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Moderation / mod-forum / Why I do not feel safe here
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RAdmin Inbox BOT 2025-10-02 17:58
[Part 1 of 3]
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l33t3rth4nur1111
Why I do not feel safe here
Hi, I've been contacted by other people who feel as I do about how Retroachievements management/admin's priorities regarding bigotry, so I feel it's time to speak directly to you. So here goes. Retroachievements seems like a fantastic idea and a great community at first glance. I thought this was a place where classic game fans could come together and celebrate their love of games, compare their accomplishments, and chat about what they love. Then I stumbled across a rom hack called Pokémon Periwinkle. I played a bit of it, and it seemed fine until I saw a reference to a hacked Pokémon called "Lizakbar" (or one of its evolutions—I don't even remember now). This got me curious, and I looked up its origin in another rom hack called Pokémon Clover. It turns out that the latter has not only an entire line of Pokémon depicting an Islamic suicide bomber caricature as a "joke", but it also has a host of other horrifying things, including date rape and an "oven" specifically representing those used to murder masses of Jewish captives during the Holocaust. I'm not a fool. I know this stuff exists. I'm aware, especially in 2025, that there are horrible people out there making this stuff. What I did not expect was for this community—a community that also hosts several trans-perspective fan games, a community with a rule saying "bigotry will not be tolerated", a community that recently hosted an event raising money for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund—would not only have an achievement set for this but actively supported it and was in the midst of reviving said set. I attempted to report this set, but while I found a mechanism for reporting bad behavior by commenters, I found no means to report a set that itself violated the Code of Conduct. This appears to be a deliberate design choice by you, RA admin. I objected to this via the comments for said set and was immediately crowded out with "it's just a joke" and "so you approve of X bigotry in some 1980's ga
17:58
[Part 2 of 3]
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l33t3rth4nur1111
Why I do not feel safe here
me". These are not coherent defenses of this sort of behavior; they are examples of horrible people defending horrible behavior. When I responded with essentially "so that's the kind of community this is", I apparently got site-muted for a year. This is no community. I dug some more. The Clover hack has listed as its developer "Hackers - 4chan", which links to a whole hub of 4chan "humor" hacks in a similar vein. The only conclusions that I can come to are as follows: 1. This site 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. 2. Participation in the community and use of the Retroachievements system means that participants in targeted demographics must at least tolerate people who "joke" about mass murdering their entire peoples. 3. The line in the "Code of Conduct"about how "bigotry will not be tolerated" is an outright lie. 4. RA community management cannot be trusted. "Why do you care about this?" Because I'm in one of the demographics people are casually joking about murdering. Because I have friends and family in many other such demographics. Because I'm not an entirely terrible human being. Because I have seen over the course of my lifetime that this stuff matters, it has consequences, it is not just "we offend everyone so it's fine" humor. Because I know firsthand that I'm not the only person who feels unsafe around you and your community. "Okay, so what are you gonna do about it? Leave then." I did, and I am. But I am not going to stop there. First, I'm spreading the word. I have an article in progress about Retroachievements' celebration of hateful conduct and a place willing to publish it. You have told me who you are, and I want to be certain everyone else knows as well. Second, I am going to actively encourage other Retroachievements users to campaign for you to take out
17:58
[Part 3 of 3]
your trash or leave the site. I don't have as much influence there, but I have plenty of time. Third, I'm exploring the possibility of creating a new achievement system to replace you. Apart from the unnecessary coupling you've created between the concept of achievements and hatred, your system has a number of other fundamental flaws, including overcentralization. You have only one set available at a time. Despite being open source, you have total control over the only real implementation and database, and pointing emulators to an alternative database appeara to be frictioned by design. A truly celebratory system would allow anyone to create, host, and publish sets for players to mix and match as they see fit. It's time for a better system. "Big words from some rando." Sure, I'm just one girl. I'm also a AAA game industry veteran who is currently disabled and unemployed. I have a bit of reach, and I have a lot of time on my hands. I've been itching to find something I can do to make the world just a tiny bit better given my current limitations. Against all odds, I hope that you read this and decide to do the right thing yourselves and make your site something that every player can enjoy without fear. If not, then I will make it my personal project to see Retroachievements either clean up its act or fade into ignominy. Be seeing you.
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RAdmin Inbox BOT 2025-10-02 18:06
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l33t3rth4nur1111
Why I do not feel safe here
P S. If you wish to comment for the aforementioned article, you can contact me at this account (provided you don't delete it) or at ra_article@tutamail.com
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 18:38
Ok
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Suffa 2025-10-02 19:37
👍
19:39
wes: Muted l33t3rth4nur1111 due to their toxic comments on game pages.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 19:55
Comments for reference (https://retroachievements.org/game/11575, unsurprisingly) (edited)
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Hexadigital 2025-10-02 21:23
If you want to see change on a platform, attempting to intimidate them through threats of blog posts, social media comments, and thinking about making an alternative is the opposite of inspiring change
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:24
I disagree with 99% of this but I think some kind of warning could be warranted, even if many people will click past it. It is reasonable that someone who somehow doesn't know clover's history may just see it as any other hack Scrap the existing adult hub, it doesn't do what it was for and ultimately gets misused for games like GTA or GoW. Reuse the functionality for some kind of extreme content warning that user's can still disable on their options
21:26
I'm never going to agree with this kind of censorship. Whether they like it or not, Clover is well known as an extremely competently developed hack and the streisand effect has happened multiple times for it whenever it's been warned against playing (edited)
21:27
The blurb for the warning should be something along the lines of this. Just because we have achievements for something doesn't mean we support anything within the game or its creator's views. The only things we should care about are making sure any of the site facing stuff is SFW and nothing illegal is being supported (edited)
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Hexadigital 2025-10-02 21:27
The only things that should be outright censored/blocked here are anything with potential legal issue for the site (like The Guy Game), but I'm in full favour of an improved filtering / content warning system, whenever that gets developed (I think Wes also had interest in that?)
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wes 2025-10-02 21:29
This is credible enough to take seriously.
21:31
Here's my current thoughts: 1. This person may not actually have a publisher yet. "I have an article in progress and a place willing to publish it" - past tense on "willing" but "in progress" on the article? 2. I have mixed feelings about responding, but ultimately lean towards the feeling that we should do so. We should remain professional, just like we did with the Afterplay situation.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:32
Especially because any response is likely to be included in said writeup
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wes 2025-10-02 21:33
This is going to seem uncomfortable, but I think we need to unmute their account.
21:33
Their concerns are a policy criticism, not a CoC violation.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:33
Personally, aside from adding a filter that we have discussed a few times before, I don't want to do anything for this person--no response, no solution, nothing. They are screeching and screaming for change, and when they don't get what they want they start threatening. I understand your concerns, but my personal stance is that I don't want to bow down to a person like that, when we have stated multiple times already we do not take a political stance
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wes 2025-10-02 21:34
Reality check: if we respond to them and own the account mute, we're going to lose a lot of credibility. A reasonable outside observer will read these and think: "they were muted for criticizing the site's policies on offensive content." The phrases that make this especially difficult:
  • "this place is not safe for me"
  • "people are getting put in literal camps"
  • "during a worldwide fascist uprising" These are politically charged and undesirable, yes, but they're also expressions of genuine fear from someone in a targeted demographic.
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wes
Their concerns are a policy criticism, not a CoC violation.
BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:34
I do like that meleu put this in the coc https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/users/code-of-conduct.html#freedom-of-speech
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wes 2025-10-02 21:35
I agree with that too
21:35
I'm just trying to calculate how we can best navigate the situation
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Hexadigital 2025-10-02 21:35
Could we give a neutral response - not directly responding to anything in their message, but letting them know that the site is actively being rewritten and improved, and the list of planned features includes better filtration settings?
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:36
Unlikely, a neutral response is not a response they want and will still be used against us
21:36
Better filtering is not what they want, they want Pokemon Clover gone
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wes 2025-10-02 21:37
IMO, The Code of Conduct makes the situation more complicated, not less. This person is basically saying "your code of conduct says bigotry won't be tolerated, but you're hosting achievement sets for games depicting Islamic suicide bomber caricatures and Holocaust references. How do you reconcile this?" And it's a fair question.
21:38
If you have criticism, you're very welcome to say it, just be sure to be civil
Their comments were passionate and uncomfortable, but they didn't personally attack anyone. My perception is they criticized policy, not individuals.
21:39
So, ultimately, here's what I think we should do. And it's okay if you think I'm wrong! This is just my opinion; I'm doing the calculus in my head of all the possible outcomes that can happen here and I think this is the least bad choice. 1. We should acknowledge the CoC ambiguity that created this confusion. 2. We should clarify that we have an archival mission. 3. We should offer to unmute their account and continue the conversation. 4. We should commit to clarifying this CoC ambiguity. We should not admit wrongdoing, but we can acknowledge this could've been handled better and we're taking steps to prevent similar confusion. (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:42
I've made my stance and I think most of their threats are completely empty (if they truly were an AAA game industry veteran, I'd like to say they'd use a better name and/or would be more known), so I'm against anything, but I don't have any objections to polling it with the mods/admins and see what the thoughts are of the team; after all, it's something we want to present as a team, and if everyone would like to do a response then I'm not going to interfere
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wes 2025-10-02 21:42
@Admin @Moderator
21:42
We need guidance on how to handle a moderation and potential public relations issue.
21:43
You'll have to start reading from the top.
BahamutVoid pinned a message to this channel. 2025-10-02 21:43
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:44
I agree with nepiki, not trying to read into the message too much but they want acknowledgement for their viewpoint. It's why they're commenting on a game's page on an alt account instead of messaging us before it escalated to this degree, and are bypassing engagement with the users they disagree with and instead threatening us to change Personal attack no, but these comments
- hoping that ra decides to do the right thing some day but right now its supporting racism and all kinds of other bigot stuff - cannot understand rather than do better ra is choosing to do worse by sending this up in 2025 during a worldwide fascist uprising but i hope they understand what it is costing them and their community - ra is becoming known for being a toxic cesspool and frankly you earned it like any other badge
apply for
  • Public or private harassment
  • Heated public arguments
  • Personal attacks
I'm hesitant to list defamation there because you're right, we could be more transparent about their misunderstanding about why we allow a set for something that includes things are coc forbids. But I cannot read any of this in any way that I would count it as civil (edited)
21:46
If we respond at all, it's needs to be so ironclad that there's no room for a followup message and doesn't in any way paint us in a bad light as they will quite clearly post the message in its entirety for the article (edited)
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tele 2025-10-02 21:47
Oh, someone taking video games too seriously again…
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BahamutVoid
If we respond at all, it's needs to be so ironclad that there's no room for a followup message and doesn't in any way paint us in a bad light as they will quite clearly post the message in its entirety for the article (edited)
wes 2025-10-02 21:47
I actually lean towards them selectively picking apart different parts of the post. We'd need to respond publicly in the game's forum topic.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:49
Basically someone who won't actually be thankful if we were to do something 😅
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BahamutVoid
I agree with nepiki, not trying to read into the message too much but they want acknowledgement for their viewpoint. It's why they're commenting on a game's page on an alt account instead of messaging us before it escalated to this degree, and are bypassing engagement with the users they disagree with and instead threatening us to change Personal attack no, but these comments
- hoping that ra decides to do the right thing some day but right now its supporting racism and all kinds of other bigot stuff - cannot understand rather than do better ra is choosing to do worse by sending this up in 2025 during a worldwide fascist uprising but i hope they understand what it is costing them and their community - ra is becoming known for being a toxic cesspool and frankly you earned it like any other badge
apply for
  • Public or private harassment
  • Heated public arguments
  • Personal attacks
I'm hesitant to list defamation there because you're right, we could be more transparent about their misunderstanding about why we allow a set for something that includes things are coc forbids. But I cannot read any of this in any way that I would count it as civil (edited)
wes 2025-10-02 21:51
I definitely see your viewpoint, but I'm anxious it's a critical error in interpretation. I say this with utmost respect, please hear me out. Public or private harassment is behavior directed at individuals, not organizations. The comments are specifically criticizing RA as a platform, not any specific person. Heated public arguments require a back and forth. They're just yelling into the game comment section. They specifically state they looked for a way to report the set, and took to the comments section because it was the only avenue they could find. The website design steered them to do this. "RA is a toxic cesspool" sucks for someone to write, but it's not an attack on anyone's person or character.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:52
I appreciate your different viewpoint by the way Wes, I should say that upfront PacThumbs It's good that we all have different opinions on it within the team
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wes 2025-10-02 21:52
For sure! I don't know what the right choice is, I can only bring my collective experience into whatever we decide to do
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:53
The public harassment I was referring to was them replying to everyone else in that game's comments as shown by
yeah the replies here tell me everything i need to know about this "community"
I apologise if you don't feel like you're being heard. That's not my intention, I just feel really strongly about these types of issues
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tele 2025-10-02 21:53
Honestly, I wouldn’t even respond because of the last few paragraphs
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wes 2025-10-02 21:53
Ah, I didn't even see that bit
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 21:54
Am I understand it right, they get uncomfortable because of Pokemon Clover and other games like Custer's Revenge?
✅ 3
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:54
They're fine to trash RA as a collective. But that was an active conversation between 10+ people, writing an inflammatory response there was a deliberate choice
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:54
It's essentially a repeat of the Afterplay situation like Wes mentioned earlier; it's listed on our site, so by default we support it
21:54
Which is why for emulators we don't use the word ''support'' anymore
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:55
And I'm all for changing up our documentation to reflect how we feel more transparently. I'm just opposed to making this user feel directly responsible for any of it by giving them a direct reply (edited)
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wes 2025-10-02 21:56
I think there's a subtle nuance that makes this different, unfortunately. Please hear me out. They've already telegraphed that this is how things will be framed: 1. User finds offensive content. 2. User looks for way to report it -> doesn't exist! 3. User uses comments (only available option) 4. Community responds with "it's just a joke" 5. User responds critically to that response 6. User gets muted
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:56
Do we still link to the code of conduct when they sign up for an account?
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wes 2025-10-02 21:57
We don't, but we should. That's a great idea
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:57
Achievement Hunting Rules as well while we're at
21:57
What they're referring to as not an option is here https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/users/code-of-conduct.html#what-to-do-if-you-think-moderation-is-wrong
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 21:58
I'm all for more ''checkboxes'' on sign-up, even if the majority won't read it, they can't hold us accountable if we have done our due dilligence
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 21:58
Note: on the website there's no "kick". If the offender ignores the warning, the next step is a ban.
