.
• Deterministic behavior where possible. Heavy randomness is not disqualifying, but runners should be able to learn routes that usually work.

These are small features, but together they determine whether repeat attempts feel smooth or frustrating.

Running it on Bounty Board

Bounty Board's competition format fits this shape of event. A competition ranks entries on a leaderboard, fastest time or highest score, and the top finishers are paid from the campaign budget when the ranking closes.

Two properties do real work for a speedrun event:

• The prize pool is funded up front. Entrants can see the prize pool was funded before they invest practice hours, which answers the "will this random studio actually pay" question that haunts self-hosted contests. Anything unused is refunded automatically when the campaign ends.
• Video proof can be required. Scores post to the competition leaderboard. After the event closes, you review the podium against your published rules before finalizing the cash payouts.

Write the ruleset from this guide into the campaign brief, set the deadline to your submission window, and the up-front funding, submission, ranking, and payout mechanics are handled. The studio FAQ covers competition campaigns in more detail, and if you have not written a brief before, start with how to write a bounty creators actually want.

A speedrun competition will not rescue a game nobody enjoys. But if players already like your game's movement, your best marketing asset might be the person who wants to beat it in four minutes. Give them a reason, clear rules, and a prize pool they can trust.

Sources worth reading

• Speedrun.com: Challenges
• 505 Games: Ghostrunner 2 $10,000 Speedrun Challenge
• Limited Run Games: Arzette speedrun contest terms and rules
• Coolmath Games: OvO speedrun contest official rules
• Speed Demos Archive: Making your game speedrunner friendly
• Not Yet Games: WarriOrb Prologue speedrun competition
• HappyGamer: Demon Lord speedrun contest prize pool
• Enns & Archer: Sweepstakes and skill contests, the basics