Subway Surfers
Backstory
Subway Surfers is an endless runner mobile game co-developed by Kiloo and SYBO Games, private companies based in Denmark. It is available on Android, iOS, HarmonyOS, Kindle, and Windows Phone platforms and uses the Unity game engine. In the game, players take the role of young graffiti artists who, upon being caught in the act of "tagging" a metro railway site, run through the railroad tracks to escape from the inspector and his dog. As they run, they grab gold coins, power-ups, and other items along the way while simultaneously dodging collisions with trains and other objects. They can also jump on top of the trains and surf with hoverboards to evade capture until the character crashes into an obstacle, gets caught by the inspector, or gets hit by a train, at which point the game ends.
Subway Surfers was added to speedrun.com on June 25, 2017.
History
In late 2021 and early 2022, a TikTok account by the name of lexakt_ was posting short videos about Subway Surfers and the placement of Brazilian speedrunners. Her videos got popular in a short amount of time, helping not only her channel grow, but also the Subway Surfers game leaderboard on speedrun.com. In August of 2020, a total of 86 players submitted times to the Subway Surfers leaderboard.
Most runners in 2022 were Brazilian, which influenced the community at the time causing the games rules to be translated into Portuguese. Because of the language barriers from the runners and mostly english speaking moderators, channels in the official Subway Surfers Speedrunning Discord Server were also newley created and translated to Portugeese for Brazilian runners. Because of the mostly english speaking mod team, new moderators fluent in Portugueese were recruited to not only help verify runs, but help Brazilian runners with problems they had. Brazilian runners in Subway Surfers died down slowly in late 2022 and early 2023.
Because of the sheer amount of people submitting to the leaderboards, a priority que was made on July 21st, 2022. This was meant for runners who wanted to get their runs verified faster. They would just need to ask a current moderator to verify their run by sending them their speedrun.com run link. For spam measurements, you would've been required to wait at least two months to put your run in the priority que.
On September 2nd, 2022, every category on the speedrun.com page was split between Mobile and Web runs. The mod team decided to split the board for a handful of reasons.
- FPS - On the Mobile version, the FPS is capped to only 60fps. On the Web version, there is no such cap which leads to less movement delay.
- Bugs - There are more bugs and glitches found on the Web version than the Mobile version. For example, you could run into a wall for a second and still survive, giving an unfair advantage for No Coins runners.
- Coin Hitboxes - The coin hitboxes in Mobile are different than the hitboxes on Web.
- Patterns - There are different patterns between the Mobile and Web versions.
Because of Brazilian runners giving Subway Surfers more popularity on speedrun.com, people from other countries started to run Subway Surfers. People from surrounding countries like Argentina and Chile started running Subway Surfers for a short time. Runners from English speaking countries like the United States and the United Kingdom also started running Subway Surfers at the same time as Brazilian runners.
In later 2023, Chinese runners started to run Subway Surfers. This was a problem for moderators for a while because of YouTube restrictions for Chinese citizens. Instead of uploading their runs to YouTube or TikTok, Chinese runners primarily uploaded their runs to BiliBili. Moderators had to upload their BiliBili runs to YouTube manually to be able to retime them. This led to a build-up in the que even after barely any Brazilians were submitting runs. At times, this caused the que to go over 100 runs waiting. Moderators soon found websites to help retime BiliBili runs to help verify runs faster. jensj56 and jackzfiml primarily verified BiliBili runs. They have verified the most amount of Chinese runners runs since.
Notable Runners
Blindado
1st Place - No Coins, No Hoverboard/No Keys on Emulator with a time of 23m 37s 767ms.
2nd Place - No Coins, No Hoverboard/No Keys on Web with a time of 1h 13m 44s 367ms.
