What is speedrunning in video games?
Last reviewed March 1, 2026
Quick Answer
Speedrunning is playing games as quickly as possible, often exploiting glitches and optimized routes. It's a competitive community with categories like any% and 100%.
Detailed Answer
Speedrunning is the practice of completing a game in the fastest time possible. The speedrunning community has developed several standard categories: Any% (complete the game by any means possible, often skipping content through glitches), 100% (complete all objectives and collect everything), Low% (complete with minimal items/progression), and glitchless (natural gameplay without exploiting bugs). Speedrunners discover optimized routes, frame-perfect inputs, sequence breaks (doing things out of intended order), and glitch techniques that skip sections. The community shares strategies through videos and forums, and competition happens through leaderboards on sites like Speedrun.com. Speedrunning demonstrates deep game mastery and often reveals game mechanics designers didn't even know existed.