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Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which was one of the aims of Moderator BahamutVoid in leaving his farewell letter not long after Administrator televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.
Subheadings added during the editorial process.
Original Post: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/33246
November 15, 2025
It Reminds Me of 1939
Hey everyone,
I just wanted to put this out there to get it off my chest. I know this statement isn’t “important” in the grand scheme of things, and I’m not pretending that I’m important either — but this whole situation has bothered me so deeply that I feel the need to say something publicly. Not to start drama, not to reopen old wounds, but simply to express how unfairly I felt treated and to offer this as constructive criticism.
A bit of background: I’ve been a supporter of RetroAchievements. I created three sets — not many, but I was active, I cared about the site, and I genuinely loved being part of the community.
The issue that started everything was the ban of the Pokémon Clover hack. Whenever people tried to have a constructive, meaningful discussion about the decision, the topics were shut down (like here : https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32785) — usually with explanations that felt weak or dismissive. Because of that, I opened my own thread to lay out my thoughts again. (Here : https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32808)
That thread was then closed as well within minutes. And yes — I reopened it again (here : https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32810), 1:1, purely because I wanted the conversation to continue and because I felt my points hadn’t been heard at all. For doing that, I was muted for an entire month. No warning, no real explanation. Just silenced. Completely excessive and nothing more than a show of force. Especially since I have never done anything wrong and have never been muted — not even warned — before.
And that hurt. Not because of the mute itself, but because it made me feel like my voice didn’t matter at all. I wrote the admin team a long message explaining why I reopened the topic, and I never received a response. It felt like my concerns — and the concerns of others who tried to discuss it — were simply swept aside. The inconsistency around what gets banned and what doesn’t was never addressed, and being shut down for trying to talk about it just felt incredibly unfair. I recently deleted that message because, out of pure disappointment, I had added that I wasn’t surprised there was no reply. But due to the previous events and the arbitrariness I experienced, I was afraid my account might get deleted. That’s how far it has come — that you stay silent out of fear of repercussions. It reminds me of 1939.
It’s possible that, while I was involuntarily “absent” for over a month, things have changed, discussions have happened, and new rules have been implemented. Maybe the situation has calmed down. If so, great — genuinely. I’m not here to reignite conflict.
I just needed to express what happened to me and how wrong the handling of the situation felt — both the way the topic was managed and the way I personally was treated. I love RetroAchievements, and that’s exactly why this whole thing hit me so hard. It just wasn’t okay, neither for me nor for others who were affected.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
edit: Since I’m German, I used ChatGPT to translate, and I found the message I had sent to the admins. I’d like to include it here for the sake of completeness.
Hello,
I’d like to respectfully ask for a review of the one-month silence that was recently applied to my account. I genuinely don’t believe my behavior justified such a severe measure, and I’d like to explain what happened from my perspective.
I started a topic to discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding the banned set for the Pokémon hack. The discussion wasn’t meant to question one single game’s removal, but to talk about the inconsistency of moderation decisions in general. Many users, not just me, have pointed out that if rules are applied to one title, those same standards should apply to others — otherwise, the reasoning behind such bans appears arbitrary and unclear.
The point of my thread was simply to encourage an open, constructive discussion about this issue, because the same topic keeps resurfacing. Unfortunately, every time it comes up, the threads are locked before any meaningful exchange can happen. So I opened a new thread, hoping we could finally talk about the moderation policy itself rather than specific games.
That thread, too, was closed shortly after I posted it — even though I took great care to remain polite, factual, and non-confrontational. Out of frustration, I re-posted the same text, because it felt absurd to have a calm and reasoned topic shut down for discussing the fact that topics get shut down.
I fully understand that copy-pasting the post may have been seen as spam, but I assure you it came from a place of genuine disappointment, not hostility. I’ve been a long-time supporter of this site and really care about the community. Seeing important discussions repeatedly silenced is disheartening, and being muted for an entire month on top of that feels disproportionate.
I’m not trying to start another argument — I simply ask to be unsilenced, or at least to have the duration reduced. I also hope that, moving forward, the community can have a space to openly discuss moderation standards and the reasoning behind such decisions. That kind of transparency would benefit everyone.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
I truly appreciate all the work you do for the site, and I hope we can clear this up fairly.Best regards,
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