This needs rewriting now that we have on-site muting
22:00
There's also the Contact Us section at the bottom of every page that I assume they did find to be able to send this message
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22:01
You're right that there's no way to report a game that shouldn't be on the site, but given what I'm getting from this discussion I'm not sure there should be
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wes 2025-10-02 22:04
I just realized I'm the one who muted them 😅
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:05
Yeah I believe it was in response to when they continued stirring shit in the User CoC reminder
22:05
https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32262?comment=314011#314011
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A Friendly Code of Conduct Reminder
AI is banned for achievement purposes so all uses of AI by community members is not related to our projects. We just don't want people to start fights over it, because then it becomes our responsibility and moderation wi...
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wes 2025-10-02 22:06
yeah, that would've done it
22:08
to be honest, i think i was wrong to mute them here.
22:08
looking over the whole collective situation, that's how i feel now at least
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:11
I think the bigger issue is that we have a community that immediately resorts to dunking on them in a reminder of the CoC. Doomhiker I did address with a mute, but suffice to say most people responding got away with insulting them; sadly I was asleep when the thread went to shit. But on the other hand, they purposefully used the thread to bring this issue in a very negative way even though the introduction thread mentions that we do not take a political stance. Likewise they felt it was necessary to call us out for no reason other than push their own agenda
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wes 2025-10-02 22:13
i think they just raised a concern they cared deeply about while making people uncomfortable. it's a valid point that if community members were insulting them in a CoC reminder thread and they got away with it while the critic got muted, that's really bad from an optics POV.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:13
Yeah I do agree with that
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:13
Send them something along these lines in private and call it a day: Thank you for your feedback. We are aware that there is some game entries on site that can trigger certain feelings on people making them feel unwelcome or upright attacked. However, we are just a community which adds achievements to games to make them more entertaining to play. Due to the large variety of users of different cultures, countries and other kind of groups it can often happen that we feature content that trigger some of our users. The main part to keep in mind however is, that this project should be taken just as a fun service, it's not a playground to spread hate. In fact, for such entries like Pokémon Clover we even have strict rules when it comes to achievement development like the set would need to look harmless outside and don't have achievements directly targeting at certain groups to avoid heated discussions. We do not tolerate hate against anyone and moderate it, independent of the rank of the user who caused it. However, games like these are still listed on our site since while some take it personal, for others it is just a shit show to laugh at and to not take serious. If you do not like content, just try to avoid it. It's like a book or TV show, while some enjoy it, there are also some that just think that it's gross or sexism. A good way to avoid such content is to disable the setting in your profile to show "Mature" content. Disabling results into a warning popping up before opening a game entry that could cause unwelcome feelings. Furthermore, we are happy to hear feedback to improve the site in a kind way and ideas how to actually make the site better. Complaining like this in private or public is not really helpful and gets very easily flagged as harassment which gets moderated.
22:14
Man, I wrote more than I wanted to hahaha Just word after word came out of my fingers
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:14
I don't think that response is going to land well, sorry to say 😅
22:15
''If you do not like content, just try to avoid it'' will be an immediate point used against us
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LordAndrew 2025-10-02 22:15
I think we need to make it clearer somehow that achievements are not an endorsement of the game's content or its creators. We also had someone yelling at us about allegations against the creator of Andaron Saga. https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1419933766172016741
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:15
Well, they do exactly that by leaving the site
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LordAndrew
I think we need to make it clearer somehow that achievements are not an endorsement of the game's content or its creators. We also had someone yelling at us about allegations against the creator of Andaron Saga. https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1419933766172016741
SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:16
I hope the team just responded with a link to 177 hahaha
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wes 2025-10-02 22:17
"RetroAchievements claims 'we do not tolerate hate against anyone' while simultaneously stating hateful content is fine because 'for others it is just a shit show to laugh at.' When pressed on this contradiction, moderators told me to 'just try to avoid it' and warned that further complaints would be 'flagged as harassment.'"
💀
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:18
I said something along these lines
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:18
I think we should unmute but only as the last step after all changes are implemented. Any changes to the coc, webpages, and filter implementation should ideally come first. I don't think directly messaging them is going to work well for us regardless of how well it's written, it should be a public message like wes mentioned that addresses the community in general (edited)
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:18
I didn't actually recheck what I wrote
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wes 2025-10-02 22:18
😄
22:19
any reply has to be airtight, if they're still muted when we reply it's basically impossible
22:19
there's both tremendous potential upside and downside to replying
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wes
"RetroAchievements claims 'we do not tolerate hate against anyone' while simultaneously stating hateful content is fine because 'for others it is just a shit show to laugh at.' When pressed on this contradiction, moderators told me to 'just try to avoid it' and warned that further complaints would be 'flagged as harassment.'"
💀
Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:19
I really hate this by the way. It happens so often lately that people bring forum posts to the discord, or just start fighting in a forum thread; it creates this really toxic environment for no reason just to laugh at people and insult them. No matter how many times I make it clear to people, they just... ignore it, or acknowledge it and continue a day later (edited)
👆 2
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:19
Honestly no matter what you write, they can always complain that it was a shit respond
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:19
2nd to last step is post the message, last step is unmute
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wes 2025-10-02 22:20
ya, we need better moderation tools. i am sorry i haven't prioritized building this yet
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:20
No not at all, don't worry about it
22:20
Like I said I think we need to be stricter with mutes, no mercy Hahaha Especially for repeat offenders (edited)
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:21
It's not like you didn't prioritize important stuff, if you prioritized this instead then we would have issues somewhere else. We are just glad that you do improve stuff anywhere pray
ZeldaHeart 1
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Hexadigital 2025-10-02 22:23
It's a bit off-topic from this discussion, but I think a large chunk of the toxicity is just a combination of access to real-time chat (Discord) where things can get heated too quickly, and toxicity bleeding into the site from the competitive aspects (as you often see in things like online PvP shooters or League of Legends). Outside of something like giving users a way to vote for a channel to temporarily go into slow mode, I'm unsure how that could be addressed.
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tele 2025-10-02 22:27
Didn’t we have something somewhere that flat out says just because we support a game with achievements, it doesn’t mean we agree with the games’s content?
22:28
As silly as it is to have to say something like that…
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:28
I think this is everything
  • Make sure the Code Of Conduct and Achievement Hunting Rules are linked during sign-up. Ideally with a mandatory tick box for reading them
  • Amend the Code of Conduct to include a statement that RA does not endorse anything within a game or its creator(s). Our priority is making sure any of the content we create and display on the site is SFW
  • Re-use the Mature hub and its filter functionality to instead be for any sets that include content that a user would not immediately know contains harmful material. If we receive a report like this in the future we can discuss adding that game to the hub https://retroachievements.org/hub/7869
    • Automatically enabled for all users that hides these pages from the site. Links to those games will only show a generic harmful content warning (to better avoid tempting people), they won't contribute to any site statistic, mastery badges won't show up on people's profiles, these sets will outright not exist unless someone goes into their profile and enables an option that will show these games
  • Post a message clarifying our stance addressing the community at large
  • Unmute the user, allowing them to respond to the message
 (edited)
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BahamutVoid
I think this is everything
  • Make sure the Code Of Conduct and Achievement Hunting Rules are linked during sign-up. Ideally with a mandatory tick box for reading them
  • Amend the Code of Conduct to include a statement that RA does not endorse anything within a game or its creator(s). Our priority is making sure any of the content we create and display on the site is SFW
  • Re-use the Mature hub and its filter functionality to instead be for any sets that include content that a user would not immediately know contains harmful material. If we receive a report like this in the future we can discuss adding that game to the hub https://retroachievements.org/hub/7869
    • Automatically enabled for all users that hides these pages from the site. Links to those games will only show a generic harmful content warning (to better avoid tempting people), they won't contribute to any site statistic, mastery badges won't show up on people's profiles, these sets will outright not exist unless someone goes into their profile and enables an option that will show these games
  • Post a message clarifying our stance addressing the community at large
  • Unmute the user, allowing them to respond to the message
 (edited)
wes 2025-10-02 22:29
Yes, I very much agree. I'm in the process of drafting a public post if ya'll wouldn't mind reviewing it.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:29
Absolutely
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wes 2025-10-02 22:30
just a few more minutes, this is really hard
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:30
No rush, I'm also available for reviewing
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:32
Could also just write RetroAchievements is a service that just tries to provide achievement support for every old game. We are not responsible for the content of a game itself or the message it sends. Our developers are free to choose which games they want to create achievements for, as long they follow our achievement creation rules including special rules that offending games should not have achievements that are more offending than necessary to get the actual unlock requirement transfered to the user, this includes text and graphics. On the other hand our users are free to choose what content to consume and what they want to avoid. While the games are covered on our website, we do not tolerate the content of the game itself and are simply a platform for content creators to share their work.
22:32
Probably shit too but I wanted to participate one more thing before I leave for today and let the pros handle the situation hahaha
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:33
It's useful regardless since it ensures we're on the same page
22:33
There's nothing there I don't disagree with, and think it's best for the community overall
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SporyTike 2025-10-02 22:35
Btw while I was writing this, I wondered how doable a general personal black list would be. Like someone could visit 177 and click on "block" so the game gets filtered out everywhere - main feed, user profiles, technically AotW section (although I doubt block-worthy games would even be in there),
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tele 2025-10-02 22:36
Achievements for anything linked to the adult hub is not to be required for any event, but with the state of that hub, it’s kinda up in the air.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:38
No God of War in events cAAAAAmerAAAAAA
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tele 2025-10-02 22:38
Game shouldn’t even be in there
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:38
Yeah it's an unrestricted mess. The whole list should be rebuilt from scratch
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wes 2025-10-02 22:38
Dear RetroAchievements community, [b]We'd like to make a policy clarification regarding the Code of Conduct's scope and our stance on content archival.[/b] Recent discussions in our community have raised important questions about the scope of our Code of Conduct and our approach to game content. We want to address these questions publicly so the entire community has clarity on our policies and practices. [b]On the scope of our Code of Conduct[/b] Our Code of Conduct governs user behavior within RetroAchievements community spaces: how members interact with each other in comments, forums, and Discord. It does not govern the content of games or ROM hacks for which we provide achievement sets.
 (edited)
22:39
RetroAchievements functions as an archival platform. We provide achievement sets for games and ROM hacks as they exist, without curating based on their themes, content, or messages. This includes commercial games, from various eras and regions, homebrew projects, and community-created ROM hacks. The presence of an achievement set on our platform does not constitute endorsement for a game's content, nor does it reflect the personal views of our volunteer developers, moderators, engineers, or administration. We understand this distinction was not clearly communicated in our Code of Conduct, creating reasonable confusion about the scope of our content policies. This is something we intend to clarify in our documentation. [b]On reporting mechanisms[/b] Our platform currently lacks a clear, intuitive mechanism for users to report concerns about game or set offensive content. Users must know to contact RAdmin, which isn't well-documented or easily discoverable. This is a structural gap we should address, regardless of whether we ultimately take action on content reports. We'll add improvements to our reporting systems to our engineering priorities.
 (edited)
22:39
[b]Our position on archival vs. curation[/b] We recognize the tension between archival preservation and community safety. Different platforms resolve this tension differently. Some curate heavily based on content, while others preserve more broadly. RetroAchievements has chosen a preservation-focused approach, prioritizing archival completeness over content curation. [i]This means we host achievement sets for games and hacks that contain content some community members find deeply offensive.[/i] We don't expect everyone to agree with this approach, and we respect that some users may decide this platform isn't for them based on this policy. We're committed to being transparent about our approach so users can make informed decisions about participation on RA. [b]Moving forward[/b] We welcome discussion about our policies in community spaces, provided discussions remain focused on policy rather than personal attacks. Civil, constructive criticism is encouraged as outlined in our Code of Conduct. [b]We also expect respect between community members regarding game choices.[/b] Harassing or calling out users for playing games you find offensive violates our Code of Conduct. Conversely, deliberately provoking others by taunting them about offensive content or bringing it up in unrelated discussions is equally unacceptable. Our community spaces should remain focused on achievement hunting and retro gaming. If you have questions about our policies, you can reach us by DMing this account (RAdmin) directly.
 (edited)
22:39
my fingers hurt
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:39
You and Nepiki will never cease to amaze me how you write something so coherent so quickly ssweat
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:39
SpatInnocent
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wes 2025-10-02 22:39
i was terrible in math at school but always got perfect english scores
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:41
Hm I'm a bit puzzled on whether we should bring up the moderation part
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wes 2025-10-02 22:41
we could omit it, i wasn't sure
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wes
RetroAchievements functions as an archival platform. We provide achievement sets for games and ROM hacks as they exist, without curating based on their themes, content, or messages. This includes commercial games, from various eras and regions, homebrew projects, and community-created ROM hacks. The presence of an achievement set on our platform does not constitute endorsement for a game's content, nor does it reflect the personal views of our volunteer developers, moderators, engineers, or administration. We understand this distinction was not clearly communicated in our Code of Conduct, creating reasonable confusion about the scope of our content policies. This is something we intend to clarify in our documentation. [b]On reporting mechanisms[/b] Our platform currently lacks a clear, intuitive mechanism for users to report concerns about game or set offensive content. Users must know to contact RAdmin, which isn't well-documented or easily discoverable. This is a structural gap we should address, regardless of whether we ultimately take action on content reports. We'll add improvements to our reporting systems to our engineering priorities.
 (edited)
tele 2025-10-02 22:41
Does not constitute endorsement for*
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:41
I will say that I don't think you were wrong to mute them based on what's been posted here. You could argue it escalated things but there was no way for you to know that at the time
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tele
Does not constitute endorsement for*
wes 2025-10-02 22:41
ah, good catch of that typo
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:44
The downsides of it are that:
  • We let the community know that we are unmuting someone who, by all means, did break the rules in my opinion. While their concerns are a different question, they did bring it to a thread specifically dedicated to not break the rules, and like Bahamut said, I don't think you were wrong with the mute
  • We acknowledge the user, so they know the response is about them and they will use that thread to further escalate it (unless we lock the thread by default)
  • It may show people, even if we take no action, that we ''bow'' to a user even though they have been a disturbance, justified or not
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tele 2025-10-02 22:44
I feel they definitely deserved the mute. Just sayin’
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Nepiki
https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32262?comment=314011#314011
BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:45
This is the part that solidified it for me. They would be muted if not outright banned in most other communities for being that conformational (edited)
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tele 2025-10-02 22:45
When is their mute lifted normally?
