Hi all,

I’m writing this with a heavy heart, as this will be the final RetroShell weekly newsletter for now.

Over the past week, we’ve had to take a step back and reflect on whether we want to remain directly involved in this side of the retro gaming community. Some of you may have seen the recent discussion on X/Twitter about RetroShell, our use of AI, and the way our news coverage has worked. Unfortunately, it became quite public, quite emotional, and at times personally difficult.

We want to say clearly that RetroShell was never created to discredit anyone, replace passionate writers, or take away from the work of independent creators. Quite the opposite. For more than 200 weekly newsletters, we have linked to, credited, and supported retro gaming websites, writers, channels, creators, and community projects without asking for anything in return. We did that because we love retro gaming and genuinely wanted to help surface more of the brilliant work happening across the scene.

The idea behind the news side of RetroShell was simple: use technology to help find stories from across the retro gaming world, track down the most original source where possible, and report them in a clear and useful way.

A lot of gaming news is already reported from secondary sources rather than primary ones, with credit passed up the chain rather than going straight to the origin. That is exactly what RetroShell was trying to do. What we have learned through all of this is that there is an important distinction to draw: aggregating general news is one thing, but shining a light on genuinely unique content, a feature article, a review, something someone has invested real creative effort in, is different, and does not add much to the wider community. We accept that.

What I do not accept is that the underlying concept is wrong. A central, well-sourced place that brings you retro gaming news from across the industry and points you directly to the primary source would be a real value add for the community. That idea has not gone away.

That said, we also accept that the system was not perfect. Since all of this happened, we have spent time reading up on copyright law as it applies to images. The honest conclusion is fairly simple: if it is your own image, you are on solid ground. The moment you use someone else’s image, you are in copyright territory, and credit and a link do not necessarily change that.

We completely understand why any publication would be frustrated when their images are used without consent. After looking into this properly, we are not sure it is ever truly acceptable without it, which is a big part of why we have taken all of our news coverage down rather than simply reformatting it.

The ironic thing, and we say this not to be provocative but because honesty matters here, is that a number of gaming websites, including some of those who were most vocal about our approach, regularly use images from manufacturers and other sources. We would be genuinely surprised if they always had explicit consent to do so, though we could be wrong.

When you start looking into the ownership structures and partnerships behind some of these companies, you realise it is a murky industry where profit is often the real priority, well ahead of people’s rights. One only needs to look at who owns publications like IGN, and what positions those organisations take or fail to take on things like Palestine, factory worker conditions, or labour rights, to get a clearer picture of what these companies actually care about.

If people are genuinely passionate about standards, copyright, and ethics in this space, we would encourage them to look carefully at how the publications they read actually approach these issues and decide for themselves whether they are comfortable with what they find, or whether the criticism aimed in our direction is a little more complicated and potentially hypocritical than it first appeared.

What we found difficult was the public shaming that followed, especially after we tried to explain things clearly and without emotion, politely, apologising where appropriate, and resolve the concerns directly.

I’ll set one thing straight, for the sake of accuracy rather than to reopen the argument: during the discussion, a screenshot was shared to show that we had not linked to a source. That same screenshot in fact shows our post linking directly to that source’s own article. We will not share DMs to illustrate a point as we think this is wrong, but the discussions had with the parties involved were very passive aggressive and there have also been attempts to dox us.

On the AI point, I know people have strong feelings. RetroShell does use AI, and we have been open about that. We believe AI is a tool that, when used responsibly and with human editorial standards, can help small projects do more. It should not replace human opinion, experience, judgement, or passion. It should support them. That has always been the aim.

More broadly, we still believe the retro gaming community is at its best when people support each other: writers, collectors, preservationists, developers, sellers, YouTubers, small websites, larger publications, and everyone else who keeps this culture alive. There is room for different approaches, different tools, and different views, but I hope we can all try to deal with each other in good faith.

RetroShell itself will continue. We still make, and will continue to make, mighty fine protectors for collectors – as we are collectors ourselves, and we remain very proud of the products and the people who have supported us.

From here, any future announcements will come through our Instagram, @hiretroshell. You can always find us, and the shop, at retroshell.com. If you are looking for a weekly retro gaming newsletter going forward, Retro Dodo publish one at retrododo.com/subscribe.

To everyone who has read the newsletter, visited the site, bought our products, shared our posts, sent kind messages, or supported us in any way over the years: thank you. It really has meant a lot. It certainly kept the newsletter going for far longer than I probably should have. ❤️

Maybe we will be back with something else retro-related in the future.

Thanks again,

RetroShell