Or, in short, “it’s 2025, man, you really don’t gotta allow Pokemon: Racism Version.“
Update: Since posting this I've gotten several comments via tor full of slurs, and one person in the official RA Discord attempting to doxx me, if you're wondering how that's going.
The RetroAchievements platform posted an update today across the front page of the website that, among other things, made some curious announcements:
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.
On the scope of our Code of Conduct
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.
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.…
Our position on archival vs. curation
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.
This means we host achievement sets for games and hacks that contain content some community members find deeply offensive.
First of all, as someone involved in archival and preservation, it is extremely strange to me to consider this “preservation” or “archival”. What it is, is creating a all-new set of achievements and conditions for old games, and rewarding the people who engage and play with those additions. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s not archival or preservation. It’s a stamp card.
In most cases, it isn’t the developer or programmer of a game adding RetroAchievements; it’s a third party reverse-engineer, finding what variables in memory are associated with progress in game.
One thing to note, too, is that the community already has “User Code of Conduct“, includes these examples of “unacceptable social behavior”:
- Bigotry: This includes racism, sexism, elitism; intolerance regarding others’ nationality, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs, etc.
- Public or private harassment.
- Defamation, as in making false statements about a person that may injure their reputation.
- Threats of violence.
- Unwelcome sexual attention or advances towards others.
- Posting pornography, as in images or descriptions of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement.
- Posting gruesome or gory images intended to cause disgust.
These are all pretty reasonable rules for keeping a community safe and trusting. There’s nothing wrong with them at all, in fact. The critical part is that these are only for the users. Not the content.
Enter: Pokémon Clover
RetroAchievements accepts sets for ROM hacks, which are mods for existing games. These can be as simple as a new set of levels (or graphics), or as elaborate as entirely new gameplay concepts or genres.
Pokémon Clover, named after the 4chan logo, had a RA set in development for years… and it was finally due to release. What is Pokémon Clover? I’ll let the site itself explain:
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.
Emphasis mine; it is, essentially, a shock hack. It’s designed to offend as many people as humanly possible. A gym leader who gives you the “Aryan” badge; monsters named “Furnazi” and “Kuklux“, among countless others. It’s not exactly subtle.
Which makes it all the more bewildering that RetroAchievements would choose to allow it! Needless to say, the front-page combination of “new guidelines” and “new game supported by these guidelines” caused quite a stir.
You know, exactly as it was designed to do. Kind of the whole point of a shock hack.
Pokęmon Clover is not an example of ancient ROM hack crust, either: it’s a recent project, with its last update two years ago.
It’s 2025, man
Speaking personally and openly, I honest-to-God do not know what the RA admin(s) were thinking when they did this. We live in a world in which the USA is literally setting up concentration camps in all but name, with horrific conditions. Police busting into apartment buildings and arresting everyone, just to “sort it out later”. We’re living in fascism, right now.
As one would expect in this environment, many users revolted! The announcement thread drew 42 pages of replies, spanning from “why are you doing this” to cheering for not “censoring” things.
USER 1: are you serious. if the content of the game is too offensive for the forum surely, surely that’s as good a litmus test as any for whether the game should be allowed on the site lmfao
USER 2: The fact we can’t actually post example images of the in-game material because it’s so offensive it’s against the rules and is KoS should say enough, truly
Mod: The Code of Conduct applies to our community, not the games. We do not allow such content in the achievement titles, descriptions, or badges either.
This makes it explicit: the game openly and flagrantly violates the User Code of Conduct. Buuuuuuuuuut, because it’s not hosted here, it’s fine to have a set for it on the site.
You just can’t actually, um, discuss it, here. At all.
At this point, in their shoes, I would immediately close the forum thread, post a “holy shit oops we made a big fucky wucky”, and throw the set into the garbage. Then I would reopen the thread, post “any off-topic shit gets you banned for a week”, and enforce that strongly. The thread has been full of nonsense slippery slope arguments (“if we ban this one game, where will it end!?“) and wild hyperbole (“they’re calling for murdering mods!” was someone’s misrepresentation of one poster saying the mods should “go”). Exciting stuff!
