As someone with absolutely no knowledge of speedrunning community norms, it’s very interesting to see how a practice that is fundamentally about exploiting generally unintended mechanisms within a system design still develops its own notion of ethics, legitimate and illegitimate exploits, etc. Not that different than something like the Astros technology-assisted sign-stealing scandal (as opposed to legitimate sign-stealing) against the Dodgers in the ‘17 WS, at least from the perspective of needing to identify the lines between fair play and illegitimate advantage.
Edit: children have helped point out the precise notion of ethics - no exploit is unethical on its face, so long as it is disclosed, which allows the speedrun to be correctly classified and compared to others in its class.
Edit: children have helped point out the precise notion of ethics - no exploit is unethical on its face, so long as it is disclosed, which allows the speedrun to be correctly classified and compared to others in its class.