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 Admin televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped. To see ladynadia’s developed sets on RA, click here. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.
I honestly am appalled by the announcement and how it completely denied any threats happened. That is such an obvious lie when I definitely saw one publicly posted in one of the now nuked threads and I’m sure plenty more happened that I didn’t see. To be honest, I don’t feel comfortable contributing in a community where gaslighting is going to happen, people can harass and threaten and get their way, and harassers walk away with a slap on the wrist. If we can’t even agree that it was wrong for people to respond to allowing content that contains hate speech with hate and threats then there is a far more serious problem and I do not feel this was truly addressed and instead swept under the rug and hidden away.
I don’t care about certain games getting banned even though I am very against censorship and feel it only draws more attention to the problematic content which was proven a few days ago. I care about the fact that people were harassed and threatened and that our highest level staff bowed and complied with what those people wanted and showed that hate will give them what they want.
I would be interested in that discord server, but to be honest, I am not sure if I wish to continue to contribute to RA. I will finish my current claims of course because I’m not going to screw over users who were excited about those games getting sets just because the mods don’t care and would rather pretend nothing happened than be honest to users and especially those who have volunteered their time to create content for users.
Farewell Letter from Moderator BahamutVoid of Retro Achievements
Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which was one of the aims of BahamutVoid in leaving his letter. To see BahamutVoid’s developed sets on RA, click here. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.This letter follow’s Admin televandalist’s resignation letter, which is covered here.
TL;DR RetroAchievements supports openness but only when it’s convenient.
I know that a week ago I had no intention of leaving the site. I was hard at work on Umbrella Chronicles, finalising the Parasite Eve 2 revision and subsets, and had just finished the Sonic 1 maintenance overhaul. I genuinely thought I was in for the long haul, the site was running better than ever and we had a lot of cool stuff planned. I might’ve even gotten around to proposing Console Wars II that used global site data for that week, alongside the original system, for some added fun.
Instead I, BahamutVoid, am leaving permanently. It’s become increasingly apparent given recent threats that the project’s current trajectory is unsustainable and RA’s best days are long behind us. Therefore I’m offering up the most transparency as I can so that everyone in the community and outside can have a full understanding on whether they want to be part of RetroAchievements.
Let’s start with a timeline. It started when we mods received a thinly-veiled threat from a user, claiming the site’s administration “not only tolerates 4chan culture—the type that has been repeatedly demonstrated to cultivate the mentality that led to the current fascist uprising around the globe—it actually encourages and celebrates it” and that nobody involved could be trusted to handle this in good faith. This ended with a demand that we cease all development on the Pokemon Clover hack, or else they were going to use their industry contacts and campaign RA users to leave the site in droves. They then left their account and said they were exploring the idea of using our open-source nature to create a competitor. They were ultimately muted for a year following their comments on Clover’s game page publicly harassing other users who were looking forward for the achievement set, and another post in our 10th of September Code of Conduct reminder announcement.
My initial response proposed the long standing want to implement content filtering options to the site. We currently have an Adult hub with limited functionality but over the years developer additions deviated it away from the original purpose; it was meant to hide sets for those who didn’t know the full context of what they were getting into, not act as a general 18+ hub for games like Grand Theft Auto and God of War.
This is the ideal compromise where neither side is fully satisfied. Those who didn’t want to see content didn’t have to, and those that did only had to enable a setting in their profile. Our original stance on content moderation was not subjective, it was an objective need to only prevent encouraging users to have games that are illegal to own. This was to protect the site from any potential legal issues. Wes took the threat at face value, an understandable response, and decided that we should respond as soon as possible while we still controlled the narrative. Many of us in the discussion did not want to respond to threats, it’s not a good stance for any passion project and would show that this type of pressure works which may come back to bite us in the future (foreshadowing).
I want to make this as clear as I possibly can. Everyone involved in the initial discussion was in favour of staying out of content moderation, which includes: Nepiki, Suffa, Hexadigital, myself, tele, SporyTike, LordAndrew, wes, and finally Scott himself. Everybody involved was pinged before the initial announcement was sent out to voice any concerns. Scott thanked us for this being “handled perfectly”: “I’m 100% happy with and support the decisions taken so far that represent RA (i.e. Wes news post).
They did not want a neutral response, they wanted an immediate change to how we handle a sensitive topic. I made it clear multiple times that we should have actual functionality in place before any kind of public action to strengthen our agreed stance. Nepiki found what appeared to be their old twitter. We quickly agreed this person was lying through their teeth to force change instead of actually contributing to a contribution project. I again pointed out there was no need for an immediate response and we should implement anything reasonable in the meantime to strengthen our long-held internal stance on content moderation. Instead, it gets posted. Directly into the Clover thread.
This went as well as you would expect. Instead of a general reminder of what the team already thought, it was made about Clover specifically. Wes, who initially wrote up the announcement, disappears until I bring them up again. The announcement has since been deleted. Despite the complete confidence from before, damage control begins. The use of “archival” doesn’t land in the way we intended. Replies are posted by the administration in the forum but only make it worse. Scott intervenes to kill Clover’s ongoing development directly. Suddenly it’s not just about Clover, we’re considering making sweeping changes to other games because Bluesky is blowing up. Magicking up criteria without much discussion in an attempt to appease users we would later find out most don’t even use the site.
In the midst of all this the second mistake happens. The post is moved away from Clover’s forum to the front page. This went as well as you would expect. Even though it wasn’t about Clover, everyone know thought it was. Now it’s proudly displayed for every visitor.
