Behind the scenes: how Feud decides a time is real
How Feud worksJuly 3, 20266 min readBy Lamine Diouf, Founder of Feud
Every claim Feud makes — skill decides, everyone competes on equal terms, the best valid time wins — depends on one thing: the leaderboard being real. I am the developer behind the platform, and in this post I want to open the hood a little and show what actually happens between you pressing Start Attempt and a time appearing on the board. Not because you need to know it to play, but because a competition is easier to trust when you can see how it protects itself.
What happens when you press Start Attempt
A recorded attempt does not simply open the game. First, the platform verifies your player session for that specific feud. Then the server issues a one-time start credential — think of it as a single-use ticket — that is bound to you, to the feud, and to that one attempt. The server also records when the ticket was issued. Only after that does the game actually open.
That one-time ticket is the backbone of verification. It is consumed when your run is submitted, and a fresh one is required for every attempt — including replays from the results screen. A submission that arrives without a valid ticket, or with one that was already used, is rejected before it ever touches the leaderboard.
Why 'impossibly fast' runs never rank
Because the server knows when your attempt started, it also knows the earliest moment a genuine completion could possibly arrive. A submission that claims a finish faster than the game can physically be finished — or one that arrives suspiciously instantly after the start ticket was issued — fails verification. This is also what makes replaying an old submission pointless: the ticket it was tied to is already spent.
The same design protects honest players from a subtler failure: if your connection drops mid-submission, nothing half-counted is left on the board. A run either verifies completely or it does not count at all.
What the game actually reports
Each game in the library runs in its own sandbox and measures your run in milliseconds, from the true start of play to the completion condition — touching the exit of Astray's eighth maze, reaching the finish line 110 steps out in Road Hopper, bringing the last ball home in Tilt Maze. When you finish, the game reports that elapsed time to the platform, which pairs it with your attempt ticket and submits the two together for verification.
The leaderboard then keeps exactly one number per player: your fastest verified time. A slower run changes nothing, and a faster one replaces your previous best. This is why replaying can never hurt you — a principle worth internalizing, and one I covered in more depth in the leaderboard guide.
Test Play: practice without recording
Every feud also offers a test-play mode that skips all of this: no ticket, no submission, nothing recorded. It is the same game with the same timer, so it is ideal for the scouting and drilling runs described in the game guides. When your route feels ready, switch to a recorded attempt and post it for real.
What this means for how you play
- Play normally and verification is invisible — the overwhelming majority of runs verify without you ever noticing the machinery.
- There is no percentage in shortcuts. Tampered or automated submissions do not just get invalidated; repeated attempts get accounts flagged and banned.
- Your effort is protected. The strictness exists so that when you finally hold the top time, nobody can take it from you with a tool instead of a run.
Fair play on Feud is not an honor system — it is engineering. If you want the player-facing rules that sit on top of this machinery, the fair-play article covers what counts as a valid attempt, what gets a time thrown out, and what gets an account banned.