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Admidst the turmoil of the Clovergate incident of Retro Achievements, former developer Kisumebuckets sits down for an interview with FFV Central.
Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed in the interview section of this post are those of Kisumebuckets and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any other individual within or outside of the FFV Central community.
Subheadings were added during the editorial process.
As for why Kisumebuckets is speaking with FFV Central, one might ask?
Retro Achievements is “NOT a bastion of freedom of speech,” Per Its Own User Code of Conduct
Link: https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/users/code-of-conduct.html#freedom-of-speech
If you just want to rant or dump derogatory comments about how we run things here, you’re free to do that. But, as it’s demotivating and wastes a lot of volunteers’ time, we don’t want it on our forums or Discord Server. There are plenty of options where you can do it around the Internet.
Keep in mind that RetroAchievements.org is NOT a bastion of freedom of speech.
If you have criticism, you’re very welcome to say it, just be sure to be civil.
Even RA Legend Salsa, who created nearly 5,500 achievements, gets her comments deleted and then her entire devlog locked and deleted just for attempting to express an opinion on the RA forums.
And yours truly was shadowbanned from the RA Discord not for anything I posted in the RA Discord or on the RA forums but presumably just for writing some blog entries covering Clovergate on a gaming fansite.
Interview with Kisumebuckets
To see Kisumebuckets’s developed sets on RA, click here.
October 19, 2025
FFV Central: Greetings. What led to the “NAZI MODS” achievement unlocks on your user profile on Retro Achievements?
A: That is kind of long. It has to do with a long running grudge the old moderation team had against me and my friends.
1. Wrongfully Dropped from Player Event
How I was excluded from an event (Leap Frog) for supposedly cheating in Haunted House for Atari 2600.
I disputed [Moderator A’s] accusations with a video and gave it to a few admins and the admin account but they ignored it.
When the host of the event said I could continue playing, [Moderator A] threatened to shut down the event entirely.
After I gave up and the event was over, they pretended nothing happened and the admin team said I didn’t cheat.
[Editor’s note: the moderator involved is reportedly still on the Events team today.]
2. Wrongfully Removed from Developer Role
Then, Dev Quest, another event happened.
There was a questionable set (Theme Park for SNES) that I fixed up, and my friends made a lot of tickets for it.
I was worried it would seem like cheating, so, I went to [the] admin [who was also the] event host [to ask] if it was alright for me to have event credit and explained the situation to him.
He said yes, and only for this one instance and no more.
After the event, things were fine until an anonymous document was dropped by the RAdmin account, detailing how I apparently cheated the set by not blocking in game cheats.
[B]izarre claim because that’s how the game saves your progress, and also how you transition between one level to the next.
I specifically blocked the cheat that was coded in that was printed in magazines and websites so the claim was even more bizarre.
When I made my defense I was ignored and that lead to me being permanently dev banned.
3. Wrongfully Banned from Global Leaderboards
So with nothing left, I loaded up a lot of copies of one of my favorite games, quickly spelled out “NAZIMODS”, in a silent act of defiance, and left without saying anything else.
They untracked me after that insisting that I had to have used cheat engine because the unlock times were fast (or was it because I just had everything loaded up because I had a plan? Not that they would care).
4. A Situation Like Clovergate Could Have Been Predicted
FFV Central: Considering the events you shared, and now learning about Clovergate and events surrounding it, do you draw parallels and think something like Clovergate was inevitable? What needs to change in the RA leadership today in your opinion?
A: Well, with my situation, there wasn’t a lot of communication between me and the people who were making claims and decisions. I spoke and they already knew what they wanted.
With Clover, Scott acted without communicating with his team.
A situation like Clovergate could have been predicted. Scott had done this when another game, “Street Fucker” was given a set. This was a very long time ago.
There was another situation where user-input Rich Presences being displayed on the front page caught his attention when he happened to spot someone using a slur with said RP. He wanted that user banned, and user-input RPs removed immediately.
I don’t know what would change in leadership today. Maybe someone who has more community passion, people who are more willing to talk with everyone, and not so much impulse. I have more specific criticisms with the moderation in general, but not related to this incident.
5. The Anti-Cheating Team … Is More of a Clique Than … a Group of Referees
FFV Central: Would you care to share your specific criticisms with the moderation in general?
A: In relation to the anti-cheating team, from what I have seen, it looks like the team is more of a clique than what would be expected: a group of referees. It’s hard to set up a team that doesn’t have some bias, but I’d be more willing to trust a group of strangers with individual experience and no stake in competition (in the global leaderboard) that convene, rather than people who are all friends in a chain of referrals and compete in the same space.
In relation to moderation of users, I would suggest keeping opinionated talk out of mind. It muddies up opinions of someone and creates a bias, something that I have seen happen on RA many times. I’ve seen how moderators talk behind closed doors, and sometimes it can be a bit much, calling random users “children” because they disagree or agree with someone else.
6. Cloning Hacks without Author Permission
FFV Central: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A: I was more interested in what I read about how hacks are handled and distributed on RA kind of carelessly without the original creators wishes.
This was something that I argued about way back when I was a dev and I made a set, Touhoumon Ordinary Edition [Editor’s note: link].
[Admin A] insisted it had to be mirrored on RA, and I warned him that’s really not a good idea.
There are a lot of Japanese rom hackers that will delete everything and leave the scene the moment they see their work mirrored without permission.
FFV Central: Understood. Thank you for sharing your side of the story.
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