Tele leaves. Censorship of any kind is very big deal to them and considering how quickly all of this 180’d, I do not blame them for opting out. Auburn is concerned about site growth and optics, Scott isn’t really about that. Scott then for the rest of this discussion keeps contradicting himself, in any effort to find the correct path forward.
I come back after trying to moderate the discord. I point out that backpedalling was a mistake but get told that by Scott that it’s their decision. The team is now writing up an apology announcement in order to save face. Auburn later edits the wording away from any future filtering system.
For any of you reading and thinking this was a good thing; nobody involved took the necessary amount of time to discuss things, have everyone’s opinions and concerns heard, and ultimately decide to change our stance. A few members made a reactionary decision in order to save face. For those of you who disagree with the stance we ultimately took, you are right to believe that we flipflopped our decision. That’s exactly what happened. There are many stances we could’ve chosen to take on this issue, none of them inherently right or wrong despite what the extremes of both sides would say. What we instead picked was a position of fear, of the retaliation we convinced ourselves we would face, and that is not in any way a strong stance to take.
Some of the team convince themselves that this would only be related to a small selection of games while others point out that without solid criteria, that is actually explored in full, we are setting ourselves up for future failure. To copy Nepiki’s phrasing, some of us at this point “don’t feel we can object to” Scott’s overrule. The apology announcement goes live. This went as well as you would expect. It’s the early hours of the morning for the European mods and admins, including Scott, at this point. I clean up Clover’s page because that’s the logical next step.
Nobody’s happy now. Those with extreme views from both sides object to the use of “both sides” because it validates the other’s existence. Scott assures us we’re fully in the content moderation side of things now. Scott was very concerned over being doxxed and receiving death threats, later it was shared to me by Wes they hadn’t been personally targeted. We don’t know that at the time so we continue on our flipflopping in any effort to appease angry users that were understandably furious that we now had no real stance.
I’m back to moderating the discord. Surprisingly enough our users are having a much more sensible discussion about the pros and cons of content moderation vs. content filtering. People also point out that bowing to any hate mob guarantees that it’ll be followed up with more demands (foreshadowing). Bluesky users continue to act as expected. Then we’re having to moderate users who are full of hate. They want their side acknowledged and that everyone who doesn’t agree should be removed from the community. Bad faith Clover supporters attempt to wash away any reasonable stance given by more understanding users. The “hate never wins” crowd continue to spread as much hate as possible. Both sides feel that they can just ignore the code of conduct because they’re in the right.
Misinformation spreads on Bluesky like wildfire. We apparently develop Retroarch and actively participated in the bullying of Near (emulator dev). Despite anybody’s claims to the contrary, Clover has been the highest requested Pokemon hack for years and was in active development. It was solely the initial announcement that drew this much attention to it.
Wilhite points out that this is a dangerous road we’ve started on and that it won’t be limited to a few select games (foreshadowing). Compromise is completely out the window now, we’ve not only abandoned our initial stance but abandoned any part of our community that didn’t want Clover delisted. Some members of the teams adopt the same stance they’ve seen elsewhere, let’s just keep going with content moderation until the voices quiet down.
Now we have the thing that nobody wants to mention, and for good reason. Remember Auburn suddenly having a change of heart? They inform us that Dolphin and Horizon were threatening to pull support, as well as our members who shout us out at GDQ. It’s quite common where the admin team have a discussion in a separate channel, forget that they haven’t filled us in on anything, and then expect us to action their stance with no discussion. In their defence, Auburn probably never felt this because of how quickly they went from Mod to Admin.
Only here, after all of this, do we have an actual discussion of what moderating content looks like. It needed pointed out that any decision we make needs to be final because we need to account for later platforms and also later administration who may not be able to ask us for clarification. You quickly start to notice that every subjective criteria has exceptions that don’t make sense to ban. A case-by-case basis makes our decisions look random and biased. Scott electing to take the blame makes the rest of the team feel pointless and powerless.
It’s now the morning for me and I wasn’t exactly well rested before all this happened. Turns out, our reddit is acting normal. The discord is acting normal. Bluesky continues to set fire to itself and blame us for providing matches. We even have a Kiwifarms thread (not a shoutout).
Do you remember Wes? They’re back! I’m not sure if they’ve been busy in the admin thread or elsewhere but we finally get some guidance on where to go from here. “I don’t think I’m in any position mentally to offer any kind of diplomatic solutions to the problem. I want to be most helpful, so if there are technical things I can do I’m happy to work on those things.” Which would’ve been great, before the announcement went out.
I still think filtering can work. We discuss some finer points before we’re dragged back to discussing demoting sets that had nothing to do with the initial outrage. We found out that even 4chan is acting tamer than Bluesky. Especially by their normal standards.
Everything’s calmed down enough that we’re now actioning users who broke the code of conduct. Unless something is particularly egregious, we normally vote on warns and bans to avoid making situations worse. This understandably isn’t apparent to some who don’t think we’re doing anything, they can’t see that posts have been removed and users banned, and only fill up the comments more complaining that nothing is done. Instead of walking away to cool off, they add even more work and risk getting banned themselves. We’re coming up to the the 24 hour mark since the initial threat was received. We are understandably exhausted. Nepiki needs to step away. I find this as enough reassurance that I can also step away. People flood the Clover comments even though they’ve already been flushed. A non-staff user has been doxxed and Wes mentions this should result in a full ban (foreshadowing).