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:45
A year I believe
22:46
2026-09-01
22:46
Are they aware of the length of their mute?
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:46
Yes, it shows when attempting to make a post
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:46
Gotcha
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Hexadigital 2025-10-02 22:46
If we decide to post this response, just be prepared for complaints about 177 to come up immediately.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:47
I definitely feel we need to make it a locked thread like we did with the PCSX2 announcement, nothing good would come out of the reponses
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wes 2025-10-02 22:48
i think we need to address the muting if we go forward with a response
22:48
we shouldn't let them frame the muting
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:48
I keep rereading on the moderation section and I think it's acknowledging more blame than actually occurred. They did break the coc in my opinion, they were muted for further escalating and attacking the community as a whole
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wes 2025-10-02 22:48
if we don't address it, they get total control on framing
22:49
IMO whether they deserved it is beside the point. can we defend it publicly in the court of public opinion once a hit piece is published about us to the press?
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:49
I think that ship would sail with how it's currently written as it sounds instead like it was completely a moderation error and they did no wrong
22:50
Which gives them a high ground to then claim that our stance is also a mistake (edited)
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wes 2025-10-02 22:50
yeah that's true, it shouldn't seem like we're totally capitulating
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tele 2025-10-02 22:50
Any site who’d publish it without reaching out to us for comments would be making a journalistic mistake
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wes 2025-10-02 22:51
i had the same thought but i think that's exactly who will publish something like this
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Hexadigital 2025-10-02 22:51
There's already been videos like "The Dark Side of RetroAchievements" being posted, I'm not too convinced that an article from them would gain much traction, especially if we make adjustments to our documentation to state otherwise beforehand.
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wes 2025-10-02 22:51
it's clickbait and rage farming (edited)
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:51
You can acknowledge that the 1 year length was a mistake, a temporary option while the situation was being reviewed
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wes
it's clickbait and rage farming (edited)
tele 2025-10-02 22:51
In other words: an annoyance for a few days and then we’d never hear about it again
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Hexadigital
There's already been videos like "The Dark Side of RetroAchievements" being posted, I'm not too convinced that an article from them would gain much traction, especially if we make adjustments to our documentation to state otherwise beforehand.
tele 2025-10-02 22:52
That shit made me roll my eyes so hard lel
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:52
But the muting itself I don't think should be mentioned as a mistake. They did provoke people into responding we've muted people for less because it's the best way to calm a situation when people don't have the self-control to remove themselves for the situation until they've calmed down
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:52
I'd like to research this person a bit more in general, they claim to be a big shot for someone whose name is l33t3rth4nur1111. Not to bash on the name but that doesn't really scream professionalism if you get what I mean
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tele 2025-10-02 22:53
The majority of our users just want to play video games and probably don’t care about stuff like this
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:53
Do they have a main? Because this account has 20k points paper
22:53
Muted accounts can contact team accounts btw, if that's where the confusion lies
22:53
They can communicate with us, just not with others
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:54
I wouldn't expect a user to know that though, especially this one
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tele 2025-10-02 22:54
In which case there’s no harm in omitting the moderation stuff from the announcement
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Nepiki
I'd like to research this person a bit more in general, they claim to be a big shot for someone whose name is l33t3rth4nur1111. Not to bash on the name but that doesn't really scream professionalism if you get what I mean
BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:54
The only mention I can find is on the minecraft wiki in 2010 https://minecraft.wiki/w/Talk:Boat#Canals
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 22:55
https://x.com/l33t3rth4nur111 If this is the same person, that tells me enough
l33t3rth4nur1111 (@l33t3rth4nur111) / X
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Footer icon X
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tele 2025-10-02 22:55
They’ll probably see the announcement and can still communicate with us if necessary.
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wes 2025-10-02 22:55
I 100% agree this is frustrating and this person is really annoying, but I don't want us to make exactly the mistakes that would confirm the assumptions they're going to tell the world about us. Let's address the substance of what they're writing and course-correct. We should just handle the criticism professionally and deal with the situation, then let it die down because we now control the framing.
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Nepiki
https://x.com/l33t3rth4nur111 If this is the same person, that tells me enough
BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 22:56
I will forever hate how people only know the mask as anonymous instead of v for vendetta
22:58
The writing style is the same ssweat
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tele
That shit made me roll my eyes so hard lel
LordAndrew 2025-10-02 22:58
I'm disappointed I didn't take the opportunity to watch it when I had the chance.
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Nepiki
https://x.com/l33t3rth4nur111 If this is the same person, that tells me enough
wes 2025-10-02 23:00
well, this certainly changes things. this significantly undermines their credibility and alters the calculus i had in my brain. you guys were saying they weren't acting in good faith, and now i agree with you. clearly, they have a pattern of aggressive and confrontational behavior online. unfortunately this sort of language reminds me of my own criminal harassment case i'm dealing with as the complainant. we don't need to defend ourselves against this person. we DO need to fix the problems they identified. i think we should still make a public post. it's good to clarify this ambiguity regardless of the whole thing. but it mostly ends there. i don't think they should be unmuted.
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:01
Yeah I'm onboard with fixing the problems they identified, and that we have also further discussed here
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:01
I'm onboard with everything that was written except the moderation section. While I agree it's important to acknowledge that the conversations spiralled out of control, that's a general message to all involved and not an admission of guilt for the action against the user that started the argument
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wes 2025-10-02 23:01
i strongly agree now. we should not mention the mute whatsoever
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23:01
we should just clarify our own position as a platform
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:01
Yes, strong agree
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LordAndrew 2025-10-02 23:01
Yeah.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:02
And that's been a long time coming I feel
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:02
In general we should do this because we need to be ahead of Clover's release
wes pinned a message to this channel. 2025-10-02 23:02
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wes 2025-10-02 23:02
updated
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:02
Back whenever we had the mature hub setup for that dev's concerns who I believe left the site soon after anyway
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:03
Tomo is making good progress, and I would kick myself in the nuts for years if he gets harassed while we could have done something on our side to prevent it
23:03
(I will also defend Tomo completely for what it's worth)
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tele 2025-10-02 23:03
Image attachment
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:04
I think it's ideal to message them asking how close they are to release, and hold off if needed
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tele 2025-10-02 23:04
A step ahead of you lel
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:04
I think they were at the... 7th gym? Tomo sometimes shares progress in a sideserver I share with him
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wes 2025-10-02 23:05
i need to run to dinner, i got off the airplane a few hours ago 😅 please reread the draft post. if it should be tweaked please propose tweaks. maybe after i'm done with dinner in a few hours it can be posted or something
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:05
No rush, you should enjoy your RA break Wes prayo
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:06
I don't want to put any pressure on you wes for implementation since it's out of my knowledgebase for how long any of it would take. Anything that can be done in the meantime however only strengthens the message when it goes out. Given what we know know, there's no need for an immediate response (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:06
We don't need to get this out immediately as we are no longer addressing this person, we can take our time finetuning it, and update docs where necessary to accompany it
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tele 2025-10-02 23:07
tomojin is going to message RAdmin before promoting the set
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:08
When you disagree with how we run RetroAchievements, we want to hear about it - but we ask that criticism remain civil and constructive as outlined in our Code of Conduct.
Honestly this is an amazing way to acknowledge this user specifically
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BahamutVoid pinned a message to this channel. 2025-10-02 23:08
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tele
Click to see attachment 🖼️
Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:09
It's good that Tomojin will message us because I was honestly considering leaving a request too just so I am aware of when it releases Hahaha
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-02 23:10
Users also need to be made aware that calling anyone out for playing certain sets is public harassment and against the coc (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-02 23:11
Yeah I would like to add something regarding that, let me type something real quick
23:15
[b]Moving forward[/b] We welcome continued discussion about our policies in our community spaces, provided discussions remain focused on policy questions rather than personal attacks on individuals. When you disagree with how we run RetroAchievements, we want to hear about it - but we ask that criticism remain civil and constructive as outlined in our Code of Conduct. We also ask you to remain respectful to your fellow community members. If they end up playing a game that is offensive to you, then that is their choice and you are not in a position to call them out for it. On the other side, provoking users with the game in question, be it by taunting them or deliberately bringing it up in spaces where people expect safe, healthy discussions unrelated to it, is against our Code of Conduct. If community members have questions about our policies or want to continue this discussion privately, you can reach us by DMing this account (RAdmin) directly.
The part in bold is my addition, might need some proper rewriting though as it's late and I'm not thinking completely accurate at the moment (edited)
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wes 2025-10-03 03:59
I just got back to the hotel. Feeling really tired. Maybe we can sort out everything in the morning.
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 04:55
Rest well!
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Scott 2025-10-03 11:33
sorry I'm late to the discussion - my gut instinct says this person has come across something they've been offended by, and has written a long message culminating in threats. While I don't think we should negotiate with terrorists, there are some useful points that we could act on, i.e. allowing a set to be reported as "in bad faith" etc. We manually prevent some games (https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/content/unwelcome-concepts.html#banned-titles) from having sets due to their severe offensiveness (and my personal opinion is in favour of a few very specific games such as 177 joining that list). However games such as South Park or Pokemon Clover exist because of either parody of offensive concepts or they are intentionally "unserious" in their offensiveness. Team you've taken this situation so professionally and I'm really proud to say that this is the way we act, that this is the right way forward for RA, to collaborate and discuss things like this so professionally and maturely. That said I support
  • unmuting so long as there's nothing seriously offensive coming out of that account
  • announcement that we will not tolerate threats or hate speech, and that we cannot be responsible for the contents of prior art that exists outside our capacity
  • allow this person to begin their campaign of hate or "persuade people away from RA", with their new "achievement system", I wish them the best of luck and would love to try it out when it's ready
11:34
sorry I'm not adding much to the discussion, but I do want to say I'm really proud and grateful for how you are handling this
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 13:06
Honestly it's just reassuring to hear we're on the same page pray Regardless of how genuine the threats are, this has been a real wakeup call and their critique of gaps in our documentation is a good chance to make our stance clear for the future
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Scott
sorry I'm late to the discussion - my gut instinct says this person has come across something they've been offended by, and has written a long message culminating in threats. While I don't think we should negotiate with terrorists, there are some useful points that we could act on, i.e. allowing a set to be reported as "in bad faith" etc. We manually prevent some games (https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/content/unwelcome-concepts.html#banned-titles) from having sets due to their severe offensiveness (and my personal opinion is in favour of a few very specific games such as 177 joining that list). However games such as South Park or Pokemon Clover exist because of either parody of offensive concepts or they are intentionally "unserious" in their offensiveness. Team you've taken this situation so professionally and I'm really proud to say that this is the way we act, that this is the right way forward for RA, to collaborate and discuss things like this so professionally and maturely. That said I support
  • unmuting so long as there's nothing seriously offensive coming out of that account
  • announcement that we will not tolerate threats or hate speech, and that we cannot be responsible for the contents of prior art that exists outside our capacity
  • allow this person to begin their campaign of hate or "persuade people away from RA", with their new "achievement system", I wish them the best of luck and would love to try it out when it's ready
wes 2025-10-03 14:21
Thanks for weighing in Scott! After seeing their Twitter, I lean towards not unmuting them. I think there's significant risk to directly engaging.
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Nepiki
[b]Moving forward[/b] We welcome continued discussion about our policies in our community spaces, provided discussions remain focused on policy questions rather than personal attacks on individuals. When you disagree with how we run RetroAchievements, we want to hear about it - but we ask that criticism remain civil and constructive as outlined in our Code of Conduct. We also ask you to remain respectful to your fellow community members. If they end up playing a game that is offensive to you, then that is their choice and you are not in a position to call them out for it. On the other side, provoking users with the game in question, be it by taunting them or deliberately bringing it up in spaces where people expect safe, healthy discussions unrelated to it, is against our Code of Conduct. If community members have questions about our policies or want to continue this discussion privately, you can reach us by DMing this account (RAdmin) directly.
The part in bold is my addition, might need some proper rewriting though as it's late and I'm not thinking completely accurate at the moment (edited)
wes 2025-10-03 14:21
Thanks! I've tightened this up a little bit and worked it in here: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1423353545448493179/1423424104177860669
14:26
Here's what I think today's gameplan should be: 1. We post this message in Pokemon Clover's forum topic. 2. We make some news blurb about it that appears on the home page. 3. We link to the post in the recent thread we did on the CoC reminder. 4. We update the CoC to add clear language which distinguishes behavior rules from content policy (I'll open a PR for this shortly). 5. We add mandatory CoC acknowledgement to user registration (I'll open a PR for this sometime soon). Here's what we shouldn't do: 1. Respond to or engage with this person. 2. Reference their Twitter history anywhere publicly (don't tip our hand). 3. We shouldn't unmute their account. 4. We shouldn't announce these changes as "in response to complaints" - the framing should be this is proactive governance. 5. We shouldn't lock any threads anywhere related to this - just moderate them in a measured way. cc @Nepiki @BahamutVoid @tele @Hexadigital @SporyTike @LordAndrew @Scott (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 14:28
I'm unavailable for the rest of the day in about an hour or two, so please let me know if there's anything I can do before then PacThumbs
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Nepiki
I'm unavailable for the rest of the day in about an hour or two, so please let me know if there's anything I can do before then PacThumbs
wes 2025-10-03 14:34
Mind looking this over? https://github.com/RetroAchievements/docs/pull/285
docs: update the User Code of Conduct regarding content policies by...