A few hours and 42 pages into the mess, the founder steps in and closes the thread:
Great! Progress! The important thing is to get that decision out soon, stand firm with it, and keep things focused so that bad-faith bullshit doesn’t come stir up trouble. Again: It’s 2025! There’s no place for this garbage and you know it.
Alas.
Posting Through It
I don’t want to hammer too hard on it here, but: if you say you’re locking discussion and coming back with an announcement, lock the discussion and come back with an announcement. Instead, in a second thread:
“177” (described as “A bishoujo game revolving around rape” which “ignited a public furor […]“) is another one of those “kind of obvious not to include this” entries, but in posting this, there’s now a clear line you can cross that isn’t “illegal” or “illegitimate”.
And from that, everything that thus isn’t, is now a personal endorsement. Certainly so once you’re aware of what it is that you’re choosing not to remove.
Clover is Over
Eventually, the second thread is closed. The promised announcement arrives:
Dear RetroAchievements community,
Today, we have made an announcement regarding a policy clarification on our User Code of Conduct. 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.
Effective immediately, development on Pokémon Clover is stopped and it will not be released on RetroAchievements.
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, but we will do our best to ensure we live up to the expectations you have for us.
There’s that word again, “archival platform”. I do not think that means what you think it means.
But this is largely a non-commitment. The hack in question is banished, but it is, again, a single line item. There’s a promise of future action, but nothing in the present.
Further smoldering
A lack of direct and decisive action, including in stepping in and going “stop making bad-faith, slippery-slope, etc. arguments“, has left the Discord channels in slow-mode, with constant bait and shit-stirring arguments. Some people try to repeatedly suggest that “every” “offensive” game should be banned; others argue that it’s “just a joke” and people “shouldn’t be offended”. This argument has, flatly, dominated the general chat for the last few hours.
There have been talks of making a “blocked games” list, so you can hide recommendations about games you don’t want to play. The implication is that this would greenlight so-called offensive hacks, since, well, you can just hide the ones you don’t like. (Never mind the further implications behind this, like “showing people racist stuff before they know/can block it”, “people highlighting it on their profiles”, etc…)
Even as I am typing this, bickering continues, with the occasional image spam. People coming in and pretending “Has anyone played it? They keep saying it has hate speech, but…” (see above links for evidence it does), etc. Nobody is there to stop it that I can tell.
Nobody likes taking medicine
As I’ve said before, I have a simple solution to this problem: take a hard stance. Make people take their tolerance medicine.
- No games or mods designed as, promoting, or containing shock content, racism, bigotry, or other content prohibited under our Code of Conduct
- No games or mods that are illegal or illegitimate
This is a bit of a simplification, and also makes it subjective. Example: Conker’s Bad Fur Day; that’s a commercial game that was “offensive”, but came out, had ratings, and wasn’t focused on being racist (mostly just offensive and crude). It got appropriate ratings. Clover, being primarily made as a shock hack, doesn’t qualify; it’s designed as a vehicle for racist jokes.
This change would piss people off, 100%. Any change does. But it says to minorities and others: we don’t tolerate this kind of behavior here, not even as a Trojan horse in the form of an RA set. The people who leave over this aren’t the kind of people you want around; there’s a reason the term “Nazi bar” has been getting thrown around.
Hoo okay this just scrolled by and it’s a whopper
The problem is this is one of the most well-regarded Pokemon hacks despite the offensive parts, and one of the most requested games on RA. In order to dismiss that, people have to attack the character of hundreds of people they don’t know, or just say “I’m in danger” or “they want to kill me” and attempt emotional blackmail. In my opinion it would be a good compromise to hide the game from view on the site while still allowing people to play it if they wish
I love the wording here. “Asbestos is a great insulator, despite the cancer.” Note also the strawmanning; nobody has been saying that. It’s a classic tactic that has been going on in this Discord for hours, and it will likely continue for hours more. Speaking of,
At some point you just have to say, “enough.” Remember: The thing sparking this debate was a shock hack full of blatantly racist, pro-Nazi images. It is still being brought up as something that should be allowed on the site! Right now! The conversation has not been put to rest.
To say I’m disappointed at this point would be an understatement. Many streamers I follow use and enjoy RetroAchievements in their streams; friends claim it’s gotten them back into classic games. In today’s world, being around as long as it has, I don’t know how we’re still having this debate. I just don’t.