Developers Code of Conduct
This document covers developers' rights, responsibilities, and rules for fair play.
If you are not a dev, check how to become a developer.
See Also: Users Code of Conduct.
- Golden Rules
- Developers must do the following to keep in good standing
- Revisions - Working on Sets with Existing Achievements
- Expiration of Developer Status
- Achievement Ownership
- Feedback about the Developer Code of Conduct
Golden Rules
- Follow the Developer and Content Guidelines the best you can. When in doubt, ask.
- Respect your fellow developer and communicate through any issues you have civilly.
- Make room for other developers to get a chance to work on games they like, in their own way.
- Do not discourage anyone from working on any game, in public or in private.
- Developers are expected to treat players with respect, just as players are expected to treat developers with respect.
Interactions with players
Interactions between players and developers may not always go smoothly. The Users Code of Conduct exists to ensure players keep a healthy attitude towards developers, and likewise developers are required to do the same. Don't dismiss a user's respectful feedback as harmful or invalid. Instead, try to understand them and see what can be learned from it. A player's viewpoint can be very different than a developer's, so it is important they understand why certain choices are made they may disagree with.
If a user goes on the offensive and starts harassing you or your sets, please don't engage further with that user. Instead, reach out to the moderation team or RAdmin. Harassment is taken seriously, and actions against the user, such as a mute or even a site ban, will be taken when deemed necessary. The moderation team will ensure you can keep developing without your enjoyment being harmed by unwarranted negative interactions.
Developers must do the following to keep in good standing:
- Keep your work free from unwelcome concepts.
- Use protective code, preventing potential cheating and exploits.
- Leave accurate code notes for each achievement condition you use.
- For set revisions, follow the revision policy.
- Resolve tickets and leave notes each time you do.
- Like a wiki, once you publish your work, you are giving it over to the community to be reviewed and reworked over time.
Revisions - Working on Sets with Existing Achievements
Revisions, as in working on a set that has existing achievements typically requires community approval by presenting your plan in the forum and in the #revision-voting channel in Discord. Not all changes need approval. See Achievement Set Revisions for details.
Expiration of Developer Status
Inactivity
The developer status will expire and account type will be set to [Registered] if the following conditions are met:
- Developers: Inactivity as developer for 6 months or overall inactivity for 3 months.
- Jr. Developers: Inactivity as developer or overall inactivity for 1 month.
It is important for developers to remember that this is NOT a punishment and is only done for security reasons!
Inactivity as a developer will be defined as:
- Has not made or renewed a set claim.
- Has not created new achievements.
- Has not performed maintenance on existing sets (revisions, rescores, badge changes, etc.)
- Has not resolved, closed, or otherwise addressed any open tickets, theirs or otherwise.
Negligence
A developer's highest priority on RetroAchievements is maintaining the achievements they've created. Tickets shall be addressed as soon as possible. A developer shall be considered negligent and lose the developer role if they have either of the following:
- 5 or more unaddressed tickets that are at least 1 month old.
- Any unaddressed tickets that are at least 2 months old.
An unaddressed ticket is defined as a ticket that has not had a comment by the developer in at least 2 weeks. If a developer cannot resolve a ticket due to insufficient information in the ticket and the reporter is unresponsive, the ticket may be closed as "Not enough information." If a developer is still working on a ticket, they must provide a status update comment at least every 2 weeks for the ticket to be considered being actively addressed.
The intent of the Negligence policy is to ensure developers make a good faith effort to prioritize and resolve their tickets. If there are extenuating circumstances that might prevent a developer from meeting the Negligence requirements, DevCompliance may grant an extension upon request.
Reinstatement
If a user's developer status was removed due to inactivity and they wish to have it reinstated, they must contact Dev-Compliance. However, before doing so, it is recommended to review any changes that were made to the Developer Code of Conduct, updates to the achievement creation tools, and have a plan to address open tickets for their achievements, if applicable.
The steps involved in reinstatement will vary from user to user depending on the following:
- The amount of time elapsed since developer status was removed.
- The amount of tickets that may have been opened on their achievements.
- Other QA issues that may have come up since developer status was removed.
- Moderation warnings or actions the user may have received.
A user may be required to submit work to code reviewers if more than a year has passed since their developer status was removed or if they initially obtained developer status before the junior developer program existed (July 2018) and did not retroactively obtain the Junior Developer badge.
Note: Achievements edited by other developers will not count against a user seeking reinstatement.
Achievement Ownership
When you publish your work you are giving it over to the community to be reviewed and reworked over time - see Achievement Set Revisions.
While the original developer does not own published achievements, they are still the caretaker in terms of bug fixing and maintenance. If another developer revises the achievement, they are the new caretaker of that achievement.
Changing Accounts
If a user with either Developer or Jr. Developer status changes accounts, achievements and tickets under the old account will be re-authored and reassigned to the new account.
Feedback about the Developer Code of Conduct
Although the Developer Code of Conduct is the result of an intense debate, it's not an immutable document. If you have suggestions for improvements, contact us on our Discord server or send a message to RAdmin.