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 14:34
Surely, give me a few mins
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wes 2025-10-03 14:35
thx
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 14:44
Looks good to me, maybe for the last bullet point I would change we want to hear feedback to we welcome feedback, slightly pedantic but that's more so we don't encourage people but will listen to what they have to say
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wes 2025-10-03 14:44
i agree, i'll change that
14:45
next, it doesn't seem in the last 12 hours there were any objections to what i wrote above
14:46
i'll post it through the RAdmin account to the Clover thread
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 14:46
Not from me no, the writing looks good and got nothing to comment
14:47
What might be up for consideration is that we can't really lock the clover thread, so people will be able to comment on it and potentially start fights. Not sure if that is preferrable to a locked RAdmin news post
14:47
It will basically turn a game's forum into a policy forum if you get what I mean
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wes 2025-10-03 14:48
that's fine. i don't think we should lock anything related to this
14:48
we're saying in our statement we welcome feedback and we want to be transparent about our position. we have to keep threads unlocked, but moderate accordingly
14:48
people can say uncomfortable things about our position. that's fine. but they need to follow the user CoC and not attack each other.
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 14:48
Alright PacThumbs
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wes 2025-10-03 14:49
i've merged https://github.com/RetroAchievements/docs/pull/285, we can adjust it further if it needs adjustments
14:50
weird - merging that seems to have taken our docs site down
14:50
investigating
14:51
... and it's back
14:51
odd
14:54
https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/5910?comment=320328#320328
~Hack~ Pokemon Clover
Dear RetroAchievements community, We'd like to make a policy clarification regarding the User Code of Conduct's scope and our stance on content archival. Recent discussions in our community have raised important question...
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14:56
also posted a reply in the friendly CoC reminder thread
14:56
i think the only thing i need is a news post linking to the pokemon clover reply made with the RAdmin account
14:56
then we're basically done for now
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 15:05
Did you want this accompanied by a community news post in the discord or rather not give too much attention? (edited)
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wes 2025-10-03 15:07
nah it can just be on the site for now i think
15:07
people on the discord probably already know where we stand on this
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Scott 2025-10-03 15:52
handled perfectly guys, you are such a top-tier team, thank-you so much again for your professionalism
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wes 2025-10-03 16:18
news post made
16:20
maize left a cynical comment, that's fine. given how much she hates RA, i'm not sure why she still hangs out here.
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Scott 2025-10-03 16:22
Maize seems like a real breath of fresh air
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 16:22
People wishing RA to die but gaming on it nonstop is a breed that must be studied
16:22
Because something does not add up
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wes 2025-10-03 16:23
i like maize, i wish she would be a little more positive. all part of it tho. we should just let the conversation breathe unless it devolves into people personally attacking each other
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 16:23
Yeah for sure
16:25
I'm away for the day but feel free to ping me for emergencies and I'll come check it out
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 16:30
I'll glad to see this place stand against censorship. In the current worldwide climate, and the UK specifically for me, it's nice to know that even if you disagree with something existing it should still be allowed to
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wes 2025-10-03 16:31
that includes even my cringe AI music
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 16:33
unfortunately ;)
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wes 2025-10-03 16:50
i'd continue as best as possible not responding, especially to Kumiko and SuccinctAndPunchy
16:52
there is no winning the framing/debate they're putting forth. the questions they're asking are rhetorical. we think devs should be able to work on any content. they think we're facilitating hate content. there's no factual answer that will ever resolve this - it's a values conflict.
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LordAndrew 2025-10-03 18:33
It just occurred to me that as a highly-requested Pokémon set, this may appear on the trending list on the home page at times, possibly as someone's first exposure to this site. Is this something we're comfortable highlighting like that?
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 18:34
I think games in the mature hub are hidden from those sections, aren't they?
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wes 2025-10-03 18:35
they should be, but i'll double check
18:35
we may need a mod to reply to the thread saying constructive discourse is healthy and welcome, but please do not stoop to personal attacks
HexNoted 1
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 18:40
Left a comment, it will be visible for approximately 10 minutes before it gets pushed off the current page
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wes 2025-10-03 18:41
😄
18:41
thank you for leaving that comment
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LordAndrew 2025-10-03 18:53
Is mdct an alt of TieTuesday? They're both talking about Lizakbar, Justified, and Confederate statues.
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Scott 2025-10-03 20:23
Ok so things appear to have exploded just a little in that thread, I've had a few PMs, but generally I think we're in a relatively strong direction. Treading the line appropriately between censorship and freedom of speech is certainly a difficult one, but I'm 100% happy with and support the decisions taken so far that represent RA (i.e. Wes news post)
20:28
I'm not sure we really can do any more here, except to just let it settle for a bit, it's too intense
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 20:43
I also got a few DMs and I'm not even home bowsercry
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Scott 2025-10-03 20:49
In general, at this point what are our options? Do we now also block any title with nazi symbolism in it? Wouldn't that include Bionic Commando and Contra? (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 20:51
I don't think we should block Clover, especially now that we have already stated we don't condone it but do allow it on our platform for archival purposes
20:51
Backing out now will just get the other crowd riled up
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 20:54
Agreed that it doesn't make any sense to block it - especially when there are so many games that would be asked to be blocked next (like how Persona 2 has Hitler as a major story point and character)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 20:58
It needs to be able to be completely hidden unless opted into
20:58
If it's going to exist at all
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Scott 2025-10-03 20:59
I'm tempted though to ask for a vote to remove https://retroachievements.org/game/6978?v=1 though, as it's a good argument for inappropriate content (achievement names for instance)
21:00
achievement names read too close to the fire, like as if RA endorses the game or its content
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 21:00
I could ask my team to do a rewrite
21:01
If that is desired I will do it completely anonymously though, not naming the writer who changed them or just saying that I myself did it
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Scott 2025-10-03 21:04
I'm certain we don't want to be acting crassly demoting things here and there
21:04
maybe we do need to let the dust settle before we can make any further calls
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 21:05
A rewrite for that set has come up before, and I think that would be fine - it's not a demotion or even direct staff action
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 21:06
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21:06
Those should probably be demoted and just beat act 2
21:08
Archival also doesn't seem like a good word since we do deny games
21:11
Announcements like this directly impact our growth trajectory imo. This kind of policy is very important and volatile
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Scott 2025-10-03 21:15
we do deny games that are literally illegal, and I'd be comfortable demoting 177 - I just don't know how to handle this particular romhack
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 21:19
I don't care for Clover one way or another, but my main concern is that if we start banning games based off in-game content, even if it's limited to just aftermarket games/hacks, it's still a very wide net to wrangle. For example, I could see this one coming up as highly reported, despite being the opposite of Clover (not meant to be offensive, and pro-LGBT+): https://retroachievements.org/game/25300
~Homebrew~ He Fucked the Girl Out of Me. (Game Boy)
There are 25 achievements worth 40 points. ~Homebrew~ He Fucked the Girl Out of Me. for Game Boy - explore and compete on this classic game at RetroAchievements.
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Searo 2025-10-03 21:27
Found a bluesky thread about all of this: https://bsky.app/profile/tietuesday.bsky.social/post/3m2cks4jgxk2b
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TieTuesday (@tietuesday.bsky.social)
retroachievements.org/forums/topic... Retroachievements using the "we're just neutral It's not political!" about allowing a romhack with pokemon named "KuKlux" that's a ghost in a hood with the ability "Justified" don't get me started on the "terrorist" pokemon platforming hate isn't neutral
-# ~Hack~ Pokemon Clover Dear RetroAchievements community, We'd like to make a policy clarification regarding the User Code of Conduct's scope and our stance on content archival. Recent discussions in our community ha...
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Footer icon Bluesky • 2025-10-03 18:11
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Scott 2025-10-03 21:28
https://retroachievements.org/game/11575
~Hack~ Pokémon Clover (Game Boy Advance)
No achievements have been created yet for ~Hack~ Pokémon Clover. Join RetroAchievements to request achievements for ~Hack~ Pokémon Clover and earn achievements on many other classic games.
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21:28
is it this?
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Searo 2025-10-03 21:28
Yeah that's the hack
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Scott 2025-10-03 21:28
has it ever been an actual set on RA that people can earn achievements on?
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Searo 2025-10-03 21:28
No but tomojin is almost finished with it I believe
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 21:29
Do not discount that we do get traffic from platforms like gdq via auth and sky
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Searo 2025-10-03 21:30
Yeah would probably hurt to lose that whole community and they are both clearly unhappy with this
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 21:30
We may not like it, but there should be some give in one form or another. It needs to either not exist or seem nonexistent to people. If it's hidden then it should be forbidden to talk about and posted about
21:31
And that goes for any problematic games
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 21:31
It's been the most requested hack set in RANews since 2021, I think it's just an issue now because the CoC update brought attention to it
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 21:31
A line would have to be drawn somewhere for sure, but that line would need to be found
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LordAndrew 2025-10-03 21:33
In retrospect, the announcement was probably more damaging to our reputation than doing nothing.
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 21:35
I think if we didn't make the announcement, hell would have just broke loose when Clover releases
21:36
It absolutely sucks it happened now and we could have done better, but this would have just been delaying the inevitable
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 21:48
This is just like the emulator thing. We course correct and do better
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Searo 2025-10-03 21:51
Yeah I mean we've made plenty of changes/updates based on community feedback when appropriate it's not like every decision is immutable
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Scott 2025-10-03 21:51
ok - decision made, and I am happy to take the wrap, but I've spoken to tomojin, wes amongst others and I'm happy to take the executive decision to kill it
21:52
sorry
21:52
it's driving people to doing really stupid things like dox and make threats, and life is much more important than some stupid meme game
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Scott
ok - decision made, and I am happy to take the wrap, but I've spoken to tomojin, wes amongst others and I'm happy to take the executive decision to kill it
Suffa 2025-10-03 21:53
I support this
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 21:54
Agreed - Scott, if you want to exercise an executive decision here, I'm in full support
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Searo 2025-10-03 21:56
I'm also fine with it pthumb I just think we will need to determine how we go about it as it's likely to draw more discontent from everyone who supported the announcement and a 180 in terms of what was just announced. Also if we need to come up with where a drawn line is as this may lead to the crowd moving on to the next game they are going to be upset about being on RA. (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:06
I'm not a fan of it, but I will support your decision Scott
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Suffa 2025-10-03 22:06
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:06
Not because of the edgy game mind you, I don't care for Clover
22:06
I just... hate the current internet landscape where we either cater to them or they will vocally riot
💯 2
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 22:08
Passing this suggestion on: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:gwfx4qjjq2yhjzrgr5xqcnyz/post/3m2cwhr7hfk2s
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X ΘΔ (@xkeeper.net)
-# ↩ X ΘΔ (@xkeeper.net) if i was a moderator, what i'd do: - close the thread immediately for a few minutes - post a "non-serious replies in this thread will get you banned for a week" - actually enforce that but if i was a mod i wouldn't have allowed the racist hack in the first place, so, y'know. solve your own problems
Footer icon Bluesky • 2025-10-03 21:40
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:10
the announcement we've put out still stands exactly as is. The withdrawal of pokemon clover can be arguably unrelated... but seriously it's an overdue thing that's needed to have been addressed.
22:11
I've locked the thread and I'm about to put some sort of reply in it
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:11
Tell them we're considering feedback and will follow up
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22:11
If you could post on the radmin account that'd probably be good too
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:11
I'm home now so I'm available for any assistance necessary
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:12
I won't do anything announcy without Nepiki's/team's approval
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:12
If you want me to help write something up, I can also do that; likewise, I can do what Auburn asked
22:12
Maybe even do it from my own account because I am the community manager after all, it's on me to solve issues like these 😅
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:14
So are we completely removing these games and hacks or are we going to block them from the public eye
22:14
I don't care either way (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:14
Oh it's already locked I see
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:14
I think we need to decide on what else may be affected, for now I think it is just Clover. Need to find out where the line will be drawn
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:15
The big ones that come to mind are 177, clover, custere revenge
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:15
"I've locked this thread for the moment as we don't need any further discussion about the Pokemon rom-hack. This news article was to address an uncertainty in the user Code of Conduct, which has been done. We are considering the feedback that you have provided and we will follow up with an announcement shortly."
22:15
sound ok?
👍 1
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:15
Yes, that looks good
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AuburnRDM
The big ones that come to mind are 177, clover, custere revenge
Searo 2025-10-03 22:16
Yeah those are the main ones I can think of as well, the other two are not hacks/homebrew but definitely the worst we have on here
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Searo
I think we need to decide on what else may be affected, for now I think it is just Clover. Need to find out where the line will be drawn
Scott 2025-10-03 22:16
as a placeholder: "games where rape or nazi imagery is prominent or reflected in a positive light"
22:16
that then covers 177, clover, custer's revenge
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:17
I have no issues with Custer's being removed btw (I made the set dedpacman)
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:17
aw sorry dude
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 22:17
Maybe less on the "prominent" side? Otherwise that would include stuff like Wolfenstein (killing nazi's)
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:17
as I said to tomojin I'm happy to reimburse anyone who's time or energy is lost as a result
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:18
For Infinite Backlog, the database we use is IGDB, and their content rules for sexual content are: no incest, no sexual assault, no non-consensual sexual activity
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Nepiki
For Infinite Backlog, the database we use is IGDB, and their content rules for sexual content are: no incest, no sexual assault, no non-consensual sexual activity
Scott 2025-10-03 22:18
good phrasing
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Suffa 2025-10-03 22:18
177 should be killed off, I guess Custer's too
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:19
Specifically for shown content by the way, because games where it is discussed but not shown (Trails in the Sky 3rd) would obviously not fall under that
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Hexadigital
Maybe less on the "prominent" side? Otherwise that would include stuff like Wolfenstein (killing nazi's)
Scott 2025-10-03 22:19
literal presence of nazi's I'd say is fine, as in games we're typically shooting them
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:20
Yeah I don't see an issue with Nazi games, there are almost no (official) games that glorify them--they are always the ''villain''
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 22:20
Let me see if I can find the wording I used before for my site
22:21
Any game which predominantly and consistently promotes Nazism or other racial hate groups in a positive manner, even if done in irony or for comedic effect
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:22
What about beat em and eat em, is that consent? hahaha
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:22
Just browsing through the list of mature games the only other questionable one I see is the game about women eating jizz/pee https://retroachievements.org/game/14759
Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em (Atari 2600)
There are 26 achievements worth 168 points. Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em for Atari 2600 - explore and compete on this classic game at RetroAchievements.
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22:22
Beat me to it lel
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:22
lmao what the fuck
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:22
Game is broken anyway tbh
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:23
i didn't not expect that to exist
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LordAndrew 2025-10-03 22:23
Pokemon Periwinkle and Terrifying 911 have also been brought up in the thread.
