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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.
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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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