The Strange Girl Saga

Sit down and relax, and crack open a nice cold can of drama while I tell you a story.

NOTE: Do not contact any of the people mentioned in this post. This is just some fun speculation about a potential scam. Don't harass anyone, or take anything in this post as definitive!

When Itch.io made their shitty new algorithm, the top block of the adult tag turned overnight into an unchanging brick wall of shitty dime-a-dozen VNs by game devs Fouzi and Strange Girl. Now I say they're shitty VNs, but I don't know...they're not my thing, so whatever. If you like them that's fine, it's not really the point, and I don't want to throw stones in my glass house here anyhow. The point is, the algorithm change resulted in like 15 of the top 20 games being from these two creators, and Strange Girl was doing remakes of Fouzi games, too, so it was really almost like one creator was just dominating the popular tab.

Both creators have since, to my knowledge, been shadow-banned (really de-indexed). Their games are still accessible on Itch.io, but their project pages are no longer listed in search and browse. This also coincided with the old algorithm being restored (my games shot right back up to where they used to be, by the way, so I hope they just keep the old algorithm). There was also a rather testy exchange on the Itch.io discord server where Strange Girl reached out to the admins and Leafo, Itch.io's chief admin and god-emperor, literally responded to them with "Lol, RIP" and called them a cheater.

So what happened? We know two things for sure, first, that at least two creators who started dominating in the new algorithm were de-indexed, and second, that the old algorithm was (probably temporarily) reinstated at around the same time. It seems likely that Fouzi and Strange Girl, probably acting in concert, found a way to exploit Itch's new algorithm. They were then effectively shadow-banned, and the new algorithm was retired due to being exploitable. There's a chance the new algorithm will be fixed and re-implemented, or that a new, third algorithm will be created, but for now I'm personally very happy to be back to the old one and I hope it stays forever. But that's neither here nor there. What did Strange Girl (and Fouzi, maybe) do? Well, let's start with what we can reasonably verify.

Here's what Strange Girl admits to doing, so we can reasonably assume this was in fact, at least part of what they did.

Strange Girl essentially did giveaways in exchange for ratings. I don't think asking for ratings is a problem, but a giveaway is a bit different, and may even have legal ramifications in some regions, so it's not something I'd ever recommend doing. Still, to me, this seems like something that would generally result in a warning. Like the admins reaching out and telling you to stop. Also, Leafo said he applauded them for "figuring out what [they] did" which is like what? Figuring out ratings are good is hardly something warranting that sort of reaction.

So my opinion is that this is a partial admission from Strange Girl. This is pure speculation on my part: while this admission is true--they definitely did do these ratings giveaways, I've seen the posts myself--I also think this is the tip of the iceberg. It's like admitting to a lesser crime to make yourself seem more honest while trying to hide a bigger crime. This is a tactic manipulative people will use sometimes, though we can't definitively say it's being used here. This is all pure speculation. It's like a mystery novel. In fact, let's just call the rest of this post Itch.io fan fiction, and let's see what else could maybe be happening under the surface.

So if this is just the tip of the iceberg, what else did Strange Girl do? Let's try to figure it out.

So Strange Girl was involved in some sort of pseudo-publishing deal, leveraging their large following on Itch in exchange for 40% of the revenue of the games they "published" which is an INSANE take for doing absolutely fucking nothing. This is extraordinarily shitty behavior, it's literally just a fucking trash tier smooth brain scam, and anyone who does this is fucking garbage. Remember, just fan fiction, so I'm talking about this made up character Strange Girl in my fan fiction story, so don't @ me.

And look, on some level, if you get scammed, that is on you. It takes two smooth brains overlapping in just such a way to cause this sort of thing to happen, but anyone can be susceptible to a scam, so these people deserve some sympathy. If you've never fallen for a scam yourself, I'd propose that maybe it's not that you're a genius who's impervious to scams, but instead maybe you just haven't had someone spring the right one on you yet. Besides, the last things the victims need is for some shame to be piled on them. I think this is a straight-up heartless scam, and in my opinion it massively elevates the seriousness of what's going on here.