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:23
Terrifying 911 should just be unlinked
22:23
There's a metal slug version
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:24
Oh yeah I remember that and yeah unlink that would be good, the metal slug hack that makes it about 9/11
22:24
Not familiar with Periwinkle
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:24
But yeah, this stuff should probably all come from the radmin account. Don't necessarily want it to just look like scott is doing this and we're incompetent
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Searo
Just browsing through the list of mature games the only other questionable one I see is the game about women eating jizz/pee https://retroachievements.org/game/14759
Scott 2025-10-03 22:24
technically, and I mean technically, that's not nazi praise or unconsensual sex
lel 1
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 22:24
Periwinkle would probably be fine to ban as well if we're banning Clover - I played it to make a POC subset and I remember there's some NPC's with wild dialogue if you go and talk to them, but I think most of the hack is fine (aside from maybe Mewtwo wearing a plastic Barack Obama mask) (edited)
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AuburnRDM
But yeah, this stuff should probably all come from the radmin account. Don't necessarily want it to just look like scott is doing this and we're incompetent
Scott 2025-10-03 22:24
I will happily cosign it (and or post it) with my account
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:25
Nah, it should probably come from "us"
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:25
We don't have that hypno pokemon hack that someone mentioned on here do we? I think you have a hypno and go around raping the girl trainers or something
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 22:25
This one? https://retroachievements.org/game/16160
~Hack~ Hypno's Lullaby (Game Boy Advance)
There are 8 achievements worth 11 points. ~Hack~ Hypno's Lullaby for Game Boy Advance - explore and compete on this classic game at RetroAchievements.
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:26
We should also double down in the new announcement that this type of speech is unacceptable and to treat our neighbors with respect and follow coc
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:26
No I tdon't think that's it paper
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:26
So let's draft and put something good out without rushing
sonicpoint 1
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Searo
We don't have that hypno pokemon hack that someone mentioned on here do we? I think you have a hypno and go around raping the girl trainers or something
AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:26
Jordy was devving it, can't remember anything else
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:27
Yeah I don't think we should rush anything, move quickly but make sure we are all in agree-ance
22:28
Ah it is this one https://retroachievements.org/game/24233
~Z~ ~Hack~ Pokémon Psychic Adventures (Game Boy Advance)
No achievements have been created yet for ~Z~ ~Hack~ Pokémon Psychic Adventures. Join RetroAchievements to request achievements for ~Z~ ~Hack~ Pokémon Psychic Adventures and earn achievements on many other classic games.
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:28
so are we covering racism too?
  • Nazi praise
  • Unconsensual sex
  • Racism of any kind (this then would exclude Mafia 3 for example. Can this be phrased better?)
  • Child interference (this I don't know how to phrase at all. Hypno molesting children)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:28
That's it
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Scott
so are we covering racism too?
  • Nazi praise
  • Unconsensual sex
  • Racism of any kind (this then would exclude Mafia 3 for example. Can this be phrased better?)
  • Child interference (this I don't know how to phrase at all. Hypno molesting children)
AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:29
Gorifying hate speech
22:29
Racism can exist in games, it just shouldn't be the point
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tele 2025-10-03 22:29
@Scott since I think you’re the only one who can, please remove my admin/mod on the main server.
bowsercry 1
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:29
Damn tele cAAAAAmerAAAAAA
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tele
@Scott since I think you’re the only one who can, please remove my admin/mod on the main server.
Scott 2025-10-03 22:29
will do, as soon as I have a moment
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tele 2025-10-03 22:29
I can’t support this, sorry.
22:30
I don’t even give a shit about the games in question. It’s just the principle
👍 1
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:33
Yeah, i know you don't support the actual content
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:34
so let's give this some time before we move forwards. I'm comfortable having pokemon clover be halted, just for the moment. In terms of how to navigate this, just by putting together a line in the sand we've already had to remove some (arguably disgusting) games. Before we make any decisions I think it's important to take a breather and make sure this makes sense
22:35
arbitrarily trying to tell people what media they can and can't consume isn't my strong suit, it's very 1984 and not something I feel comes naturally (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:35
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:37
really useful points of view, thanks for sharing Auburn
22:37
ironically 'growth' isn't my personal goal
22:37
I just wanna have fun, same as everyone else on RA. I don't particularly care if 10 people use it or 10000
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:37
Growth is natural and should be on the mind a little at least
22:37
Maybe not growth but like
22:38
Accepted in different reaches of the internet?
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:38
I guess? I just made something I thought was fun for me, I didn't really factor in whether or not anyone else liked it or not
22:38
yea I agree - something to be proud of. I want RA to be something, somewhere I'm proud to be or proud to talk about
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:38
Yeah for sure
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:39
I can't be proud of RA if it's got Nazi shit in it
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:39
Is there a path forward where it exists on the site but mega hidden or is that just a cop out on a stance?
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:40
Wes suggested a new feature to isolate games like that so they can't be found organically, unless you have the URL
22:40
they don't exist via achievement of the week, via what a player 'last played', via lists etc
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:41
Yeah. No stats or anything. Opt in view only. Forbidden to talk about these games
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:41
so you play the game, it works, you get achievements, I guess you can get the badge etc
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 22:41
Maybe even not a visible badge idk
22:42
Would something where the game only exists behind layers of obscurity be something you could back @tele ?
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:43
My personal opinion is that the strategy for RA to thrive is by occupying the seemingly vacant space in today's world of the boring middle ground. RA shouldn't take stances on politics, social issues, nor permit intentionally divisive content. This means no promoting Palestinian charities, no pride month events, no Custard's Revenge, no Pokemon Clover, etc. It's all bad for RA - all of it.
22:43
I've read that a few times now and it hurts for RA to 'have' to be so generic as to not support pride or children's charities
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:46
Is the stance on Clover final? Just so I know what I can propose on how to move forward
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:47
for me yes. Having to make a choice either way, I make that choice and I stand by it
22:47
in terms of 177, I asked wes to nuke that one too. I haven't asked for any other changes to any other sets
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:48
Alright, here is what I would like to propose: We make an announcement that Clover is no longer welcome on our platform following the feedback we have received (as well as 177). In the meantime, we are looking into addressing concerns with other games, but need more time to do so as this is not something we should rush
22:48
Making this announcement should at least douse the fires somewhat
22:49
I know that ultimately we would like to make an announcement when all the games we have identified as offensive on RA, but it's probably best to get something out as soon as possible to regain our goodwill
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:49
I don't know about announcing other games
22:50
as a gamer I wouldnt' like the thought that "this game i really like might get taken off me"
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:50
Can you have Wes nuke Custer's as well prayo
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:50
Yeah fair point
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:50
I mean if we can keep it to an absolute minimum of changes I think that might help
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Searo
Can you have Wes nuke Custer's as well prayo
Scott 2025-10-03 22:50
long term yes, maybe not today or tomorrow though
prayo 1
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:51
Realistically the only games that have come up in the past are 177, Custer's Revenge, and Clover
22:51
I don't remember any outcry over other games
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Scott 2025-10-03 22:51
I think the difference is that nobody cares about custer's revenge (in a nice way), and 177 is literally abhorrent in a unique way. Clover has only recently gained this attention
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Searo 2025-10-03 22:51
Wow how can people find out about things so fast, this is on 177 page
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:52
Oh it has already been doing rounds in the main server
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tele 2025-10-03 22:52
People were able to get those taken down so it'll just be a new list of games until it's all sunshine and rainbows
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:52
People found out really quickly 😅
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Nepiki
I don't remember any outcry over other games
Hexadigital 2025-10-03 22:54
Pokemon Periwinkle has come up before, as the prequel to Clover, and was also mentioned in the DM that started this whole thing
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 22:54
Ah right
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:04
Sorry but I think this is a mistake. I do not care for the content personally but filtering and hiding content with no solid line, and there will never be one, is only going to hurt the site in the long run. There will always be a talking point about something that is close to the line and this situation will be brought up as precedent that if enough people push harder enough then we will go against our own rules to appease them. With that whine out of the way, I want to bring up the Mature hub again. I mentioned that I thought it was better to enhance its functionality before we made any statement but in retrospect I should've pushed harder on it. I feel like I've let the team down. To avoid this in the future, we need functionality that is automatically enabled for all users that hides certain pages from the site. Links to those games will only show a generic harmful content warning (to better avoid tempting people), they won't contribute to any site statistic, mastery badges won't show up on people's profiles, these sets will outright not exist unless someone goes into their profile and enables an option that will show these games. I think right now I agree somewhat. If everyone feels it should cease development to avoid backlash that's fine, but I would encourage wording that doesn't set things in stone. Something along the lines of "We are taking this down for internal discussion to discuss its future and other similar cases on the site". I cannot stress this enough but there is never going to be correct wording for content screening, even if you could it would change after a few years as each individual country's societal norms change. (edited)
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SporyTike 2025-10-03 23:05
I was pretty much not involved the whole day but have like 300 mails just related to Clover's forum... So to summarize it, we just ban games like Clover and raping games now? (edited)
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:09
ok let me do this another way - I personally want 177 removed from the site and I had it removed because I don't want it there. I am also receiving various threats over the presence of Pokemon Clover on the site, so I'd like to cease it's development for the moment until we can understand what to do next about it.
23:10
it's all my decision, I chose to make those actions
23:11
that's all there is to it then - we don't need new guidelines, we don't need anything special, I just decided I personally don't want rape or nazi worship on RA so I took action on those two sets. I don't plan to take any other action on any other sets
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 23:11
I don't think this should come off as a scott decision
23:11
I think that would hurt the team more than the post
23:12
So please don't act on your own behalf, then that just opens mods and admins to get attacked
23:12
@Scott
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:12
I'll work on a draft announcement now if that's alright
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SporyTike 2025-10-03 23:17
I agree with Auburn, it could result to messages like "Finally Scott came in and brought admins back to normal sense, he should really think about who to put in the team" I saw some of these messages several times in the past for various things and if you publicaly state it was your decision then I could see many people getting motivated to message you requesting a better team or shitposting us everywhere. As I said, over the day I just had 300 mails just for that one game, while some users might have continuously posted in the forum over and over, I still believe there was a good amount of individual users who were active in there
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:18
shit tbf I hadn't thought of that, I want to take the brunt of the shit, not sell you guys out
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SporyTike 2025-10-03 23:20
I don't think anyone would be mad at you since we know your initial idea behind doing such a claim, but hate messages would still drown motivation hahaha
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:21
I have a horrible gut feeling that this whole thing is literally just pokemon clover
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SporyTike 2025-10-03 23:21
Of course it is, any drama we have on the site is at the bottom started with Pokemon
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:22
well maybe but I mean the whole purpose of 4chan and anything it produces is to troll, which is literally the result happening here
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:22
I can confidently say it is all just Pokemon Clover, which is why I want to push out an announcement regarding just that to douse the fires 😅
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 23:24
Re: 177, Scott - if we want to remove it then we probably want to remove mastery badges for it too
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Hexadigital
Re: 177, Scott - if we want to remove it then we probably want to remove mastery badges for it too
Scott 2025-10-03 23:24
hadn't thought of that. this is such a mess
23:26
ok but I'm happy to say that I publicly, without discussion with you guys, authorised that 177 be demoted
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 23:27
We should still work as a team. We'll get the content removed
23:28
Or at least should have demoted via radmin if we agree on that
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:28
if 177 comes back with slightly more censored badges/titles, I wouldn't even mind that
23:28
it's just pokemon clover
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Hexadigital 2025-10-03 23:35
I think 177 is dead now - it's demoted, and you publicly posted that you wanted it gone. I don't think we should flip flop on every decision
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:36
true
23:36
I've wanted that one gone for years tbf
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Searo 2025-10-03 23:36
Yeah I agree, I think making anymore quick decisions that we later reverse is going to do more harm and we should be cohesive as a team
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SporyTike 2025-10-03 23:36
We can always add it back with a more fleshed out system
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:37
completely agreed, sorry all, this is mega stressful, not making great choices here
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:37
Sorry for the silence, I've been reading through our other messages and the forum to get a better grasp of the community's reaction. 177 and Pokemon Clover should not exist on the site in its current state. We lack any kind of content filtering and it's reasonable that without this people would believe we are platforming these games. I personally do not believe anyone in this discussion deviated from what was said in the announcement, that none of use endorse or support anything within a set's game content. Some of the messages here mention that they see our intent with the announcement but believe the wording was too open and gave the wrong impression, and in our follow-up message that should be acknowledged that we have let people down. Since games like Scarface have already come up I would heavily endorse that the wording for the announcement does not take a hard stance that we may change later on. Any future discussion of this topic or announcement of changes will have the content of that announcement used as ammo. (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:37
This is what I have drafted thus far: Dear RetroAchievements community, Today, we have made an announcement regarding a policy clarification on our [url=https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/users/code-of-conduct.html]User Code of Conduct[/url]. This was met with serious concerns, and we fully acknowledge that we have let the community down by how we handled it. First of, we would like to apologize for how this started in the first place. We posted this announcement in the forum post of Pokémon Clover, which (understandably) associated the announcement specifically with that game. This policy clarification was meant to be regarding transparency of our policy in general, and was not meant to be associated with a single game. Pushing this to the front page did not help, and for that, we do deeply apologize. One concern that was brought up was regarding our stance as an archival platform not curating what games we allow on our platforms, aside from games that have been deemed illegal. This obviously raised concerns that, given our stance, we are also in favour of allowing an edgy Pokémon hack that glorifies hate speech. This obviously goes against our ideal of a retro gaming platform, and we have no intention to ever be associated with hate speech. [b]Effective immediately, development on Pokémon Clover is stopped and it will not be released in its current state on RetroAchievements.[/b] Internally, we are going to discuss how to move forward with content like this in the future. This will take time, because we want to be absolutely sure we reach a conclusion that we can truly stand behind. We have lost goodwill today from all sides, but we will do our best to ensure we live up to the expectations you have for us. (edited)
ZeldaHeart 1
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:39
thank-you for putting this together - I'm not sure this would address the naysayers, they want it "gone" gone, not development stopped
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:40
Internally, we are going to discuss how to move forward with this game, as well as similar cases that are already on the site.
to
Internally, we are going to discuss how to move forward with content like this in the future.