After all this, I get a message. There is a screenshot of me saying that I do not want to prevent Clover from getting achievements. I keep being asked why, and why I’m ignoring the messages. At this point I have barely slept as is and and I’m definitely not at the computer. Then a picture of my newborn is posted.
Both screenshots were taken directly by someone with access to the moderation channels. Somebody I have worked with for years has betrayed my privacy. That person is currently still there.
Not remotely being able to deal with this, I retreat completely. I shut down all of my online presence that I can remember, wildly thinking about how and why this happened. I don’t touch the discord and reach out for real life support. I am a very private person intentionally, one of the only places I felt comfortable sharing what was going on in my life was RA. This is a reminder to anyone online that you are one disgruntled user away from having to rethink your entire way of life.
Eventually I reached out to Wes, a semi-public figure who has had to deal with similar harassment during their lifetime. They seemed the least likely involved to have done an otherwise hypocritical act. We talked through the proof provided, and were deciding next steps. They offered to let a few people they trusted in the loop but I did not share any of this trust. They had switched their initial position and anyone included could’ve benefitted from a scapegoat, concerning given that some users were already asking for anyone involved to be forcibly removed from the community.
I have already confirmed with Wes that, from the technical side, nobody outside of those who have access to the moderation channels could have taken this information. I also confirmed that there was nothing suspicious about my discord logs. I was given 24 hours to write up a message addressing the one(s) responsible within our moderation chat.
I send my message informing the entire management circle that I had been doxxed, and then return to my family’s damage control. Wes confirmed the evidence was credible. An outpouring of support followed. Almost 2 hours later Scott acknowledges the violation of trust that took place but otherwise stands by their new stance. They either don’t acknowledge or simply misinterpret the majority of my post, and I am made to feel that it’s my responsibility to prevent this from happening to others. He offers to call me, one of the most out of touch things possible to ask someone after having their privacy leaked.
Less than 15 minutes later, another announcement goes out. It proudly claims that they are sticking to their new stance. The draft version included this message: “There have been no confirmed doxxing attempts or threats directed at RetroAchievements staff. We have confirmed doxxing took place within our community however, and the perpetrators have been permanently banned. We take the safety of all community members seriously and will continue to act swiftly against such behavior.” Which is a stark contrast to the version that went live: “No direct threats have been confirmed at this time, and any that might arise would not alter the decisions above. Our moderation team has addressed all reported threats within the community. We take member safety seriously and will continue to act decisively against such conduct.” All of the announcement remains unedited, despite my situation.
My message to the administration was what I felt seemed to give the most respect to both myself and the community. Some of the positive responses following the announcement make the same previous demand of ousting those who supported the initial position.
By the time I had returned to the computer, I had been removed as a moderator. I was informed via site message that this was intended to prevent me from being targeted further. I specifically had asked for an honest discussion on where we went next. Instead there has only been silence. Instead of waiting for any response, it was settled that I needed protecting. If I was truly in that state, I would not have publicly addressed the entire team in the first place. Yet another heavy handed approach, if the leaker had any input in this decision then they effectively silenced me. It felt reasonable for me to have left the community then and there. Especially because a target was painted on my back once the lack of mod role was quickly noticed.
This is everything that’s happened behind closed doors. Originally I only wrote all this out as a way of dealing with my situation and didn’t intend to post it.
What Wes was intentionally left in the dark about was that the rest of that message thread also included personal information. Nobody, no matter how far up the ladder, was ruled out. It was also not part of my message addressing the mod and admin teams in the hope that the person responsible would slip up by revealing something they shouldn’t know. I do not know how this information was obtained, I have never posted about my personal life anywhere tied to this name, and frankly I do not care what method was used. I did not want to further paint myself as a victim to someone who already thought they were getting away with it.
But I know how these things go. This is only my word on it and I expect that after this message goes out, the team will go into full damage control and may drag up any negative thing about me to claim that my recollection is unreliable and to please trust that they have your concerns in mind. Even though before this they’ve been completely fine with the way I’ve contributed my time and energy to the project. You will notice that they have never brought this up beforehand.
Unfortunately for those who were complicit in this retaliation, Discord doesn’t remove you from the channel you’re currently in when you lose a role (foreshadowing). That is why I’m sharing the entire discussion and surrounding context at the bottom of this document.
This is the full timeline of events:
“Workshop – mod-forum – Why I do not feel safe here” thread
“End of Mod Chat” image from the “Workshop – mod-general” channel
“Released Announcement by Scott” image
“End of Mod Role” image from BahamutVoid’s RA inbox
“Scott Admits No Pressure” from the “Retroachievements.org – gaming” channel Everything else included is to more accurately show how those on the teams really felt. Images reflect my UK timezone which is currently UTC+1. It was brought up, hopefully innocently, during the initial thread. As my information is now out there in the wild, I feel it doesn’t make sense to hide this. Keep in mind that admin-only channels are inaccessible so there will still be unprovable context from them.
Scott. Assuming what you said to tele was true, I can understand how you initially acted was to protect your own family. But the results of your further actions ultimately risked my own. If what you said wasn’t true, you deliberately misinformed members of the administration, the achievement developer, and the community as a whole, jeopardising the entire project by appealing to a hate mob. The messages I’ve received since the mod role was noticed missing have not been kind. The final announcement as of writing is that there were “no direct threats”.
