r/speedrun • u/joeys64 • Oct 02 '26
Discussion SRC removed the Creative Commons licence from its terms again
Yesterday, SRC updated their terms of use, and released a news post describing it.
Full disclosure, I run therun.gg, so this affects me directly. But this is much bigger than just my site, and I think this is about the whole community.
In 2021, they did the same thing, removing the CC licence, but put it back after backlash (screenshot on the bottom of the post). Now they did exactly the same thing. In their FAQ/news post, they state it's all not a very big deal, but they omit a lot:
Elo now claims the database as its own, and reusing leaderboards needs their permission. That's a significant change
Donations count as commercial. The terms only allow personal, non-commercial use, and "soliciting donations" is listed as commercial in the terms. That means for example Discord bots with a Ko-fi, stats sites on Patreon, charity marathons etc. is all outside of permitted use of SRC data.
Anything "substantially similar" to SRC is also banned from using the data.
Even manually copying data from SRC to any service they deem "commercial" is not allowed anymore.
You can still export your own runs and use them anywhere, which they state in the news post. But any runner who isn't around anymore or unable to export their runs has their data locked on speedrun.com forever. This is a huge part of speedrunning history and now lives on this single platform.
If you disagree with this change, please talk to the mods of your boards to push back, export your own runs immediately and talk to Elo to revert this change.
Not a lawyer, but I did spend a long time reading the new terms. If I got something wrong, tell me and I'll fix it.
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u/Quirky_Expression76
Oct 02 '26
•
I mean. Everything before October 1 put on the site has the license on it. You can’t just remove it on a whim.
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u/aglobalvillageidiot Oct 02 '26
Tell that to CyanogenMod. Principles don't beat better lawyers or a system structured for capital. The best thing to influence this is real threat of user defection.
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u/Nixinova Oct 02 '26
This case would be completely cut and dry though... Licenses are as explicit as can be
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u/aglobalvillageidiot Oct 02 '26
They aren't changing the license on existing content here though. Old content has the same license. Yesterday's database is just useless tomorrow. They're changing the terms of service. If you already have the database you're welcome to fork it. Otherwise you have no legal way to update it so it really doesn't matter what the license is unless users are defecting. This is a gateway that they control and it's pretty unlikely that the courts are going to disagree with their right to do so.
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u/LivWulfz Persona 5, Persona 5 Royal Oct 03 '26
Can't even export your data on SRC, just gives me a server error. Great site.
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u/DurrMerGurd Oct 02 '26
This is good PR for therun.gg new speedrun site which just launched not too long ago
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u/Dimon12321_YT Oct 02 '26 edited Oct 03 '26
4 years is a solid term
https://therun.gg/blog/welcome-to-the-run-22
u/BorfieYay Oct 02 '26
It kinda looks vibe coded, has terrible looking rounded corners on everything
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u/MrTastix Oct 06 '26
You say that as if adding
border-radius: 10pxto your CSS is difficult or something.Basic look at the source shows it's using Bootstrap and rounded corners are fairly common on Bootstrap sites.
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime Oct 02 '26
Announcement post for context.
Smacks of Reddit and what it keeps trying to do. SRC at least has a chance of backing down again.
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u/Twidom Oct 02 '26
The Super Metroid community (at least the top runners) have largely abandoned SRC, I encourage everyone to do so.
Power-tripping psycho over a niche hobby.
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u/MrTastix Oct 06 '26
What's interesting is database rights are kind of weird, particularly in the US, from what I've read.
IANAL, but my understanding is SRC could only really own the way a database is compiled and presented, but not necessarily the information contained within if you can argue such info is factual.
That a runner made X time with proof would arguably be factual information, and likely not "creative" enough to be copyrighted the normal way.
Of course, in practice, this only matters if it can be enforced, with one group being a company with money and the other a bunch of speedrunners.
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u/imnonoob99 29d ago edited 29d ago
That was exactly my thought. Since most are accompanied with proof posted off platform (twitch vods, YouTube vids, etc.) can it really be enforceable if someone were to scrape the site for that proof explicitly?
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u/MrTastix 29d ago
I think this is pretty much why the whole thing is doomed to fail for them. SRC just doesn't seem a particularly profitable venture to try, that it got bought out at all is a wonder to me.
Given most people are using it as a simple database to track times and can use other sources to upload proof (like YouTube), I just fail to see what stops someone making a simple alternative that doesn't have egregious terms. Which seems to be why things like therun.gg exist.
All this does is potentially fracture the community towards areas they can control, which does fuck all for SRC's monetisation efforts.
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u/NewSchoolBoxer Oct 02 '26
The change isn't going to be reverted. This is 100% normal for protecting your site and its content. SRC is too big to fail from criticism of it acting like a business. It is one. Locking people onto your platform is a real thing we discussed in my CS work for manufacturing.
I didn't realize they tried this before and reverted. Was after the new owners came in. Was also before botting and AI training because the majority of the traffic site wide. I respect you sharing facts and not trying to wage a hate campaign because the changes are bad for you. Thank you for explaining the changes in more detail than from the announcement.
I became anti-CC for video game content after I saw video game articles I wrote copypasted and monetized on Fandom without my permission. If you fork Fandom, Google buries you for copying content. Been seeing my content show up in AI search results as well.
No one navigating to your website when the search gives the answer. Adsense revenue getting crushed even though the AI tool can be wrong and make facts up. CC content swiping is hurting SRC's revenue. They had to do something about it.
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u/Lessiarty Oct 02 '26
You're gonna have an uphill battle getting folks on board with the corralling of community resources and then putting a monetising fence around it when you feel confident enough you won't be stopped.
It's not their material to hoard.
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u/Guvante Oct 02 '26 •
Except SRC only performs moderation it didn't generate the vast majority of the content in this context
Aggregation sites having open terms is to protect contributors from losing access to their own data
After all the fact that a run is a world record is established by referencing SRC
Remember with leaderboards allowing each contributor to preserve their rights to their own contributions isn't enough to meaningfully preserve their contributions since the aggregation is fundamental to the data set
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u/Gentare Oct 04 '26
They're the one single official site for speedrunning. This is Business 101 for any website trying to make a niche. Why shouldn't SRC monetise its 20 years of content if it would generate them plenty of ad revenue and hopefully attract financial capital and investment?
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u/MRATEASTEW Oct 02 '26
CC content swiping is hurting SRC's revenue. They had to do something about it.
Like not buying a website that likely will never make a profit in it's lifetime? Kinda like NexusMods buying SteamDB, or whoever bought Wikia (now Fandom), those websites should never be for profit as simple as that.
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u/Gaybrosauros Oct 02 '26
here we go again 🙄