Category: Retro Achievements

  • Retro Achievements Announces New Patreon Tier

    Warning: May Contain Satire

    To see JAM’s developed sets on RA, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube.

    Covered 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 coverage, please reach out to clymax directly.

    Original Link: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/36913

    July 31, 2026

    That post made me facepalm a several times and my forehead even hurts a little…

    This and also:

    the set developers, QA team, events

    I like how you put devs on the first place here while in reality you treat them like a shit.

    QA team

    The team crew itself should go through QA because of being incometent idiots, as well as other teams who knows better.

    I wonder what happened with other paRAsitic teams and why there were not listed here.

    Like DevComplaiance, Set Design team, Writing Team.

    When you need money you suddenly stopped shitting on devs telling everybody that devs can do nothing without a dozen elite teams controlling them?

    events

    Like that the recent Wii rollout event where you either playing a good games and being rewarded by crappy badge or playing a shitty press-X-to-win homebrews and being rewarded by the best badge?

    Or like that RAD event when the host didn’t had time and efforts to fucking post the links the lins to the games in this event but had time to spam every channel with stupid RAD memes to make everyone question WTF is “RAD”?

    Or that DevJam event that encourage devs to mass produce shitty sterile watered down set.

    fun and interesting

    And if something isn’t interesting and many people who didn’t even played the game are complaining we are removing it, regarding of the ones who actually earned an achievement.

    site a safe place for everyone to be,

    JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST.

    Your accessibility is locking me in a cage. ©

    When you make something for everyone, you’re making it for no one.

    keeping RA aligned with the original vision

    Original vision is everyone who wants to be a dev is becoming dev if they are competent enough for that.

    Without a dozen of paRAsitic teams doing with achievements everything they want without asking anyone.

    Without Junior Obedience program, 1984 different standards and waiting for months in queue until some big daddy will come and say to change everything to his liking.

    Since the servers have been paid for and we haven’t had concerns, there wasn’t a need to investigate this, until lately.

    You don’t like how shitty and slow the site became? It’s your fucking problem.

    Go upgrade your PC to play retro, scrub.

    Be thankful for every update we are bringing to the site or else…

    I’d say if your site is suffering from bots like ones from Internet Archive are harvesting the site all the time and you have to cut access for them then it certainly something wrong on your site.

    Prices for hosting have increased significantly due to surging global hardware costs, RAM supply shortages and rising energy expenses.

    Oh, what do you mean?

    Your v2 nobody asked for is now costs a lot? Who could have thought of that?

    What should we do? Right, let’s add a fucking annoying banner to every game and add more screenshots as 2 aren’t enough anymore.

    Maybe it’ll help us to save the money?

    Rather than adding adverts, lowering the server capabilities, adding premium paid accounts with more features

    How about a basic fucking optimization?

    Why your main page is over 1 megabite?

    Is there an mp3 file hidden somewhere in the code or what?

    Why a huge event forum post with a lot of links and participants is taking 1 minute to load with CPU 100% CPU usage on my machine? Like if I opened 20 livestreams in the same time.

    That feels like you’re mining coins on our PCs just to open forum page and now we are even encouraged to donate you money for that?

    That feels like exclusive early access option when you’re paying a $100 for a game instead of $60 to voluntarily work as a beta tester.

    To start this off, we are looking to add a new $2 Patreon Tier to allow you to be a “Super Supporter”

    But we will still treat you like a shit and if anything gets wrong from your side, we’ll dispose you without a second thought but still keep you in the donaters list to make an illusion that over 1000 people are donating every month.

    I’ll give you another idea. When you need money again, add a $5 tier with a ton of bells and whistles.

    You know, how a unicorns are fucking on rainbow when you put your mouse cursor over that badge. Basically, a Discord’s super reactions.

    Or course, everyone will play their PC resources to display that shit… er… sorry, that rainbowstorm.

    however if they were to charge us their currently advertised going-rate (which they could technically do at any time), in our current state we wouldn’t break even.

    What if people who have the most influence on RA would come and invest their own money?

    If all the mods, power team members and in general people who like to have a finger in every pie like Nepiki, suspect15, TMO, StingX2, Gollawiz, Fridge and Layton would donate $50 each, that would be up to $1000 each month.

    And in areas where most of them living in a $50 is almost nothing.

    Less than a modern game to buy. Less than a day of working.

    If would not be complately fair at that point but at least it would make sense.

    They would pay for servers, so they are setting the rules.

    Currently we have “we don’t pay for servers but we’ll tell you what to do”.

    RetroAchievements has always been a non-profit

    Non-profit doesn’t mean you need to spent all the money you earned during a month on some stupid shit.

    Have you tried saving and conserving money? Seems like not.

    People who’s bad at managing community and public discussions are also bad at managing money. What a surprise!

    Maybe conserving the excessive money you get every month for the future instead of sending them for something like that cringe $250 donation to GDQ? It has attracted some people, but worst kind of people.