The original mod channels are now hidden from me. Had I not prepared in advance, all potential proof would have otherwise vanished. I am providing this much context via other files only in an effort to show its legitimacy. Keep in mind that optics are the focus right now, apply everything that’s said publicly with the scrutiny it deserves. I have not retaliated against the site itself in any way, however reducing my online presence in response to this may have broken links that were posted previously.
It’s already known that they’re deleting or hiding everything they can in an effort to reframe things. If you didn’t see a update for any information in the initial thread, the mod channel, or the mod forum, then it wasn’t factored into the decisions made. The files help protect against any retconning attempts.
They tell you to message RAdmin if you need to. From what I saw, they only responded to the positive responses and mocked others. While claiming to only moderate those extremely opposed to the ruling, they also shut down all discussion. Tele’s wall remained the only way to express your opinion without being muted or banned. That didn’t mean your comments weren’t be removed. The mod team considers the “o7” salute to automatically mean something nefarious. Yet the “Big Boss” salute reaction in the discord remains. People are afraid to speak out. The administration overwrote the opinions of many in the community to appease those who threatened actions against the project. Everybody in the community was lied to.
As I’m writing this I am not aware of any action against the leaker. All the same people have all the same roles. I have been given very little time with which to structure any kind of response, and given the nature of this whole thing I am forced to act alone against a group that are now proven to manipulate facts. Nothing in this document is intended to be libel or slander. It was written with the knowledge that it is backed up with evidence directly from the discord, normally away from prying eyes.
It wasn’t an easy choice to post this, in fact it is unironically one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Right up until the last moment, I still considered letting it remain buried and just silently leaving. I’ve made good friends in this community, worked alongside people for years now who absolutely do not deserve to be swept into this. The numerous people who had no horse in this race, simply wanted to contribute and leave any of this to those they thought were responsible in their positions. I’ve contributed many sleepless nights for the achievement sets I’ve worked on and the community I feel that I’ve helped out. I haven’t even properly played much from the site in the last few years. Even then, I also let the community down by not being involved in the discussion more.
To be upfront, the only thing I have done to this archive is remove the images of my children. I did this at the insistence of my better half who has grounded me throughout this whole ordeal. It is otherwise, to my knowledge, an identical representation of the discord.
To begin I only started backing all up this over fear that I would be removed after informing the administration that I had been doxxed. There was never an intention to post it, but I never imagined that my doxxing would be taken so lightly. I was right to fear retaliation.
I want it understood that I never made anyone aware of this archive before making it public, especially not to use as a threat. I did not want to use these backups to coerce anyone into a decision fearing backlash, since it would only make me as bad as those I condemn.
DO NOT use anything within this archive as a means to, in any way, harass or otherwise cause harm to anyone included. This is meant to be for transparency only. If you want to see change on the site, its administration, or anyone in its community, I insist that you do so civilly. I was targeted during all of this, when there’s a different crisis there’s nothing suggesting the same won’t happen to you too.
Regardless of what ultimately happened, the mod and admin teams worked throughout the initial night, despite being volunteers. But a line has been crossed and the trust is broken.
Again, I want it made absolutely clear, that this is not intended to target anyone or “destroy” RA. We have had a long standing problem with transparency and role abuse, and no meaningful efforts have been made to prevent those issues from happening in the future.
I have been made forcibly aware that anything posted on discord is merely a screenshot or forward away from being shared elsewhere.
I trust all of you to be able to read everything provided and make an informed decision to decide if this is still the right place for you.
This spiralled because people allowed it to. Even those that didn’t agree with the change in stance did not speak up enough. These actions have forever damaged the community and to brush it off as “we’ll bounce back” is insulting to anyone who cares about this site. It doesn’t deserve to be swept under the rug while also lying to them about what happened, all for the sake of optics. I am not perfect either. In the past there have been issues where I didn’t feel strongly enough to object or knowledgeable enough to propose alternatives, and I regret that.
You may still think this is a weird hill to die on. It’s not, for all the previous times I’ve weighed the pros and cons and ultimately decided to back down. I’m out of good faith, and I can’t convince myself to back down anymore.
So, I’ve decided to burn this bridge. I have been unhappy in the community for some time and there were always things that didn’t seem fair or right. We are a contribution project, often guided by those who only passively consume or benefit adjacently. We dictate how to participate, and gatekeep those who don’t fit into the admittedly flimsy documentation. We actively encourage the site to have unchecked growth without caring if it’s sustainable. There will never be enough contributors to match the ideal that people expect RA to be, seeing it instead as a service. As has been mentioned by plenty, this was “bound to happen at some point”. But that doesn’t make it okay, or unavoidable.
If you agree that this information should be buried in any way, I think it’s fair to assume you are also complicit in everything that has transpired over the last week. Anybody who contributed to any kind of harassment, misinformation, or threats towards RA and anyone in its community are equally responsible for escalating this to its ultimate outcome. We are in a time where online privacy is on the way out. It would be the height of hypocrisy to claim that any of the actions taken against me were worth it in the end and also claim that you are entitled to any sort of private life.
With all that out of the way, let’s begin the grievances about this situation.
Tele left because they thought content filtering would’ve been a good compromise. I agree with that, you would never even know the set was on the site unless you enable an option letting you. Nobody would see any extra points attributed to your account unless they also had the option enabled. It wouldn’t able to be linked to, show up in search results, or exist in any meaningful way on the site. Moving sets in and out of the hub is much less destructive than what’s being done right now. A quick reminder to those that aren’t familiar with how things work here, anything site facing must be SFW. It is not difficult to avoid mentioning certain things that happen in-game and still have understandable achievement criteria.