3rd Place - 500 Coins on Mobile with a time of 47s 283ms
qianxun
1st Place - Obtain Item, Pogo Stick, with a time of 2s 767ms
1st Place - Obtain Item, Key, with a time of 3s 500ms
1st Place - Obtain Item, Magnet, with a time of 3s 500ms
1st Place - Obtain Item, Jetpack, with a time of 3s 500ms
1st Place - Coins, 100 Coins, on Mobile with a time of 13s 600ms
1st Place - Obtain Item, Super Sneakers, with a time of 3s 533ms
1st Place - Obtain Item, 2X Multiplier, with a time of 3s 533ms
3rd Place - No Coins, No Keys, on Mobile with a time of 40m 55s 367ms
3rd Place - Mystery Box, 1, with a time of 1s 567ms
silliewhimsical
1st Place - Coins, 1000 Coins, on Web with a time of 1m 27s 867ms
1st Place - Score (x38-), 100k, Boosts, on Web with a time of 13s 367ms
1st Place - Coins, 500 Coins, on Web with a time of 50s 333ms
1st Place - Obtain Item, Pogo Stick, with a time of 2s 767ms
1st Place - Score (x38-), 100k, No Boosts, on Web with a time of 1m 27s 650ms
2nd Place - Coins, 100 Coins, on Web with a time of 14s 333ms
Stats
Total Players - 28,597
Total Runs - 44,617
Total Run Time - 2M 16D 14h 56m 21s
Total Followers - 37,309
| User | First Boost | Total Boost |
|---|---|---|
| VyPr | Jun 17 2022 | 26 |
| YUMmy_Bacon5 | Oct 21 2022 | 2 |
| RC_SRZINN | Jul 30 2022 | 2 |
| starsmiley | Nov 3 2022 | 1 |
| Allexantj | Sep 22 2022 | 1 |
| bl4ckz_br | Sep 1 2022 | 1 |
| Blacknimess | Aug 15 2022 | 1 |
| Anonymous User | Aug 14 2022 | 1 |
| Tales012 | Aug 2 2022 | 1 |
| ELISEU4X_YT | Aug 1 2022 | 1 |
| Act_ | Jul 9 2022 | 1 |
| glennobrien | Jun 22 2022 | 1 |
| TheChoosenzOne | May 24 2022 | 1 |
Moderators
Super Mods
Regular Mods
Verifiers
Previous Moderators
ducanh201006
ImQuertyXD
Aiivan
Tournaments
Subway Surfers x Temple Run 2 Tournament
Subway Surfers mod VyPr, and Temple Run 2 mod and Subway Surfers mod adrianus decided to make a no coins challenge where the winner got a $150(USD) reward. The challenge is to get the most time in the "No Coins - No Hoverboard/Keys" category from Subway Surfers, and the "No Coins" category in Temple Run 2.
Ranking Details
For each game, the run times (of all participants) will be ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. The runner(s) with the lowest rank sum (see example below) will win the bounty.
Example: A Subway Surfers "No Coins" run (for example of 1:35.200) is the 5th best time on the Bounty leaderboard and a Temple Run 2 "No Coins" run (for example of 1:10.100) is the 8th best time. This gives a rank sum of 5 + 8 = 13. The runner(s) with the lowest rank sum will win the bounty.[1]
Rules
- Only runs submitted before 4th of September, 23:59 BRT (= September 5th 02:59 UTC) will be considered.
- Runs must be submitted to speedrun.com and therefore follow the respective rules of the game categories. Only runners with a run in both games are eligible for the bounty. The runs must be in the respective "No coins" category, and for Subway Surfers, the run must be of type "No hoverboard/keys".
- Distribution of prize pool: Below $300: 1 winner (100%), between $300-500: 2 winners (70%-30%), Above $500: 3 winners (50%-30%-20%)
- Winners will be announced publicly and also be contacted directly via the speedrun.com message system for security measures. Be aware that it may take 2-3 weeks to evaluate the winner, depending on the number of participants.
- Prizes will be paid out via PayPal or bank wire transfer.
- Cheating in any form may lead to exclusion of the bounty. Depending on the severity, you will also be reported, for example to speedrun.com. Both is at the discretion of the bounty creator.
Final Leaderboard
| Placement | Name | Total Rank | Subway Surfers Rank | Subway Surfers Time | Temple Run 2 Rank | Temple Run 2 Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | rodboy | 9 | 1 | 12:34.200 | 8 | 3:23.133 |
| 2 | tiagoromine | 11 | 9 | 5:33.900 | 2 | 11:16.516 |
| 3 | iTs_Riks | 12 | 5 | 6:57.833 | 7 | 3:32.333 |
| 4 | 27azn | 14 | 8 | 5:36.233 | 6 | 4:36.800 |
| 5 | hgznx | 19 | 6 | 6:45.533 | 13 | 2:21.633 |
Refrences
Contributors to Wikimedia projects. “Subway Surfers - Wikipedia.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 28 Mar. 2013, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_Surfers.
“Speedrun.Com.” Speedrun.Com, https://www.speedrun.com/. Accessed 7 Nov. 2022.