Category: censorship

  • Retro Achievements Moderators Silently Delete RA Legend Salsa’s Entire Devlog Presumably as Punishment

    Clovergate Prologue, Part 2

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

    She Called Them an Autocratic Regime. Retro Achievements Confirmed it by Deleting the Entire Devlog of an RA Legend.

    If this is how Retro Achievements treats even one of its best longtime contributors—5,407 achievements created plus Legend Award from site founder Scott himself—what you can expect as a new player or junior developer? Exactly.

    Original Link to Comments (Now Deleted): https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/19536

    Original Link to Devlog (Now Deleted): https://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=1738

    Old Backup via Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20220306062656/https://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=1738

    Sample Screenshots of the Now-Deleted Devlog

    [Editor’s note: the following comments were posted before her devlog was deleted. The set in question is Arc the Lad 3 (PSX), available here.]

    March 28, 2025

    You are acting like an autocratic regime here.

    Yeah, I logged in only to write a comment here. And I did that hearing about this thing randomly, not being asked to do it or anything like that. In the official topic I saw this set was actively updated, until 1 month ago, but it was worked on for more then 2 years. Knowing those series, how detailed they are inside, and how much work will require to make a good set, I’m not surprised it could take this long. Especially if someone is not a nolife, who can spend all their time being glued to this site. Undermining creativity, and lack of respect for the work of others will probably be always the biggest problem here. A problem, which caused some very valuable people to leave. And in the name of what? Numbers? Being higher than someone on some stupid list, that means nothing? And your rules here. You are acting like an autocratic regime here. Using rules as an offensive weapon against one of the most valued (and clearly undervalued) creators. Rules should only be a defensive weapon against abusers and individuals who are generally harmful to the community or content. I often was in awe of what Alena could do, she had exceptional ideas and extremely immersive creativity. Go ahead RA, make another big step into becoming a pile of gray goo. I will miss you less. The system of claims has a fatal flaw – it will always go against cooperation. Whole site should be all about it, cooperation within creative passion. But better have something to pump your own egos instead, right? Everyone is replaceable for you it seems.

    [Moderator A:] Alena hadn’t logged in or communicated with anyone in more than two months. Sometimes people just lose interest and leave without saying a word. We can’t hold sets for them indefinitely.

    She’s still welcome to be a developer if she wishes.

    You think throwing a formal bs like this at me will fix this issue? Have you ever thought that for some people it’s harder to communicate, or that there is a serious reason why someone is not communicating for 2 months? RetroAchievements might not be the whole world for someone, and they can’t vanish suddenly because their life is falling apart for example.

    Responding to her just with “she is welcome to be a developer if she wishes”, when she is clearly heartbroken with whole situation is only dismissive, and you know well that she won’t take it lightly, but you still hold this position. Especially when she worked on this for so long and for a reason. This is not a game that can be wrought within few evenings, especially when someone wants to cover it immenesly [sic].

    [Editor’s note: subheading added.]

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  • Response of Aeliana, 73rd-Ranked Player on Retro Achievements

    You can follow Aeliana on RA or check out his RA intro 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.

    Global Points Ranking Leaderboard

    October 18, 2025

    Censorship is Not the Answer

    I do not agree with the decision to ban Pokemon Clover (nor Custer’s Revenge, nor any game that is not illegal) from having a set on RetroAchievements.

    The RetroAchievements Code of Conduct is (was?) very clear:

    The presence of an achievement set on our platform does not constitute endorsement of a game’s content, its developers’ views, or its creators’ personal beliefs. Users have control over their experience through our content filtering and warning systems. Games containing mature or potentially offensive content are marked accordingly, and users can adjust their settings to control what they see.

    I am disappointed that – against the will of much of his staff – the founder of RetroAchievements did not see it fit to uphold this Code of Conduct in the face of pressure from far-left extremist interests who would seek to not only demonize and cancel media that is in conflict with their own worldview, but also mischaracterize & morally demean any and all users who do not conform to their agenda.

    Their analogy of choice is that Pokemon Clover is a racist work and filled with intolerance-normalizing “hate speech,” therefore anyone who would want to play & earn achievements in Pokemon Clover is a “nazi,” and that tolerance of a single “nazi” will result in more and more “nazis” feeling validated, ultimately transforming RetroAchievements into a “nazi bar.” Nothing could be further from the truth… and it is ironic that the solution to “intolerance” is “more intolerance,” and also ironic that the nazis burned books that they deemed weren’t fit for society… but I digress.

    I like to think that while ~10% of RetroAchievements users are actual racists and ~10% are far-left extremists, the remaining ~80% are normal people who would be able to enjoy Pokemon Clover (and Family Guy, and South Park, and countless other satirical works in mainstream media) because we can compartmentalize “fantasy” vs. “real life” in our brains and – against all odds – still manage to have a sense of humor in the year of our lord 2025. And I say this as a racially mixed minority who has been subjected to instances of real-life racism, so I’m pretty sure I’m not a racist myself.

    This is a slippery slope; if Pokemon Clover is glamorizing “hate speech” and racist ideologies, then Call of Duty & Battlefield are glamorizing war, Grand Theft Auto is glamorizing crime, and the list goes on. Either all of it is okay or none of it is okay. And if none of it is okay, well, we won’t have many video games left to play when the dust settles.

    I urge the founder of RetroAchievements to uphold his own Code of Conduct and let users curate their own experience by means of mature content filtering features. If we are bullied by Group A into removing Game A, then we’ve established a precedent where Group B can bully us into removing Game B, Group C can bully us into removing Game C, and so on – to the detriment of the overwhelming majority of RetroAchievements users. Censorship is not the answer.

    [Editor’s note: subheading added.]

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