Just to avoid Clover being the focus
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:40
you know I don't know what I'm saying at the moment
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:41
I think we're all feeling that
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:41
I've been thinking on that, but I feel we need to thread carefully with it like Bahamut said; do we want to permanently put Clover on our ban list, or do we want to explore possibilities to allow it in the future, albeit with new site features that block it from sight, or an altered hack that removes all the offensive stuff?
23:41
I agree though, the nay-sayers will only accept it's gone, not halted
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:42
From what I've seen in the messages, some aren't going to be happy until half the mod/admin team are removed for letting this happen (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:42
True Hahaha
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Searo 2025-10-03 23:42
I think your post makes it clear we made some mistakes and are re-evaluating things so hopefully at least the reasonable people will understand that we are trying to figure out the best way to handle things
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:45
you know what it's really well worded, I wonder if it's possible to get the message of "Pokemon Clover, in its current state, will not be released on RA", and/or that RA recognises that we are associated with the content, and that we don't wish to associate with hate speech as it clashes with our values
23:45
something along those lines maybe?
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:45
Oh that could work
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:45
That does sound good
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:46
just so it's not a "we might change our minds tomorrow", it's more a "this is a wrong thing and we identify it as wrong"
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Nepiki
I've been thinking on that, but I feel we need to thread carefully with it like Bahamut said; do we want to permanently put Clover on our ban list, or do we want to explore possibilities to allow it in the future, albeit with new site features that block it from sight, or an altered hack that removes all the offensive stuff?
BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:47
That's essentially it yeah. I do not agree with the stances of users that think that burying certain content is good for the world. We would always doomed to make the same mistakes and they believe that pushing everybody they don't agree away from anything they enjoy is anything but a pipe dream. Content of all types should be available in a format that is accessible while still condeming it. I remember fondly how people at my school did not truly understand how bad the Axis side of World War 2 was until we visited forced labour camps in germany and listened to survivor's retellings. (edited)
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:48
Updated it to the following: One concern that was brought up was regarding our stance as an archival platform not curating what games we allow on our platforms, aside from games that have been deemed illegal. This obviously raised concerns that, given our stance, we are also in favour of allowing an edgy Pokémon hack that glorifies hate speech. This obviously goes against our ideal of a retro gaming platform, and we have no intention to ever be associated with hate speech. [b]Effective immediately, development on Pokémon Clover is stopped and it will not be released on RetroAchievements in its current state.[/b]
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:49
I like the wording. It opens up the hack being modified to be acceptable, which I believe 2.0's goal was, or the site itself having stricter filtering
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:49
I wonder even to remove "in its current state", because it might suggest that if you mod it to remove a single bit of racism that makes it acceptable again
23:49
it's both
23:49
actually yea keep exactly as is
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 23:50
honestly i don't think pokemon clover adds any value to even be considered in the future at this point
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:50
I believe Clover is intended to have a version with all of its racism and hate speech removed, but that may still be years away
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:50
the whole message is really really well worded btw Nepiki
ZeldaHeart 1
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Scott
I wonder even to remove "in its current state", because it might suggest that if you mod it to remove a single bit of racism that makes it acceptable again
BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:50
Since 2.0's goal is to remove all offensive content, by wording it as like that it would remove the option of considering supporting it
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:51
agreed, good point
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:52
I really do hope that this doesn't affect future team dynamics. If anyone believes that someone does support the content in any of these game's, I would hope you reach out to them privately to get confirmation and not assume the worst (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 23:52
[b]Effective immediately, development on Pokémon Clover is stopped and it will not be released on RetroAchievements in its current state.[/b]
[b]Effective immediately, development on Pokémon Clover is stopped and it will not be released in its current state on RetroAchievements.[/b]
 (edited)
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23:53
i want the emphasis to be that pokemon clover will not get released in its current state, not that it's possible to be released in a future state of RA
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BahamutVoid
I really do hope that this doesn't affect future team dynamics. If anyone believes that someone does support the content in any of these game's, I would hope you reach out to them privately to get confirmation and not assume the worst (edited)
Scott 2025-10-03 23:53
I feel I've let the team down tbf by jumping the gun or trying to fix this privately or on my own, time will tell the damage done, I'll just keep trying to do my best
23:54
both equal I think
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Nepiki 2025-10-03 23:54
Don't worry, mistakes were made but none of us can be blamed for anything
23:54
We are a team, we make these decisions together and will fix them together
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AuburnRDM
i want the emphasis to be that pokemon clover will not get released in its current state, not that it's possible to be released in a future state of RA
BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:54
Even if we have better filtering controls so that any game like it would be hidden unless enabled?
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 23:54
honestly i don't think it's worth it
23:54
i think scott would agree in that we shouldn't feature this current version at all
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Scott 2025-10-03 23:55
the stupid thing is, I get the humour, I get the stupid "ironicness" of it, and I could understand (perhaps when I was younger) playing it and enjoying the stupidity of it, in a South Park-esque way
23:56
RA being associated with hate speech is a definite Bad Choice, especially in the climate we're in, I want to be and I want RA to be on the right side of history (edited)
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AuburnRDM
honestly i don't think it's worth it
BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:57
I played through some of it maybe a decade ago now. It's an odd time capsule of early 2000s edgy internet humour and for the most part I found the whole thing absurd. It was trying too hard and ended up being almost a parody of itself. The annoying part is at the time it was one of the best developed hacks around (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-03 23:58
been talking with auth a bit about this and i agree with his stance
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-03 23:59
I can't. Some of the users that were posting in the game's comments are people that I wouldn't consider extremists in any way
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Nepiki
This is what I have drafted thus far: Dear RetroAchievements community, Today, we have made an announcement regarding a policy clarification on our [url=https://docs.retroachievements.org/guidelines/users/code-of-conduct.html]User Code of Conduct[/url]. This was met with serious concerns, and we fully acknowledge that we have let the community down by how we handled it. First of, we would like to apologize for how this started in the first place. We posted this announcement in the forum post of Pokémon Clover, which (understandably) associated the announcement specifically with that game. This policy clarification was meant to be regarding transparency of our policy in general, and was not meant to be associated with a single game. Pushing this to the front page did not help, and for that, we do deeply apologize. One concern that was brought up was regarding our stance as an archival platform not curating what games we allow on our platforms, aside from games that have been deemed illegal. This obviously raised concerns that, given our stance, we are also in favour of allowing an edgy Pokémon hack that glorifies hate speech. This obviously goes against our ideal of a retro gaming platform, and we have no intention to ever be associated with hate speech. [b]Effective immediately, development on Pokémon Clover is stopped and it will not be released in its current state on RetroAchievements.[/b] Internally, we are going to discuss how to move forward with content like this in the future. This will take time, because we want to be absolutely sure we reach a conclusion that we can truly stand behind. We have lost goodwill today from all sides, but we will do our best to ensure we live up to the expectations you have for us. (edited)
Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:01
Are there any objections if I make this post as RAdmin now? I want this situation to be resolved quickly, but I also don't want to rush anything
00:01
Are there any concerns about how we handle it? Locked announcement thread? Thread that remains open?
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:01
Is this a news post?
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:01
Yeah
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:01
Gotcha, there's been a lot of discussion and wasn't sure anymore (edited)
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BahamutVoid
I can't. Some of the users that were posting in the game's comments are people that I wouldn't consider extremists in any way
AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:02
moreso that there's no value in keeping it
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Nepiki
Are there any concerns about how we handle it? Locked announcement thread? Thread that remains open?
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:03
There's pros and cons to locking it. I don't think leaving the previous one open was a positive gain overall but locking this would also mark it as a final say that people might count as censoring (edited)
00:03
If we do lock it, maybe an added line at the end of the message asking people to message RAdmin for anything further
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:04
Yeah I agree there are both pros and cons
00:04
@Scott how do you feel?
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:04
lock it
00:05
the people it upsets I feel for, but I wouldn't even say to let them message RAdmin, there's gonna be hundreds on both sides of the argument, both vocal
00:05
I don't want to censor this but I really don't want people doxing and firebombing my house
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:06
Yeah I understand
00:06
Are you alright with me posting the announcement, and making a news post on the front page? Putting the initial policy on the front page was a mistake, but this is probably one that we want all our nay-sayers to see
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:07
I think McFarts says it best - there's no benefit giving this hack attention
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00:07
yes please
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:07
Alright, one second
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:08
it's going to be bad if we lock and it's going to be bad if we don't lock tbh
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:09
Not sure on a forum title, ''An Apology to Our Community''? Idk if we want to mention Pokémon Clover in there (edited)
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:10
perfect
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:10
Alright ChocoboThumbsUp
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:10
i'm kinda torn
00:10
part of me thinks we should open it, but we'll just have to mod it
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:10
I won't be available to mod it because it's 1 AM over here, and I don't want to bother the rest either 😅
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:11
we've had a rough enough evening, I don't want to do any modding and I don't want additional pressure put on the team if poss
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:11
how about we leave it locked for 24h
00:11
let people cool down
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00:11
can even say that
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:11
That works
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:11
i'm surprised to see so many comments that 'get' it, that are basically saying "yeesh why have that on RA, make an exception, kill it"
00:12
looks good
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:13
lemme read real quick
00:14
seems reasonable
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Searo 2025-10-04 00:16
🙄
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:18
I'm genuinely worried this would be the end of tele's involvement with the site. Censorship of any kind is a very dear topic for them
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:19
It is also very dear to me so I emphasize with tele, but likewise I completely understand why Scott has made this decision
00:19
I don't feel I can object to it
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:23
should we open the thread after a day? maybe make a separate post (to not edit the original) saying that it would be
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Suffa 2025-10-04 00:23
If people want to play it, they can still find the patch and play it. I don't even consider this removal from RA to be censorship.
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:23
I don't mind opening it after a day
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:25
https://bsky.app/profile/xkeeper.net/post/3m2ctajx4dk2s < this is an interesting point of view, from the co-founder of tcrf
Author icon
X ΘΔ (@xkeeper.net)
the retroachievements thing is just another shooting-self-in-dick-balls-feet-neck-whatever. @romhack.ing and @tcrf.net (datacrystal) had to go through something similar w/ deciding on how to handle Those Kinds Of Hacks and we went "fuck this. why would we ever host this garbage. fuck no."
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Footer icon Bluesky • 2025-10-03 20:42
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:26
I've made a Bsky post as well because that is where our most vocal community is, and left a reply that they can reach out to me for any other concerns (edited)
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00:26
Twitter fortunately had nothing 😅
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:26
I've cleared Clover's page https://retroachievements.org/game/11575
~Z~ Pokémon Clover (Game Boy Advance)
No achievements have been created yet for ~Z~ Pok&eacute;mon Clover. Join RetroAchievements to request achievements for ~Z~ Pok&eacute;mon Clover and earn achievements on many other classic games.
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:27
This thread will be locked for 24 hours. Today has been hectic and we want everybody to have a chance to take a step back and get some rest.
is that too much? hahaha
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Scott
https://bsky.app/profile/xkeeper.net/post/3m2ctajx4dk2s < this is an interesting point of view, from the co-founder of tcrf
Hexadigital 2025-10-04 00:28
I've been speaking with Xkeeper quite a bit throughout this since we're acquaintances, and they seem to be fine with the announcement but aren't too happy with it
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:29
it's not a perfect announcement, but how to make one?
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:30
The perfect announcement they want is ''Clover removed, 177 removed, all people who participated in bigotry banned''
00:30
And that's not something we can do, or have the manpower for
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 00:30
I think they were hoping for a harder stance and a full policy blacklisting any pro-nazi games, at a minimum
00:30
We were also talking quite a bit about moderation in the general sense and they were very surprised by how small our number of moderators/admins is compared to the number of players
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:31
we need time I think to outline something like that, but I don't even know if it needs it. a policy would just be able to retroactively describe why pokemon clover isn't allowed
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:31
Yeah I didn't feel comfortable listing the specifics because that needs far more discussion and we shouldn't rush that out
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:32
Backup of clover's page comments. I think these would be better blanked by someone with server access
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:32
I think we've done a good job in tying up loose ends for today, I need need sleep at this point though
00:32
but yea 100% thank-you guys, you've all been amazing, supportive, patient and mature
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:33
I've been juggling a newborn during all of this hahaha Everybody else should get some well deserved sleep (edited)
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BahamutVoid
I've been juggling a newborn during all of this hahaha Everybody else should get some well deserved sleep (edited)
Scott 2025-10-04 00:34
daaamn lol that's some skills! also congrats!
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 00:43
Followup from authorblues: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1423817239945023538
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:52
https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32644?comment=320778#320778 << useful pov
Policy Clarification: Code of Conduct Scope
I found a couple of games that suit those who are so easily offended over other people&#39;s gaming choices: Sesame Street: Elmo&#39;s ABCs (Game Boy Color) Sesame Street: Elmo&#39;s 123s (Game Boy Color) Jokes aside, good on you RA...
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:52
thoughts on editing the message slightly?
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:54
What needs changing?
00:54
That we want to address users engaging in hate discussion I assume?
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:54
We have lost goodwill today from all sides, but we will do our best to ensure we live up to the expectations you have for us.
We have lost goodwill today, but we will do our best to ensure we live up to the expectations you have for us.
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:54
Yeah that's fine, one second
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:55
maybe a note about the edit and specify that we don't care about that group's opinion in some way
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Scott 2025-10-04 00:55
We could remove "in it's current state" and add a "RA does not support hate speech and will not be associated with hate speech"
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:56
I'm fine with that, my hesitation is just that if there ever will be a Clover without offensive content
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 00:57
maybe they'll have sense to call it something else
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:57
But for the sake of this announcement, I don't mind changing it
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:57
As far as I know that's still the plan with 2.0
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AuburnRDM
maybe they'll have sense to call it something else
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 00:57
That wouldn't really change much, it'll still be associated with the same team
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 00:57
Yeah I think we can make the assumption it will not be called Pokémon Clover so that's fine, it probably has some changes
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Scott 2025-10-04 01:02
That looks great btw, just reread the post on the site
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:02
should we put an edit note?
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Scott 2025-10-04 01:04
Maybe, only because the fact it was edited shows up at the top and could lead to criticism
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AuburnRDM
should we put an edit note?
Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:07
It's a bit late for me and I'm extremely tired, would you be able to handle that? The changes I made are your and Scott's suggestion, which I makred with a checkmark emoji
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:08
do you think a simple [Edits were made for more clarity.] would suffice?