177 is an abhorrent game, I would hope nobody would argue against that in good faith. Mobygames has a page for it, GameFAQs has a guide for it, it had an achievement set for it and Scott singlehandedly decided to remove it from the site. People who mastered it have had it stripped from them. Even if we have a filtering system in the future, it has been scrubbed from the server.
Custer’s Revenge has a Wikipedia page. It was made famous years after its release when covered by the Angry Video Game Nerd. While it may have been shocking to sell at the time, nowadays the visuals are so comically outdated that it barely counts as visually NSFW. It also had a set. This wasn’t explicitly banned by Scott, Wes decided to scrub it. It’s also gone along with any mastery badges earned. No filtering again, it’s a final action.
These are both officially released games. 177 was released twice even. It is not a reflection on you when playing them, and the site doesn’t condone anything within just because it adds achievements. For those concerned that it rewards playing them, that was the point of a filtering system. To remove the incentive while still focusing on what challenges could be made out of the actual gameplay.
Clover is a Pokemon hack. It is a self-titled parody of both 4chan culture and Pokemon itself. Whether you believe that disclaimer is sincere or not, every single parody in existence has also been held to the same scrutiny. Weird Al famously made music parodies mainstream, before that it was either treated as plagiarism or criticism. They wouldn’t stand up on their own. Having played it, I can tell you right now that I cannot understand how some see this as an indoctrination piece. Even if it was intended to be, the execution sabotages that purpose and prevents it from being taken sincerely. Even South Park is more grounded than this. The idea that someone could be convinced to believe that anything in this hack resembles the real world is insulting to anyone who is capable of independent thought. The concerns about younger aged users coming across it were valid. That’s why a filtering option was being considered. They would never see it. That said, the worst part of all this is that from a technical standpoint it is one of the best designed hacks around the time of its release. The amount of new content and features genuinely makes it stand out from its contemporaries. For anyone who is on the fence, I encourage you to try it from a position that it is a time capsule of early millennium internet culture that we have hopefully moved on from. And I say this as as a member of a group who are depicted negatively in the hack. It’s shock humour, it’s not supposed to feel good. It’s the same reason people watch horror movies, you are engaging with something that in the real world is not good for you. Overall it’s a safer way to engage with it. It allows you to face those issues and hopefully come out the other side better for it.
Periwinkle is another Pokemon hack with achievements that was scrubbed from the site. Ultimately the decision to remove it was based on only two criteria, which were its loose association with Clover and Wes using AI to scan the game’s script. Once again, a difference from the way we normally operate. Minimal due diligence was taken. The priority was getting an announcement out as soon as possible.
I have been informed by a trusted member of the community that the developer who was working on Clover has since regretted dropping their claim because it was amidst pressure specifically from “Scott and wes, etc.” and that they “feel like leaving now, but can’t really do it after investing so much time”. The developer themself was coerced to drop development only because Scott claimed they were being threatened and doxxed. Given their statement that no credible threats had been confirmed, this makes even the initial action the site took based on a manipulation.
There are already more games up on the chopping block. There is no objective criteria, unlike the previous legality rules, it’s just a false hope that something isn’t considered that you don’t think deserves being banned.
There’s already bad faith arguments floating around like banning Harry Potter games because of its source material author’s views, Scarface because it depicts hate speech against a minority that was sadly acceptable at the time of its release, or even He Fucked the Girl Out of Me.
You also have more reasonable arguments for something like Hong Kong ’97. A quick reminder that up until a few years ago, this game’s image of Tong Shau Ping was used to censor images on the site and had reactions on the discord. Despite the claim that no new games are going to be banned, I wonder how long it’ll stay up there as a reminder of the older RA.
Those who are unable to understand context and intent shouldn’t play these games, period. This we can hopefully agree on, and filtering should be the way forward. Especially once you get to platforms like Flash and PC-98.
The claim that we shouldn’t platform certain media is also a statement that we are unable to learn from the mistakes of the past. This dooms us to repeat the same in the future, a much more believable underlying cause for the current state of the world.
I am not going to call out everyone who let this situation worsen. I would prefer for you to see that for yourselves, however this is my last chance to say what I felt unable to say before. I didn’t want to rock the boat.
Scott I mentioned this in my moderation post but it is no secret that you have been hands off with the project for months or even years at a time. Mods and admins had explicit permission from you to act in your stead. The ship sailed long ago on you being involved in the current state of RA even though you had many chances in the past to do so.
You volunteered to become a junior dev because of your desire to learn how we currently develop achievements. Outside of a single code review you don’t appear to have made any progress, and yet continue to act as a developer in full without oversight. Nobody would ever say anything about this because of course you can, you’re the founder. You can bypass any team as you want if you feel it’s right. Which is exactly what you did during this whole mess.
It is impossible for me to not find you personally responsible for what happened. You bowed to threats, proved they worked, and unknowingly empowered someone in the mod or admin team to think what they did was okay. I don’t even know enough about you to rule out that it wasn’t you. Your actions betrayed the trust of everyone that has contributed to this project over the years because you barged into a discussion and made decision after decision without any thought or required context.
