Fair play on Feud: what counts as a valid attempt (and what gets you flagged)
Fair playJune 18, 20266 min readBy Lamine Diouf, Founder of Feud
The whole promise of Feud is that the best player wins — not the luckiest, not the one who found a loophole. That promise only holds if the leaderboard reflects real play. So fair play is not a side rule on Feud; it is the foundation the entire platform stands on. Here is how it works in practice: what counts, what gets invalidated, and what crosses the line into a flag or a ban.
What counts as a valid attempt
A valid attempt is a genuine, start-to-finish completion of the feud's game, played normally, within the time the feud is active. There is nothing exotic about it — the vast majority of runs are valid by default. You do not need to do anything special to keep an attempt valid; you simply have to play the game the way it is meant to be played.
- It is a real completion of the game under normal play, by you.
- It does not depend on cheats, automation, exploits, or manipulation of the game or the platform.
- It was set while the feud was live — not before it opened or after it closed.
- It reflects your own skill, not a tool or another person playing on your behalf.
What gets a time invalidated
An invalidated time is simply removed from the leaderboard — it no longer counts toward winning. Times are invalidated when they were not earned through legitimate play. The point is not to punish a single mistake but to make sure the board ranks skill and nothing else.
- Using cheats or modified game files to alter how the game behaves.
- Automation — scripts, bots, macros, or any tool that plays for you or assists your inputs.
- Exploiting a bug or unintended shortcut to post a time that normal play could not reach.
- Manipulating the platform — tampering with how times are recorded or submitted.
If a time is invalidated, your other legitimate times still stand. The system keeps your best valid run, so honest play is never at risk from someone else's cheating being removed.
What gets an account flagged
Invalidating a time addresses the run; flagging addresses the player. Repeated or deliberate rule-breaking moves the consequence from the time to the account. This applies to both players and hosts.
- Repeatedly submitting cheated, automated, or exploited times.
- For hosts: listing prohibited items, or running feuds in bad faith.
- Any deliberate attempt to manipulate outcomes, leaderboards, or the platform itself.
Flags, bans, and prohibited listings
Hosts who violate the rules receive an account flag, and two flags result in a permanent ban. Some violations skip straight to a permanent ban with no appeal — most notably listing prohibited items such as pornography, weapons, controlled substances, or anything tied to illegal goods or trafficking. Feud reserves the right to remove any listing or account that breaks these terms at any time.
The thresholds are deliberately strict because the cost of a dishonest leaderboard is high: every cheated win is a real item taken from a player who earned it. Strict enforcement is what keeps the competition worth entering.
How to stay comfortably on the right side of the line
Fair play is easy to follow because the rules line up with simply playing the game well. You never need a tool or a trick — Feud is designed so that practice, route knowledge, and clean execution are what win. If you are improving your time by getting better at the game, you are playing exactly as intended.
- Play the game yourself, with normal inputs — no scripts, macros, or assists.
- If you find a bug that lets you skip part of the game, do not exploit it; report it.
- Hosts: list only legal, ethical items, and describe them honestly.
- When in doubt, ask whether your advantage comes from skill or from a shortcut. Skill is always fine.
This is the same principle behind why Feud is a game of skill rather than chance: the link between how well you play and whether you win has to stay intact. Fair-play enforcement is simply how that link is protected — for everyone on the board.