01:08
or should we break down the changes and explain
01:08
not sure what's best in cases like this
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:08
Actually let's just go with that yeah
01:08
Detailing it will just get comments that we are backpaddling
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:09
[Updated wording for clarity]
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:11
Feel free to make any changes, I believe anyone from RAdmin can make changes to RAdmin posts? I added the initial one Auburn suggested (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:11
Internally, we are going to discuss how to move forward with handling controversial content. is this a fine edit?
01:11
so it doesn't sound like we're just putting it off for way later
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Suffa 2025-10-04 01:12
Tele left a message: https://discord.com/channels/310192285306454017/752271759138357249/1423824145325621248
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AuburnRDM
Internally, we are going to discuss how to move forward with handling controversial content. is this a fine edit?
AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:14
anybody have an issue with this?
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Scott 2025-10-04 01:15
I don't know, Id say leave that bit, I don't know at this stage
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:16
the "in the future" is having people think we're going to put it off. i think just saying we'll discuss it reads better imo
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:16
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:18
FYI, whoever is using that pregnant man emoji should be looked at, Xkeeper mentioned earlier that their staff found it as a "tell" for bad actors
01:19
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:19
Can we just mute that DrJordo guy
👍 1
01:20
That is highly disrespectful, I don't care if it's not a good enough reason for mute
01:20
Fuck him
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Searo 2025-10-04 01:20
Sting dm'd me this https://bsky.app/profile/thejewker.bsky.social/post/3m2davzyzuc2e
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The Jewker (@thejewker.bsky.social)
So this is from the guy who was going to dev the Clover set, dude please just stop embarrassing yourself. A compromise at all is just gonna make people even more mad, just drop it and realize hate always loses
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Footer icon Bluesky • 2025-10-04 00:47
01:22
🫃
01:22
Why is this even an emoji...
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:22
Honestly that discussion is going to go nowhere good for any of us
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:23
Someone brought up adding Clover to automod
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Searo
Why is this even an emoji...
Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:23
All of the "people" emojis have variants for male, female, and neutral
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Nepiki
Someone brought up adding Clover to automod
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:24
I don't think that's a good idea. That just feeds into the censorship narrative some are holding
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:24
I muted DrJordo for a day, sorry if I'm overstepping my bounds but I am not going to let people trashtalk tele (edited)
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:24
People would just word around it
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Nepiki
That is highly disrespectful, I don't care if it's not a good enough reason for mute
Scott 2025-10-04 01:25
Someone has given him a 24h mute
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:25
Yep that was me lel
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Scott 2025-10-04 01:25
Lol you did
01:26
I was going to kick him too for good measure
01:26
But then I noticed he could just join again
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:26
It would get the message across so I have no objections, I find this highly disrespectful to an amazing contributor to our community
01:26
He would need to re-verify to get back in, that's enough for me lel
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:29
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SnowPin 2025-10-04 01:30
He's not wrong.
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:32
the policy will dictate where we head
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:32
Honestly this has put the community in a bad light for me. I keep writing things out to post and then deleting them knowing I'm probably going to make the situation worse, whether that's being misinterpreted on purpose or not
01:32
It's just real sad to see people being openly hostile to anyone who disagrees with them
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Searo 2025-10-04 01:32
I manually deleted the comments on the game page pthumb
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:33
is this a clover 2.0 hack dev? ssweat just found a random thread on reddit about it. does not instill optimism anyway (edited)
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:34
https://poclo.net
The main point of Clover is to be both a parody of 4chan’s imageboard culture as well as a parody of Pokémon as a whole. It thus contains themes and language not suited for the faint of heart.
01:37
I've chosen to keep the game page's name and forum for now to solidify that it won't be getting a set until something changed in the future where we would consider it
01:38
I think deleting the forum would give a negative impression. It's currently locked and preserving it I believe is a good compromise
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:39
I also want to keep it up so I know if there are users we need to take action against
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:41
I think we should also come to a decision about banning a large amount of users that used this situation as an excuse to attack others. People are right that if we don't take a stance against this then we are allowing them to act out the same way in the future
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:41
did we back up all the comments before the wipe?
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BahamutVoid
Backup of clover's page comments. I think these would be better blanked by someone with server access
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:41
Yes
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:41
Yeah I'm fully onboard with banning/(long) mutes for anyone involved that broke CoC
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BahamutVoid
Yes
AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:41
a lot happened in the hour after though
01:42
like this guy
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AuburnRDM pinned a message to this channel. 2025-10-04 01:42
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BahamutVoid
I think we should also come to a decision about banning a large amount of users that used this situation as an excuse to attack others. People are right that if we don't take a stance against this then we are allowing them to act out the same way in the future
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:42
And not users on any particular side of this discussion. Feeling that you're in the right does not give you a blanket pass to break the coc
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:42
Anyone that civilly discussed it, agreeing or disagreeing, is fine - anyone that directly attacked/insulted other users should get a mute, at minimum
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 01:44
I'm off to bed for the day, haven't left my chair ever since I got home and it's almost 3 AM; thank you everyone for resolving this, even if it's not what all of us wanted. We'll take care of users, and hopefully it will blow over tomorrow
01:44
AstolfoSleep
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:44
There has been a lot to read so I think we should take our time with this. Off the top of my head I think these users should be scrutinised heavily
  • maize, jam, lizstar, bastard
01:44
Even authorblues was out of line
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 01:46
just ban jam finally
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:47
I honestly did not see JAM but I'm really curious to see how bad his take was
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:48
I'm going off 2nd hand information. Maize and JAM apparently had a lot of bad DMs (edited)
01:48
Not something I think we can action
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:48
Ah, well, I don't think we can do much about that.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:49
Maize on the other hand has been quite vocal in the main channels
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:50
Also, what did bastard do, aside from the screenshot that got starboarded? He's definitely a troll but I can't envision him attacking another user unless it was that screenshot
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 01:51
https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1002697251812020234/1423824636268908668
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 01:54
Chill is probably fine with that, those two have some antagonistic jokes going back and forth (toxic masculinity?) but I can reach out to Chill to see if he had an issue with it, if you want
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Hotscrock 2025-10-04 02:11
I've been following the situation from afar and superficially so far, and I'd like to congratulate the team on their professionalism in handling this situation. My line of reasoning is similar to Tele's, so I avoided participating in this type of discussion, as I think it would hinder more than help, but I support the team's final decision. ❤️
ZeldaHeart 2
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 02:12
Ultimately, we have to do what's best for RA
02:13
And if a few hyper offensive games get cut for the greater good, so be it
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Searo 2025-10-04 02:57
Where do people come up with this stuff??? paper
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 02:57
RA = RA
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SnowPin 2025-10-04 02:59
I'm literally making a bluesky to reply to that message lmao
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Searo 2025-10-04 02:59
https://bsky.app/search?q=retroachievements lots of comments to go through ssweat
Footer icon Bluesky
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 03:00
Bluesky... The cesspool of the internet. lol
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AuburnRDM
And if a few hyper offensive games get cut for the greater good, so be it
WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 03:03
mm but is it for the greater good or will it simply start a downward spiral from which we never escape? The moment you start censoring this game, next time, it'll be less and less "hyperoffensive" games that start getting demanded to be censored and so on and so forth until you eventually start getting people crying out to censor everything that hurts their precious feefees. What you guys do is ultimately up to you, I'm not getting involved except to say its a dangerous road to start down (edited)
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LordAndrew 2025-10-04 03:05
I really don't think that's going to happen. The complaints have always been about the same few games.
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 03:05
Nobody ever thinks it will until it does
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Searo 2025-10-04 03:06
Already got this on Custer's and this https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1423839545325256849
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03:06
But that's expected as it is one on our list
03:11
dedpacman
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AuburnRDM
And if a few hyper offensive games get cut for the greater good, so be it
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 03:12
I still would like to see a way in the future for the game to be represented on the site. As has been shown by almost everyone involved in its discussion, nobody has actually played it enough to have an opinion one way or the other. I believe filtering options is the way to go. I also believe the idea of private profiles is the way to go. What this entire situation has taught me is that someone's opinion not aligning with someone else's gives them full right to be the worst type of human being without a shred of self-awareness because they're "on the right side of history". The sheer irony that people will decry a game having achievements that many will not ever play, and assume that the majority of people who do play are either people who believe in the game's messages or are so weak-willed that they'll be indoctrinated is one of the most damaging things I have ever seen on this site. This is the same rhetoric that has been used over and over to imply that video games cause real world violence despite countless studies proving otherwise. All it does is promote witchhunting of anyone who did want to play it or stay indifferent. The idea that you shouldn't say anything even remotely negative online without consequence is why the UK police can arrest you for facebook messages. It's not the greater good, it's one stance of many and one we hold only in fear of retaliation. (edited)
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03:15
In all my discussions with tomojin they have never given off vibes that people are accusing them of. I do not understand the stance that having achievements for a rom hack that labels itself as a parody is an endorsement of anything in the game's content. The argument that the disclaimer is not in good faith has been used against many other forms of media that labels itself as a parody (edited)
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Searo 2025-10-04 03:21
I wasn't aware it was meant to be a parody, just assumed since it came from 4chan it was meant to be offensive as hell (edited)
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 03:34
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 04:06
Parody only goes so far
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 04:25
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 04:34
Using that as an argument is basically saying racism can't exist if you say it's a joke. Just because someone of the target subject found it funny doesn't make it less racist
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 04:38
Intent is a very important part of humour and parody in general. Shock and dark humour exist to capitalise on confronting difficult topics in a safe way, in the same way that horror films/games do
04:40
This reminds me of that guy who dressed in Mexican party wear, and got accused of approiating the culture by non-Mexicans whereas the Mexicans were happy their culture was being celebrated (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 04:46
And yet we have nazi ovens in this hack
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 04:55
That's what I would count as being so obviously edgy it wraps around into absurd
04:56
Even if they did actually hold that view, that would be a dumb way to represent it. It's just asking to not be taken seriously
04:57
Edited the message slightly to clarify we don't work on the hack development itself https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1002693810037477377/1423880552913698956 (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 04:57
Good edit
04:57
That said, i don't really see a future where we support this hack at all--especially given the backlash
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 04:59
This would be a good start https://discord.com/channels/310192285306454017/1423864056418271324
05:00
The current site's structure doesn't allow for it sure, but given that it's going to expand outside of 177 and Clover it's something that needs an actual discussion
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AuburnRDM
That said, i don't really see a future where we support this hack at all--especially given the backlash
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 05:02
We got equal backlash in the community for banning it
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:03
We had 2 people affiliated with us want to pull out, that we know of. One being dolphin which would just kill the wii rollout
05:03
There's no shot that a stupid pokemon hack is worth all the bad press
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AuburnRDM
We had 2 people affiliated with us want to pull out, that we know of. One being dolphin which would just kill the wii rollout
wes 2025-10-04 05:06
Dolphin and who else?
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:06
Horizon
05:06
They got spammed with tickets
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wes 2025-10-04 05:06
How are they doing now?
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:07
I think we're ok. I reached out to the lead
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wes 2025-10-04 05:07
Thank you for doing that
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:07
He hasn't responded yet but i think he's asleep
05:07
Tangent also talked him down i think
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wes 2025-10-04 05:07
That's good
05:07
I'm trying to smooth things over on the Dolphin front.
05:08
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prayo 2
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AuburnRDM
There's no shot that a stupid pokemon hack is worth all the bad press
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 05:12
I don't disagree with that. In hindsight this was not the way to handle it. My concern is that this will now always be a sticking point because we've made it clear we are moderating content, we will be called to be consistent and condemned if we don't appear to be
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:14
Hindsight was not to make any post step 1, but couldn't have known it would be this bad given what we've dealt with this far
05:18
I propose we make some sort of guideline like this and stick to it. If a game slips through, someone can message radmin
  • glorified hate speech
  • sexualization of a minor
  • noncensensual sexual content
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 05:21
05:21
Scarface would cone under glorified hate speech
05:22
The 2nd point is already covered in the banned list but it doesn't hurt to be transparent
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:23
Does that actually happen in the game though?
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 05:23
I don't see a reason to doubt their message
05:25
3rd point would block Fear 2, Alice Madness Returns and Farcry 3 from having sets. We currently have sets for Rule of Rose, Haunting Ground and Silent Hill 2 (edited)
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:27
It can be used as a plot device, so maybe glorifying that content too
05:28
Didn't even realize in alice tbh
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 05:34
For DOS, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream also has it as a major plot point for 1 character
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:34
  • glorified hateful content
  • sexualization of a minor
  • glorified noncensensual sexual content
05:34
Would be curious how many fall under 1
05:35
I think 3 can be circumvented with glorified
05:35
You just shouldn't get a reward or given an incentive to do so
05:35
Something that would fit games like 177 and custer
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 05:38
There's a lot of later games where if you go down an "evil" route, then you get rewards for things like attacking specific groups
05:39
I know Mass Effect, for example, has some genocidal aspects that you can do if you pick those choices
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AuburnRDM
There's no shot that a stupid pokemon hack is worth all the bad press
WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 05:56
Its not about the pokemon hack. I couldn't give less of a shit about pokemon hacks, I dont even like pokemon. Its about the standard being set with decisions like this. Make no mistake, when decisions are made about stuff like this, it is never ever just about the thing in question. You then have to apply those same rules to everything or you're a hypocrite. Good luck drawing a line that cannot be applied to things that you don't think should be banned. I couldn't care less about the game. I care about setting a standard that if people bitch and whine enough, they can get anything they want removed
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 05:59
Yeah, that's why any standard needs to be airtight
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AuburnRDM
Would be curious how many fall under 1
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:00
Postal, GTA in general, Punch Out, RE5 and Gun all have racist depictions Night Trap has child abuse Phantasmagoria (Saturn) also has rape Modern Warfare 2's Airport scene has you perform terroristic acts Conker's Bad Fur Day has already been brought up Senran Kagura and Gal Gun sexualise teenagers (ignoring all the other games that do thus but avoid it being changing their age in western releases) This is of course excluding every outdated gay stereotype that was prevalent in tons of games
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Suffa 2025-10-04 06:01
I'm more in favor of a case by case basis. We set any guideline people are going to send us games that they feel fall under it.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:01
They're gonna send messages anyway, we've already had some since clover and 177 went down
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:02
That ds witch girl game is pretty creepy to be fair
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:02
My issue with "Case-by-case basis" in this case is how are you going to answer when someone says "Why is X okay but Y is not?"