All of that however, pales in comparison to how you worsened every single situation. You repeatedly lied to the community that RA did not bow to threats. You fanned the flames by removing me as a mod right after informing you I was being targeted. You contributed to the amount of hate I recieved while assuring everyone that nothing had happened.
Shown in the “Scott Lying” image from the “RetroAchievements.org – gaming” channel I count my blessings that I started removing other parts of my online presence before addressing a, hopefully only partially, corrupt team. You failed to reassure me in any way that you took the situation seriously via actions, and instead prioritised an announcement to save face. You were and have always been out of your depth in a project, that for the longest time, you barely participate in.
Wes I hate to do this to you but I’ve also included our discussions regarding this. This is an effort to show to the community that you genuinely tried to help me through all this, as it wouldn’t sound the same if it came from you.
Shown in the “DMs – Wes and leak next steps” thread
That being said, I feel I have to call you out on certain things. Even now I cannot follow your implication, I don’t believe Tele had anything to gain from being the leaker. Despite all of the improvements to the site you’ve provided, you frequently interfered in the duties of other teams. You moderate when you aren’t one, even explicitly mentioning that you would rather be doing anything else. When it backfires, it was always left to us to pick up the pieces like with the latest crisis. You have untracked users without a vote. Given what I’ve stated below, you’ll see how this is an overreach. You should considering limiting your usage of AI given the community’s outspoken disdain for it.
I still hold onto the idea that much of this could’ve been avoided if there had been a better structured technical solution before responding. I truly hope you can recover and learn from all this.
Nepiki There is nothing wrong with feeling like you’re the new kid on the block. When I was originally asked to join the mod team I felt like an imposter for months. However, you’ve been in the team for almost a year now. Actually voice your opinion, hold true to it, and don’t just bow down to those who have been there longer. As Community Manager, you should have spoken up louder and sooner. As evidenced by recent events, not every team member has the community’s best interests at heart.
Tele It’s hard to say whether your leaving made the situation worse. I respect that you have a strong opinion on censorship and encourage compromise whenever possible, but you abandoned the discussion as soon as the initial announcement was posted. You left the rest of us to deal with the fallout and the eventual spiral that followed. Yes, maybe this could’ve all been avoided if the team had actually taken the time to discuss it properly. But everything after was is where your support was needed.
Now let’s move onto problems with RetroAchievements in its current form.
Site Growth One of the biggest complaints from the community is how long RA’s teams take to respond. How long it takes to go through the junior dev program. How moderation never seems to respond quickly enough to bad actors. I do not blame any of the teams involved. The site is so large in scope that the few trusted users we have that want to actively contribute are already in those teams. As standards get higher, response times get lower. The current structure is unsustainable, but through passion alone, we soldier on. All teams usually hold votes to make sure everyone has a chance to chime in. Reactionary rulings by a few members actively damage the site regardless of where it happens.
Let’s take Developer Compliance for example. One of the highest messaged inboxes is Unwelcome Concepts and the vast majority of them are thrown out, either due to lack of information or disagreement with the report. The volume only increases with each passing month, so it’s not realistic to expect them to respond quickly. With a lack of transparency they have no time to provide, the same achievement keeps getting reported and eventually, with no new information, the achievement gets demoted anyway. The team gets worn down because they are constantly under a barrage of users who, for the most part, don’t even read the UWC descriptions. Users will claim that it “belongs in a subset” without considering the opinions of the rest of the playerbase.
DevComp is a thankless job. If they don’t demote an “obviously impossible” achievement, even though it has many hardcore unlocks, they are painted as the bad guy. Regardless of if it’s the 1st time the achievement gets reported or the 20th, you’ll hear screams of “finally!” as DevComp visibly did their job. They’re never seen in a good light because the achievements shouldn’t be there in the first place. I never even reported someone for what I thought was plagiarism of my Code Veronica set because it didn’t seem worth it. I didn’t want to add unneeded stress to the team.
Users don’t understand that the site has 13 years of sets, many that were made before there were any standards. The site grows faster than ever before but the influx of people who want to actually contribute to a contribution project doesn’t scale with it. No matter how much we try to advertise all the different ways to contribute, the site always grows faster. Many users don’t even engage with the site or discord after signing up unless there’s a problem. Yet, we have over 3000 active tickets. The non-contributors demand changes and slow meaningful work down. You aren’t wrong to think that teams used to respond faster, but it’s not the team’s fault. It’s because the majority don’t want to help out. We have been declared a service and must do better, but without the needed support. “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Trivia If you’re wondering where all the “you must have this many points to have an opinion” messages of late have come from, they originated from Varil in the #gaming channel as this all began. This is a long running in-joke in the community but of course everybody who doesn’t actually participate in the site took it at face value. It’s simply a community member trying to defuse the situation as best they could.
Shown in the “Point Requirement in-joke” thread
I rarely talk about my contributions to the site because the only recognition I truly ever needed was seeing how it positively affected the community. But given the recent turn towards lying to the community and seeing how tele was dogpiled because they didn’t agree with threats, despite their indescribable amount of contribution, and because this is the last time you’ll hear from me, here are the highlights of my 5 years here.