I won't name any names, but here is an excerpt from a Patreon post from a small adult game dev (sub $50/month) describing getting ripped off like it's the opportunity of a lifetime.

For shame. Fuck you, Strange Girl. Go to hell you wretched fucking shit heads.

But how are they confident enough to take this kind of scam on? Do they have some way to ensure some level of success on Itch.io's algorithm? Well, maybe. This is the hardest part to prove. And by "prove" I of course mean "add to my fan fiction's plot" because of course this is all Itch.io fan fiction based on my personal speculation.

For this, I'll be relying on the research my friend and fellow adult game dev, Tukann, did. Check out Tukann's game here! It's a good game, and I think it has a pretty neat interaction system for the sex scenes. Worth checking out if you want to see another dev out there stretch the poor Twine engine to its breaking point like I tend to do.

Anyway, back to what Tukann discovered. For one, Tukann noticed this:

This is the source HTML for one of Strange Girl's game pages on Itch. Notice that there are a different number of blank lines in each. Apparently, Strange Girl would edit their game's descriptions in minor ways like this up to several times a day, maybe with a script. Also, in concert with this, Tukann noticed their games were entering and exiting the same bundles, also up to several times a day, also possibly with a script. There may have also been some fake sales happening, but I could not confirm this myself, I only saw people mention it in the F95Zone discord.

Now it's important to give the caveat that Tukann, like me, is engaged in speculation, so this is still all fan fiction! The behavior Tukann observed is not something you'd normally do at all, let alone several times a day for a long period of time. While I can't definitively say this was done to exploit a flaw in Itch's algorithm, I can't think of another reasonable explanation. This also makes more sense with what Leafo said when he applauded Strange Girl for figuring something out. And this is definitely de-indexing worthy if it was working. I think Leafo probably knew about this part, I'm not sure about the other stuff.

Now, I don't actually believe this bundle thing and the game page changes were the only two steps to trick the algorithm, I think at least one additional step was also needed, and while I do have some evidence of what this third step probably was, I think it's best if I keep that part to myself just in case. But if you're of a mind to exploit Itch, know that (1) you'll be caught instantly anyway now that the admins know what to look for, (2) it won't be as effective anymore anyway now that the old algorithm is back, and (3) I didn't give you all the necessary steps anyway. So yeah, don't even try.

So let's put together our delicious, dramatic piece of fan fiction then. In our story, Strange Girl's operation looks something like this:

1. Make games! They definitely were a developer, and making some decent games people liked is definitely how they got their foot in the door and started things off!

2. Social engineer for good ratings. Using a basic giveaway-for-ratings deal they got good ratings and a lot of them, which definitely helped.

3. Exploit the algorithm. It seems they were doing this before the algorithm change, but after the change they really skyrocketed, and that actually put a lot of unwanted attention on them and made other devs, and the admins, curious. The new algorithm may have been more of a curse ultimately than a blessing.

4. They then leveraged their large and popular Itch account to scam other devs by offering them a "partnership" and taking up to 40% of their hard earned money. Real scumbag move here, imo.

The issue is I can't really prove most of this stuff. There's decent evidence for some things, but a lot of it could be explained in other ways, and while I absolutely think these morons are scammers, even that could probably be massaged into them being a "publisher" of some kind if you wanted to make that argument. Itch.io does explicitly allow publishing arrangements, so even though it's a scam, it might not break the ToS. This is a lot of shady behavior, though.

Assuming I'm right about their scams and exploits, being de-indexed will hopefully break the back of their entire operation. They still have 25k followers, but there's no way they'll have the traffic to keep the fake-publisher deal going. At least, I hope this is the end of their ability to scam small or new devs.

I know this post is a bit weird, I really don't like to talk shit or get involved with other devs, especially if I don't have something positive to say, but I've been looking into this and I figured it was kind of a good sequel to all the posts I made about the algorithm changing. I also thought, if I don't tell you guys about it, who will I tell, lol.