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:03
Which has no correct answer. We will always look bad unless we comply with their request
06:04
I think I've established from the lists that what we need most is an expanded filtering system. This cat and mouse hurts much more when we're talking about banning sets rather than moving them in and out of a hub
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:04
Honestly my stance on this issue is simple. With the exception of anything CP-related in any way shape or form, stop gatekeeping what games can and cannot have sets altogether. That's my opinion on the issue. That may be kind of extreme for some of you tho lol and I get that
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:07
I'm with you. If people don't want to see certain content on the site then the compromise should be to build tools to allow them to never see it without opting in. Banning sets based on an ever changing line and the hope that whatever we write won't be misused down the line is setting us up for failure later on (edited)
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:07
Agreed
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wes 2025-10-04 06:09
The new game page has support for advanced types of content warnings. See: https://github.com/RetroAchievements/RAWeb/pull/3990 My fear is I privately offered to pull an all-nighter to build shadowban functionality for games into the site, and my perception is that still wouldn't have smoothed things over.
06:10
The "shadowban" functionality would've made games effectively invisible unless you had their direct URL.
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:10
06:10
This whole thing is a mess. lol
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wes 2025-10-04 06:10
blobsad Yeah.
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:11
But I do appreciate everything you're doing to try to help, wes ❤️
ZeldaHeart 1
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Suffa 2025-10-04 06:11
I just realized I haven't looked at the RA reddit today. Now I'm scared to.
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:12
I never look at RAddit... or anything else on that site. lol
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Suffa
I just realized I haven't looked at the RA reddit today. Now I'm scared to.
AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:12
Its... fine????
06:12
I don't see any threads regarding it
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Suffa 2025-10-04 06:12
Considering everything that happened, I'm surprised.
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:13
The reddit is somehow the safest RA space today
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:14
Apologies if I came off badly in anything I said. Sometimes I worry that I do when speaking my mind. I've had a history of saying shit I shouldn't have. lol
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:14
You're fine wil
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wes
The new game page has support for advanced types of content warnings. See: https://github.com/RetroAchievements/RAWeb/pull/3990 My fear is I privately offered to pull an all-nighter to build shadowban functionality for games into the site, and my perception is that still wouldn't have smoothed things over.
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:15
I feel it needs to be said. What we're doing right now is appealing to one side of this argument, that's not inherently wrong but we are actively damaging our standing who believe this was an overreach. A compromise needs to be made where both parties are left dissatisfied and that is going to hurt. But in the long run it's the healthier option for the site
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:15
Anywho. I still feel it'd be a mistake to cave on this but I won't raise a ruckus about it, whatever decision you guys make
prayo 1
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:16
I'm not sure what shadowbanning would do at this stage. 177 and clover have already been removed and hopefully things will continue to die down while we recover
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BahamutVoid
I feel it needs to be said. What we're doing right now is appealing to one side of this argument, that's not inherently wrong but we are actively damaging our standing who believe this was an overreach. A compromise needs to be made where both parties are left dissatisfied and that is going to hurt. But in the long run it's the healthier option for the site
wes 2025-10-04 06:16
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.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:16
That's entirely fair, it's 6am here and I've been at this all night (edited)
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:17
6 am? Are you a brit, Bahamut? 😮 🇺🇸
06:17
😛
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:17
I live here yes
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:18
06:18
sorry. lol I just have to make those jokes
06:18
as an American I'm legally obligated
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:19
We're responsible for you and we're so very sorry
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:19
🤣
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wes
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.
BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:20
Grabbed it from above
  • Re-use the Mature hub and its filter functionality to instead be for any sets that include content that a user would not immediately know contains harmful material. If we receive a report like this in the future we can discuss adding that game to the hub https://retroachievements.org/hub/7869
    • Automatically enabled for all users that hides these pages from the site. Links to those games will only show a generic harmful content warning (to better avoid tempting people), they won't contribute to any site statistic, mastery badges won't show up on people's profiles, these sets will outright not exist unless someone goes into their profile and enables an option that will show these games
06:20
I would expect the hiding part to be the most time consuming part since there's so many parts of the site stuff links and date appear
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wes 2025-10-04 06:21
Yes, there are lots of nooks and crannies. Most people only use 20% of the site - we'd need to be sure to cover the most-used areas. We'd miss stuff.
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:21
I do think a user-defined filtering system would be a great idea tho
06:21
But I imagine that'd be a hell of a lot of work
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:22
I do think the points not being applied to the profile would go a long way for the argument that we are rewarding playing these games. Without it, they function more on the side of structure and displaying intended difficulty (edited)
06:23
I would like to think the community we would be understanding that these features take time to implement. The immediate concerned games have already been handled (edited)
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:23
I kinda hate the points system on achievements personally lol its caused nothing but disaster, like the delorean on back to the future (and real life). But trying to get rid of that would be like dropping a bomb on the site. lol (edited)
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 06:23
If they don't give points, hiding them and player activity on them is less of a concern for detecting cheating as well, since if someone cheats on them... no competitive advantage.
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wes 2025-10-04 06:24
We would need to be very sure that the games in the hub are the things we're fine offering 0 points on.
06:24
The problem is the denormalized data recalculations.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:25
We can move things in and out of hubs more easily than the effect demotion has on the playerbase. Most won't even notice, and if they do they'll see no progress was lost
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wes 2025-10-04 06:25
I think I know how to make it so that logically, all games in that hub are forced to have their achievements set to 0 points.
06:25
The new server would burn through the math very quickly.
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wes
The problem is the denormalized data recalculations.
WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:25
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wes 2025-10-04 06:25
The problem is how lazy we want to be with the implementation on this
06:26
Doing it the "right" way, devs would still be able to assign achievements points, it'd all just be "zeroed out" when a game went to the hub. This will take quite some time and at first glance feels very error prone to develop.
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:26
What games are we serving with this feature?
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wes 2025-10-04 06:27
The fast way is to just force all the achievements of all games in that hub to zero and add some simple logic so devs can't change it until they're out of the hub. Any game moved to the hub has its achievements set to 0 points. This would trigger recalcs of all denormalized data and the job would be done.
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:27
but honestly wes I dont think you need to crunch this, whatever we end up deciding to do. When we figure it out, we can make an announcement about what we're doing and if it goes over well, people will patiently wait for you to implement it I think
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:27
Any of the potential ones I listed earlier. It will also likely be relevant if we ever get pc98 support
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wes 2025-10-04 06:27
i like that
06:27
i'm happy to build whatever helps
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:28
As long as we're transparent I think we'll be fine. What the community does not want to feel right now is that this is all going to be forgotten, any side wants more actioned
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:28
Do we keep custers at this point or just get rid of that with 177?
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:29
Custers isn't getting as much mention as I thought it would. I'd be fine with it going down until whatever feature is implemented
06:29
But also nobody seems to be demanding blood for leaving the job unfinished
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:30
There's probably little reason to kill it if we're bringing it back with a feature
06:31
So it's either gone or it's not
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:31
It was mentioned earlier but this functionality could be extended out to other hubs such as photosensitivity
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:31
That's what the PR mentions
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:32
Without any of the data hiding, just the removal from search or suggestions (edited)
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WilHiteWarrior 2025-10-04 06:32
Im gonna try again to sleep and hope it works out better this time. lol love you guys. God be with you. Good luck.
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 06:32
If we go forward with this feature (removing rewards for games in the hub), would there be an interest in unbanning the two Enix (?) PC-88 games we currently have banned? I haven't looked into them myself, but it sounds like they're closer to those DS games that KiwiTaco reported than something with actual IRL content?
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:33
I would need to look into the legality of owning either of them
06:33
Guy Game is illegal to own but only the initial release
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 06:34
If it's all fictional content then I'm 99% sure it's legal to own in the US, not that I'd recommend basing anything off US law lel
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:35
We're technically not beholden to it but it doesn't hurt to be close enough
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:35
I don't see a reason to unban them
06:36
It's not like we're going to unban clover at this point
06:36
And 177 is off the table
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:38
We need to be consistent in whichever way we decide to mark these games, and also keep in mind future platforms we may support
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wes 2025-10-04 06:38
My sense is we should terminate this hub: https://retroachievements.org/hub/29836
Hacker - 4chan (Hub)
Explore a collection of 4 classic games in the 4chan hub.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:39
The hub probably, the games in there I wouldn't be sure to until reviewing them
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wes 2025-10-04 06:39
No opinion on the games, I just think the hub should be gone
06:39
Virtually no upside, extreme downside
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:40
It is a target right now yeah
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BahamutVoid
We need to be consistent in whichever way we decide to mark these games, and also keep in mind future platforms we may support
Hexadigital 2025-10-04 06:40
From what I've seen of poking at the PC-88 library, there's quite a few additional games with the same type of content as the Enix games. No clue about PC-98 but I'm sure both it and Flash would have far more.
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:40
Flash especially
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 06:40
Should just never support flash tbh
06:40
Gonna be a nightmare
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wes 2025-10-04 06:40
Is everyone ok if I terminate the hub
06:41
I will terminate the hub
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Hexadigital 2025-10-04 06:41
Most of the mods are asleep but terminating it should be fine, especially since it'd be so easy to restore if we needed to for whatever reason
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wes 2025-10-04 06:43
Done
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 06:44
4chan's reputation obviously speaks for itself but not everything about it is bad, Katawa Shoujo exists (edited)
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Suffa 2025-10-04 06:50
https://boards.4chan.org/vr/thread/12072327/retroachievements-administration-officially
/vr/ - RetroAchievements administration officially greenl - Retro G...
RetroAchievements administration officially greenlights Pokémon Clover, the 4chan-themed FireRed ROM... - "/vr/ - Retro Games" is 4chan's imageboard for discussing retro console video games and classic arcade games.
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 10:59
Surprising how tame the 4chan thread is
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Nepiki
Surprising how tame the 4chan thread is
Scott 2025-10-04 11:00
Yea i was expecting much worse
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 11:01
I'm reading the on-site thread now for potential bans/mutes and even that was pretty tame (though I'm only at page 4), I imagine it goes down the shitter later though
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 11:40
One important note I want to make: https://bsky.app/profile/tietuesday.bsky.social/post/3m2ct4e6qns22 Tie was never muted. A lie is being spread around Bsky that we muted/banned people, and that is not true (well aside from one guy who wished us dead)
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TieTuesday (@tietuesday.bsky.social)
-# ↩ TieTuesday (@tietuesday.bsky.social) ok last one i got muted for stuff like this and tbh hold that i hope you felt bad when you muted it
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Footer icon Bluesky • 2025-10-03 20:40
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 12:14
Splitpunched: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32644?comment=320470#320470 ricdesi (delete requested but we might want to speed it up): https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32644?comment=320574#320574 and https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32644?comment=320611#320611 and... many more caerulius (already muted): https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32644?comment=320709#320709 and https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32644?comment=320887#320887 somereatardedwood: https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32262?comment=321131#321131 darkwingdaffy (already muted): https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32262?comment=321081#321081 and below PocketEleri (delete requested): https://retroachievements.org/forums/topic/32262?comment=321053#321053 Comments from the threads I observed as ones we might want to action. Surprisingly, and I can't believe I'm saying this: the thread wasn't that bad. People were defending our choice, there's nothing wrong with that. People did not like our choice, there's nothing wrong with that. Honestly I'm annoyed by the users against the policy that constantly brought up Nazi stuff, I would take action against them rather than the people who agreed with the choice because barely any of them resorted to taunting or attacks.
12:18
The comments on Pokemon Clover, on the other hand, has way more mute potentials:
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 14:20
14:20
Just forwarding this to put emphasis on rules around unofficial or fan works
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Nepiki
One important note I want to make: https://bsky.app/profile/tietuesday.bsky.social/post/3m2ct4e6qns22 Tie was never muted. A lie is being spread around Bsky that we muted/banned people, and that is not true (well aside from one guy who wished us dead)
LordAndrew 2025-10-04 15:13
Tie wasn't muted, but also wasn't forum verified until late, so their replies were not visible to others at the time they were made.
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Nepiki 2025-10-04 15:17
Ah that would explain the confusion
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Scott 2025-10-04 15:51
Trying to think about how to phrase it, but I want to get across to the community that I highly value free speech and art of all kinds, but that anything that promotes or heavily normalises hate speech to this extreme extent is going to be something RA will not be associated with. It's the "normalising" of the offensive/obscene language that I think RA must avoid promoting. I was curious enough about clover to even consider playing it, knowing what it contained, just to understand what the fuss was about, or to perhaps even smirk at the quirkiness/childishness of it all
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 16:48
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Scott
Trying to think about how to phrase it, but I want to get across to the community that I highly value free speech and art of all kinds, but that anything that promotes or heavily normalises hate speech to this extreme extent is going to be something RA will not be associated with. It's the "normalising" of the offensive/obscene language that I think RA must avoid promoting. I was curious enough about clover to even consider playing it, knowing what it contained, just to understand what the fuss was about, or to perhaps even smirk at the quirkiness/childishness of it all
Nepiki 2025-10-04 16:51
Personally I'm not sure if we want to do another follow-up post; the intentions are definitely good, but I think it's better we let it die down slowly and not bring it up again. We've let our ''anti-censorship'' people already down quite hard by making a stance and then immediately reverting, they will definitely not appreciate it 😅
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AuburnRDM
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 16:51
another thing to consider on how to handle any future rulings
16:52
i agree that we don't need a follow-up post
16:52
what we need is to start by taking some action before anything else
16:52
decide on who to ban, who to mute. work forward on what we do with the games
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BahamutVoid 2025-10-04 20:36
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AuburnRDM 2025-10-04 20:38
yep, just keep plugging away
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Nepiki
Personally I'm not sure if we want to do another follow-up post; the intentions are definitely good, but I think it's better we let it die down slowly and not bring it up again. We've let our ''anti-censorship'' people already down quite hard by making a stance and then immediately reverting, they will definitely not appreciate it 😅
Scott 2025-10-04 20:43
Oh totally, completely agree, I'm clutching at straws trying to formulate a clear line to draw to help guide RA clearly into a good place
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