Tried for years to convince the mod and admin team for permission for the redesigned discord that’s almost identical to its current state. Finally got it implemented in 2024 after Nepiki was onboarded and helped
I hope you’re enjoying the plentiful new additions, like #new-releases, #achievement-tips, and #devs-help channels, and the #tech-support forum, anything to get away from how unusable the main channels were on a busy day. Even #role-request so that everyone could more easily contribute that wanted to
Major contributor and original writer for the final release of the Progression Guidelines after working with QA and DevComp to finalise the criteria. Categorising achievements in sets is something I originally proposed in the old staff channel back in 2021
Shaped the initial Beat implementation with Wes, including why we have Progression markers at all. Updated or revised multiple sets so that Beat credit worked
Shown in the “DMs – Wes and site discussion” thread
Pushed through the controversial change that made subsets inherit player counts. This would’ve been needed for multiset regardless but it did encourage users to play subsets in the meantime for the inflated points. Sadly never got around to proposing a better formula
Acted as Community Manager before we had someone dedicated to the role, keeping the userbase informed via community news and on-site news posts with the most transparency that I was allowed
Ran Challenge League 2022 and Console Wars I events alone, before we had an established Events Team or any automation. They were fun even though they were killing me
Through 2021 and 2022 was actively moderating while we were understaffed. If you ever wondered why verification took forever, that was why
Participated in many site discussions that ultimately shaped policy. I miss the roundtable style of the original Staff channel, even if the majority there ended up being inactive.
Part of Wii Rollout Team. Ultimately I wish I could’ve done more.
Before leaving, I made sure to make any needed adjusts I could think of to my work because even now I still feel responsible for them. However, I’ve seen this site encourage vultures to pick apart your sets once you’re no longer a developer, so here is a full list of my developer work in its current state.
On a side note, thank you hack developer of Sonic Delta for adding in a different cheating method specifically to allow people to cheat in Hardcore. It’s why I never updated it. Thankfully SEGA is very supportive of ROM hacks.
2021 May 24 – Sonic Delta 40Mb May 24 – Sonic Delta 40Mb [Subset – Bonus] Jul 01 – Jaguar Bomber Aug 27 – Mario Mania Dec 18 – Keio Flying Squadron
2022 Mar 03 – Metal Gear Acid Apr 18 – Metroid Fusion [Subset – Japan] May 08 – Meteoroids May 19 – PokeMaze May 28 – Sega Smash Pack: Volume 1 [Sonic 1] Jun 17 – Blue Sphere Plus Jul 10 – Metal Gear Acid [Subset – NG Extreme] Jul 24 – Videocart-27: Pac-Man Jul 28 – The Brick Wall Aug 06 – Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 [Subset – Hold Right To Lose] Sep 28 – Resident Evil CODE: Veronica X
2023 May 19 – Ultracore Jul 22 – Monster Hunter Portable 3rd Oct 31 – Final Fantasy IX (Revision) Nov 17 – Lemmings
2024 May 26 – Resident Evil Outbreak May 26 – Resident Evil Outbreak [Subset – Very Hard Challenges] May 26 – Resident Evil Outbreak [Subset – Online Multiplayer] May 26 – Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 May 26 – Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 [Subset – Very Hard Challenges] May 26 – Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 [Subset – Online Multiplayer] Jun 10 – Sonic the Hedgehog (Revision) Jun 10 – Sonic the Hedgehog [Subset – Perfect Bonus] Jun 22 – Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog [Subset – Hold Right to Lose] Oct 24 – Final Fantasy VI (Tiny Revision)
2025 Jan 11 – Pokemon XD Jan 11 – Pokemon XD [Subset – Eevee] Feb 14 – Terraria (Design Feedback, Testing)
Shown in the “Group Chat – Terraria Standalone” thread Oct 01 – Sonic the Hedgehog (Repair and Maintainership)
Current ?? – Final Fantasy VIII [Subset – Obtain Every Card Possible From Battles] ?? – Resident Evil Outbreak [Subset – Every NPC Character on Every Difficulty] ?? – Resident Evil Outbreak: File #2 [Subset – Every NPC Character on Every Difficulty] ?? – Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Wii) ?? – Parasite Eve II (Revision) ?? – Parasite Eve II [Subset – NG Rank L] ?? – Parasite Eve II [Subset – Nightmare Tonfa Only]
Planned ~Hack~ Blue Spheres (NES) ~Hack~ Crash Bandicoot – Stormy Descent (PS1) ~Hack~ Final Fantasy VIII – International GF Job System (PS1) ~Hack~ Ice Metal 1: Uninstall (SNES) ~Hack~ IronMario 64 (N64) ~Hack~ Labyrinth Zone EX (MD) ~Hack~ Paper Desert Bus (N64) ~Hack~ Pokemon Ruby Destiny 3 Life of Guardians (GBA) ~Hack~ Pokemon Run & Bun (GBA) ~Hack~ Pokemon XG: NeXt Gen (GC) ~Hack~ Resident Evil: Ultimate Director’s Cut (PS1) https://www.reddit.com/r/psx/comments/12sxdz6/finally_the_first_part_resident_evil_ultimate ~Hack~ Sonic 3 & Knuckles Hard Bosses Edition 2 (MD) ~Hack~ Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Complete (MD) (Revision) ~Hack~ Sonic 1: South Island Expedition (MD) ~Homebrew~ Infinity (GBC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT0-EMLSQF4 ~Standalone~ Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands ~Standalone~ Marble Blast Platinumquest ~Standalone~ Monster Hunter Frontier ~Standalone~ Sonic the Hedgehog: Project ’06 Devil May Cry Subset – DMD Special Bonuses https://www.reddit.com/r/DevilMayCry/comments/vt10f8/dmc1_special_bonus https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/445101-devil-may-cry/69629789 Devil May Cry 3 Subset – No Upgrades DMD Devil May Cry 3 SE Subset – All Individual Bloody Palace Stages Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 Subset – Disc Fusion Final Fantasy VIII Subset – Japan Lv. 100 From The Start Lemmings Subset – Multi Metal Gear Solid 3 Subset – All Emblems Monster Hunter Subset – Equipment Trees Ninja JaJaMaru-kun (MSX) Pokemon Dash Subset – Special Courses https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Dash#Special_courses Revelations: Persona (JP) (PS1) Sonic 3 & Knuckles Subset – Hold Right To Lose Vagrant Story Subset – Initial Equipment Only Worms Armageddon (N64)
Disclaimer: None of this document was assisted by AI. It’s only so long because nothing about this crisis deserved to be left out. Anyone who knows me well enough will tell you my writeups are usually long enough to need trimming. This was a solo effort without an editor.
