What's with the shady network posting games under multiple accounts?

Let’s get down to the short of it before making people read the full analysis: @Reiko (Reikodium) @Lysander (KannaScape), @Kasumi (Kasumi Projects), and potentially others are the same person or group, and also Tentacles Games, and a number of other short-lived groups. I don’t know what the long-term aim here is, or why they feel the need to do this, though the deleted Patreon pages for at least one of these groups could indicate a scam - get people to pay in for a few months with the promise of big updates around the corner, only to vanish when the scope becomes too large or the money starts to dry up. However, that’s only speculation on my part; I can only say concretely that this person or group is operating a network of accounts for unknown purposes.

To start with, the link between Reikodium and Tentacles Games isn’t even hidden. Reiko’s itch pages for all but their earliest title ask the user to check them out on TentaclesGames.com - an AI-assisted itch scraper that auto-creates pages for games tagged as adult content, not something the game’s author has any control over when the AI inevitably generates misinformation in its Q&A section, and whose helpful DMCA button is absolutely non-functional. Even more critically, the game pages on the site are currently all broken, deliberately or otherwise - while in the past the buttons to take the reader to an itch or patreon page have appeared to work, currently they all redirect to Reiko’s newest game on itch. From this we can conclude that the same person or group operates both.

Now, Tentacles Games and Reiko’s games and accounts follow much of the same setup, even where the artstyle isn’t identical. The games are all made in Godot, all have web/Windows/Mac/Linux/Android builds available, and all have segregated tiers of free and 1-2 different paid builds, rather than older full builds later being made available for free. There’s a slight deviation in Reiko’s oldest game only having a paid build, but from the artstyle and animation, and the general trend of ‘borrowing’ popular copyrighted characters rather than making their own, we can conclude that this is indeed still one of their works. Additionally, many of them have apparently empty Youtube pages, and empty or near-empty/retweet-only Twitter/X accounts, while following the same general template for the store page setups.

From there, cross-referencing other Godot games that follow most or all of these patterns with games featured on the Tentacle Games blog or sidebar makes it easy to pick out a number of other accounts, and just browsing the itch tag for Godot makes even more stand out. KannaScape’s games are the most obvious here - not just because it’s the content we’re most likely to discern, but because Inflation Inc. has been featured in the sidebar since the sidebar has existed, and their games also top the blog posts for Top 10 Weight Gain Porn Games, Top 10 Cumflation Porn Games, and Top 10 Belly Expansion Porn Games. The other sidebar games also follow the same pattern, pegging HelloArisu (expanding to Steam! Good for them, although I don’t think Valve’ll look kindly on the blatant IP theft) and HotaruPixie (note the Page Removed notice if you try their Patreon) as part of the network. Going through the blog posts also nets a number of new ones - naturally, the point of the site appears to be to drive traffic to their projects while trying (and failing) to appear neutral. TOP 24 Tentacle Porn Games avoids putting their games right up top but still leads to Hina Aozora (whose oldest game bucks the trend and uses SRPG Studio), katwhorm, and Yukari-chan (hey, this one’s got a SubscribeStar too!).

Looking at non-promoted stuff is where it gets a bit more nebulous. It’s pretty obvious from the template and artstyle that Kasumi is another alias, and despite their game recieving some actual development attention I’d hazard a guess that HoruBrain is as well, down to the game also drawing heavily from SCP stuff, similar to Tentacles Games. I highly doubt this is all of them, either, as not all of them use the exact same patterns and some may deviate entirely.

I’ll admit that it’s possible that I’m reading too much into this - that beyond the link between Tentacles Games and Reiko, the fact that their site just happens to frequently feature games with similar interests to their own using the same Godot templates, same handful of animations, and same store templates could just be a complete coincidence! But I’d wager the odds there, out of all the adult content on itch, are astronomically low.

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not the first person to see this pattern, i also made a thing on here to comment on it

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What bothers me is that they can clearly make games but are instead doing this. I feel like if they put all of their efforts into making an actual game then it would be fine, I don’t even know if this enterprise is profitable for them. As it is now they are fairly easy to spot.

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That’s weird.

I noticed many of their games had very frequent ratings, sometimes even (~70 twice) and others all the way up to 200+. So maybe that’s manipulated too.

While it took Forks and Some Bullshit years to reach about 100.

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I’m not defending anyone but making a game takes time and therefore money. Knowing in addition that a game is subject to the fact of pleasing or not. Sometimes these are hundreds of hours of work that bring nothing. It is almost normal that those who do not have the mental strength to play this game of cat and mouse between their creation and their public seek to make a profit. I will just take the example of DLC in video games.

Despite this I am of the opinion that this behavior is unacceptable if it were proven true. It is the potential trust in other potential creators that could suffer.

However I do not know if the elements are solid enough to decide anything. Without counting on what is possible to do whatever the scale. Thank you however for warning. This allows for the part to pay more attention to the projects where I bring my trust.

@Moinaushniki I’m not surprised when you use manga characters that are not copyright free and that already have entire sections on the biggest hentai sites on the planet. lol

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I actually just went an entire rant about exactly this and made all of these connections yesterday lol, funny timing.

A little insight I just wanted to give as a creator is that both Kannascape and some “representatives” of Tentaclesgames have reached out to myself and others in order to try to promote their stuff or put our games on their website. Believe me when I say that it’s an obvious cashgrab.

My assumption is that Kannascape/Reiko/whoever is one person pulling all the strings, or they’re a small team of people just pumping out shovelware to make money. Don’t buy into it.

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Top 10 WG Games

No Apostles or Roundbound

The shadiness I can forgive, but the lack of good taste? BURN THEM ON THE PYRE!!!

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Saw this something like two weeks ago, but ye, account doesn’t seem to answer to any fan feedback, gives a “scambot” type of vibe to me honestly. Has anyone gotten the mods involved into this yet? Because i think this could technically be called an actual scam.

Addendum: A number of other developers across engines and art styles also have a similar blurb on their itch pages asking viewers to “check us out on Tentacles Games” or something very similar; while there’s some level of fetish commonality with these games and the genres Tentacles Games seems to prefer, it very much looks like influence peddling rather than the same person/group branching out - you’ll notice the Patreon or store pages of some of the groups linked above link back to other games or have guest posts on the Patreon, and in turn some of these itch pages feature games that come from, for lack of a better term, inside the “Tentacles Games core network” of Godot games.

Reikodium’s games are unique in that - other than the main Tentacles Games itch - they’re one of the only devs that links back to the main Tentacles Games site rather than individual product pages, and one of the only devs with a TG link that also uses Godot.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say they’re at the “core” of this, but Strange Girl Studios is also heavily involved. While they are (were?) much more prolific, most of their content is Godot-based, they openly profess their love of tentacles, a lot of it is clearly the same art style, they seem to have republished or co-published a number of games from the accounts mentioned in the original post, and their Patreon published a post advertising one of Kannascape’s games only a couple months before shutting down. About two months ago they all but quit, citing shadowbanning from itch’s search results (supposedly over algorithm manipulation! Real shocker, huh?) as the reason. I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that one of their only comments since was on a game by HoruBrain (linked in the first post), and that Tentacles Games published its first “demo” game just two days later. While Tentacles Games certainly predates Strange Girl Studio’s exit, it’s hard to dig much deeper into the identity of either of them; both of their websites were registered via GoDaddy and use their WHOIS protection service, which could be a complete coincidence but puts up an investigative wall regardless.

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I suppose it could be a ploy to drive people to their website, that would be my guess. All of these “games” are just content farming for it and the Patreons are a way to try and make money in the interim (or perhaps or a vague attempt to seem genuine).