    Offended By Everything.
    Ashamed Of Nothing.
    Entitled To Everything.
    Contributing Nothing.

    Another option. Switch all the way back to v1.

    A lot of people who’s actually using the site to play and develop sets (and not just dicking around and clicking buttons) are hating your fucking Zoomer website design and now it found out your bells and whistels are also expensive as fuck.

    Nothing is accessible by default and you need to double-triple click everywhere to reveal the needed information or open a new window to get the needed data.

    Your designers know nothing about the Golden Ratio, palette blends and basic user comfort.

    You have no idea how annoying and frustrating it is now to use the site from using search to get exact time and date of some event like forum post or achievement unlock.

    Of course, “10 years ago” will say more than “1 Aug 2016 12:34”.

    A fun yet sad fact. A site related to retrogaming is infested by modern trends.

    A basic PC setup to play retro games now isn’t enough to browse your site without slowdowns and having pain in the eyes.

    You know, when you’re usually touching retro games, you usually don’t need to upgrade your PC as they were made years ago and system requirements are pretty low but seems like RA is living in another dimension.

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  • Departed Developer UnsolidSnake’s Achievements Taken Down as “Unwelcome Concepts”

    Muted Just for Saying There Is a New Alternative for Playing Those Achievements

    To see UnsolidSnake’s developed sets on RA, click here.

    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.

    Related Post:

    Original Link: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/26361?comment=403197#403197

    July 22, 2026

    Moving Goalposts of “Unwelcome Concepts” Cited

    Were these achievements justified to be demoted?

    Some users speak out.

    Muted for Response in the Set’s Official Forum Topic

    Well, thanks for showing why I want nothing to do with this site anymore.

    If anyone actually likes them, I have a significantly improved implementation. Message me if you are interested.

    The site mute was handed down even though the alternative was not even mentioned by name.

    A site-muted user cannot post in the forums or even respond to direct messages on the site.

    Was a site mute even warranted here? What forum rule was broken anyway?

    Related Post:

    This post has been viewed 43 time(s).

  • Retro Achievements Announces Set Destruction Team

    Warning: May Contain Satire

    Covered 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 coverage, please reach out to clymax directly.

    Original Link: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/35823?page=1

    May 9, 2026

    Because RetroAchievements can’t have enough departments, today we’re introducing another new department, the Set Destruction team!

    This department will help dumb down the difficulty of achievements even more than ever.

    And by forming another department, no member of the team will need to take personal accountability for any decisions made by the department.

    Yes, even if the decisions are total BS.

    This should help us appeal even more to the dirty RetroArch casuals who never visit our website except to register.

    Yes, we’re throwing serious players and legacy devs under the bus, yet again.

    Starting with seventeen devs and thirteen players from the community with all sorts of ideas on how to vandalize sets, this team will work to:

    • Butcher older sets.
    • Make lives even more miserable for active devs by telling them how they must make their sets.
    • Tell active devs how they must make their subsets.

    We look forward to a glorious new era of set destruction, and so should you!

    This post has been viewed 30 time(s).

  • Retro Achievements Suddenly Claims Achievement Logic is “Proprietary”

    New Language Silently Added to “Legal & Terms” Page

    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.

    Opinion Piece by clymax

    Original Link: https://retroachievements.org/terms

    February 23, 2026

    The following new section was added via a Pull Request here with seemingly no announcement made on the website (emphasis added):

    Achievement Data

    Achievement titles, descriptions, and related metadata may be referenced or reused by third parties (eg: for tracking sites or community tools).

    Achievement trigger logic (the code and conditions that define how achievements are evaluated) is proprietary to the RetroAchievements community and may not be reused, redistributed, or reproduced without explicit permission. The GPL-3 license covering the RetroAchievements web application source code does not extend to achievement data.

    This claim may be questionable for many reasons.

    Achievement [trigger] logic may not necessarily be protectible by copyright. But let’s set that aside from now.

    To the extent that the achievement logic is protectible by copyright, the copyright vests, at least initially, in the achievement author. Not in Retro Achievements.

    According to their Developer Code of Conduct here:

    Achievement Ownership

    When you publish your work you are giving it over to the community to be reviewed and reworked over time….

    This language, however, does not necessarily mean that achievement authors transfer copyright to Retro Achievements.

    Neither does it necessarily mean that Retro Achievements has any exclusive license to use the achievement logic.

    It could mean that Retro Achievements has at best a non-exclusive license to use the achievement logic.

    In that scenario, only the achievement authors have authority to decide whom else can “reuse[], redistribute[], or reproduce[]” the achievement logic.

    Retro Achievements would have no authority, under copyright, to tell any party that he or she cannot “reuse[], redistribute[], or reproduce[]” the achievement logic.

    So, Retro Achievements, what gives?

    This post has been viewed 24 time(s).