I’ve seen goodbye posts before specifically calling out those people they thought were great, to let them know how much their interactions meant to them. Due to the nature of my leaving, I don’t think that’s fair for anyone to be associated with me after I’m leaving online life anyway. Just know that those who did chat with me, helped me out with developer troubles, and listened to any concerns I had, you made this community special to me during a time when the world itself was forever changing.
All I’ve ever wanted to do was give back all that goodwill that was given to me and I like to think I made a decent attempt. I’ve often said the site is unrecognisable from a few years ago and I’d always meant that in a positive way. I find it impossible to think like that now. I am firmly of the opinion that it would break my heart to watch this community suffer a slow, agonizing death over the actions of a few loud personalities and the members of upper management that sold the community out to them.
You’ve proven threats work. You don’t come back from this. You either roll over to every whim or you’ll be accused of backpedalling once again, because the criteria isn’t based on anything objective. They’ll always think there’s a few that still didn’t show their true colours in the higher teams. Those that never contributed to the site in any meaningful way will continue to dictate your course until they realise that they’ll never be happy with any result.
As a final reminder, because this was never about Clover, this is about trust in this site’s leadership being broken. I don’t realistically see myself ever overcoming that.
I’m simply deeply disappointed by the administration’s willingness to rush out sweeping changes and lie for public perception. This entire event has been them repeatedly caving to threats from organisations or individuals RA has partnered with, or users who ultimately don’t care for the site or its community. I have had maybe 10 hours sleep total since all this began. I am stepping away permanently to focus on my family and pursuing any action I can to keep all of us safe. I want nothing to do with RetroAchievements indefinitely.
Despite the messages I have received, I am not a fascist, bigot, racist, or otherwise hateful person towards any minority group, and I plan to stay very much alive.
Mirrored at the sole discretion of clymax for sake of transparency on Retro Achievements, which would be one of the aims of Moderator BahamutVoid in leaving his subsequent letter. To see tele’s developed sets on RA, check out his devlog or devved sets. If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.
I’m getting this out of the way since I’m already getting DMs about my disappearance:
I left the admin/moderation teams and have temporarily left the Discord servers. I cannot support caving into an idiotic vocal minority over doxing, harassment, threats, etc. instead of outright banning them or fighting back. I’ve said it countless times: it is absolutely no one’s business what other people play and people who want to make it their business can just fuck off.
I personally don’t give a shit about any of the games in question, but I defend their existence on the site because RA is a supplementary service. The implication and accusations that we are supportive of RApe, RAcism, etc. over allowing games that include such things is fucking absurd and I think is impossible to take seriously. If it’s not those things, it’ll be something else. The likelihood of a domino effect in asskissing is something that I’ll have no part of, so good luck with that mess. I imagine the ridiculous UWC reports will also end up working since all it takes is threatening our “staff” for people to get their way and it’s incredibly easy to do. Thanks, internet.
I’ll continue doing hash management and maintaining RAPatches, if allowed, but I believe that will be the extent of what I do. Who knows how long that will last, though. I think continuing as a developer is up in the air at the moment, but that could fizzle out and leave no point to me contributing altogether. In the meantime, I’ll need others to take over DevJam, DevQuest 004, and a few other things. I’ll be in touch soon(tm).
For now, I’m taking a break from dealing with anyone.
– tele
[Editor’s note: for the continuation, click here.]
You can follow HippopotamusRex on Twitch or RA; for the player rankings, 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 Admin televandalist’s own resignation letter dropped.If you have any concerns with this mirror, please reach out to clymax directly.
We understand there are questions about recent moderation actions. When an account’s only activity is attempting to escalate tensions, we treat it as disruptive rather than legitimate engagement.
Remind me how many points or sets do the users who recently joined and are taking over this site as the morality police have?
And yes I’m directly referencing xkeeper and succintandpunchy for being complete sociopaths with no history on this site, rolling in and doing nothing but what you’ve described in your quote.
Ten years I’ve been here and I’ve never seen Scott do something so incredibly stupid as this. My account is gone in 14 days. That’s all these new accounts have done.
The DARVO and gaslighting around them accusing everyone else of doing exactly what they’re doing has created an incompatibility with skill expression in games and morality.
You don’t have the best players if you aren’t agnostic to the content of the games and curating what or what isn’t included due to the morality of these disruptive internet nomads.
This is unchecked cluster B behavior that is socially acceptable for some bizarre reason despite nearly the entire actual community with history here saying they don’t want this here.
I will drop this fucking site in a heartbeat I don’t care how many points I have if you don’t rein this shit in.
