Researcher Interview on CB and the status of this game

[poli]

Hello. I used to work with Critical Bliss quite some years ago, before they were called Critical Bliss. Last year, a researcher reached out to me for an interview after I made a post in another forum about this NTRHOLIC DX game, which has now been renamed, responding to one of the developers. I am sharing the interview here with just the questions they asked me and my answers to them. I am also re-posting my initial NTRHOLIC DX comment to the developer at the top. The interview starts right after. I hope this clears up a lot of questions people have about Critical Bliss and their practices.

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> For the DX version, I feel like CB is working hard on it right now and all we can do is just waiting. I understand the complaints but there is not much we can really do.

I am sorry to tell you that you will be sorely disappointed.

> We had nothing to show before because CB was mostly working on coding.

I think many people in this thread, you developers especially, are owed some honesty and transparency so I want to tell this to you straight.

I hope you have not gotten too far in whatever agreement you have with CB to be unable to back out, because you are being scammed. Lewdlogic (LL) is a professional con artist. He does not have coders on standby working on your game. He has a single javascript programmer who is the same man that created his original website for LewdMedia -- a tabloid site he created during gamergate to capitalize on the hype and gamer "news" while also having a few reviews of erotic games written by the handful of people he brought on for the site.

The only other programmer he has on call is a middle-aged Japanese man who is a Unity developer. That man is also the lead behind Momoiro Software. I only mention his ethnicity because it will be relevant in a moment.

CB is not diligently working on your game and simply staying silent so that they can focus. That makes zero sense whatsoever in any professional environment. What LL is doing, is stalling and gathering SEO. His modus operandi is to gather popularity from people who don't know better, use that to appear legitimate, and then sign onto faulty agreement after faulty agreement with actually talented people so that he can "publish" them. He specifically targets people who are completely new to game development and small, or are English as a second language (ESL). That's why I mentioned ethnicity earlier, it is so LL can also pretend he has a translator. He has an entire song and dance of how supposedly difficult and scary it is to put your game on Steam, but he can miraculously do it for you. Just have him be your "publisher" and hand him the full keys to your Steam configuration. Then he can take as much of your revenue as he wants (or as much as he wants to tell you), completely control the release of sales numbers, and completely control any Steam community engagement or announcements. The last part sounds like a good thing, right? Because a normal publisher should be able to advertise for you with Steam, correct? Well he doesn't even do that. He doesn't know how to make a press kit. He doesn't know how to write a contract. He won't even actually advertise your game on his own site or through social media channels. Why? Because those things take effort. He is a con artist. He only cares about getting as much money as possible while doing nothing. If you deep dive through the various things CB has published on Steam you will start to see a pattern.

It is not hard at all to publish games on Steam, by the way. It has not been hard for the past 5 years. I've done it a few times and I can just walk you through the process for free if you want. It is very easy.

But let's back up a bit. Let's talk about LL's site, and CB. Both of his company names, LewdMedia and CriticalBliss, are imaginary. They do not exist. They are not actual legally incorporated companies. At least, until 2021 when he tried to scam a small vtuber agency (well, they are one of the large vtuber corpos now) and they subsequently began pursuing legal action after he got ~$1500 from them, then never showed up to scheduled meetings on time, or at all. And the few times he did show up, he would just cuss out the people there when they asked for any sign that he was doing what he said he would do, then hang up the meeting.

Back to that Unity programmer he has on call. That is probably the only person working on your game in Godot. And he will be doing it in C#, because Unity is in C#. But that means he is experienced and this may work out, right? Wrong. C# is a secondary supported language in Godot. Godot is primarily designed to be used with gdscript. There are arguments about which language is faster on a hardware level, but I can tell you which language has more bugfixes, plugins, asset support, target platforms, developer support, and community help: it's gdscript. So when the port of your game hits snags, which it will, you will be dead in the water for a few weeks. There will not be many resources to turn to or people willing to troubleshoot your game. Not that LL will let anyone actually touch the countless abandoned projects he tried to put under his umbrella. That might create some progress and then he will have to do some work. He can't have that.

Also, those 20 or so artists he claimed to have? Another false statement. The person who managed the web infrastructure for LewdMedia created a subscription racket for artists a few years ago. That person named his company Kupaa or something. He pimps out those artists to CB's various planned-to-fail projects. Like "Vaygren: Lustful Temptation". He doesn't pay the artists regularly, on time, or most often at all. You can browse though Steam discussions for the different scams he's put on there to find people bringing this up.

You are working with a professional con artist. He is scamming you like he has scammed many people before and he is going to keep doing it. Yourself and the people here who are interested in this game are going to be waiting for a while.

I hope you get out of this and your game succeeds. It looks like a really cool game.

[poli]

Interviewer: 1) How was it, working for criticalbliss and lewdlogic during your time there? How was the workplace environment and hours there?

Me: It was very unstructured. There were discord calls every few days where Logic would not doing anything except talk about the artists or developers he wanted to have working for him. He often did this while streaming a fighting game. Usually Tekken or Street Fighter. These calls would go on for hours. Once the label "CriticalBliss" started this still did not change. As the months dragged on, he would get very very upset if anyone asked how the game WMNAD was going. Even people who were supposed to be working on the game, like myself, an expectant artist who quit, and a writer who quit after not being allowed to write anything for the game for months.

Some background to the game, which I will explain more in your other questions: Logic had no idea how to program. So he went with this very niche and dated Japanese visual novel engine called Tyranobuilder. Tyranobuilder is not easy to modify to do custom actions, unlike a modern visual novel engine like Renpy. However, the backend of Tyranobuilder is javascript. So Logic's righthand-man, the javascript programmer who built the site, would be able to do anything he wanted in Tyranobuilder. Of course this never happened. Logic did not want anybody to touch the game project. No one except himself who did not know how to code, or create art, or even properly add the art into the engine. It would only obvious to people who were supposed to work with him after months of this that Logic had zero intentions of ever completing this game. All he wanted to do was keeping lying to people waiting for the game, play fighting games, and collect Patreon money.

Interviewer: 2) How was meeting, then working under lewdlogic in particular? I mean, your first impression of him when you met and how he ended up being, by the time you had left them.

Me: My first impression of him was he was a guy who had no idea what he was doing, but he wanted to make games because he didn't like the way mainstream gaming was going. Since I default to wanting to help people, I stuck around in his discord group chats to listen. Looking back on it, there were a ton of red flags. For one, he acted like an American stereotype of a black man. He used the n-word a lot, spoke in broken English, those kinds of things. He also was very convinced that I was a naive Japanese girl. I am not obviously. But until I finally got a microphone to talk on discord, he truly thought I was. The shift in his behavior after I was able to talk made me see how really really creepy he acted in hindsight. By the time I left, it was like I mentioned in your first question. Logic was always angry when anyone asked him about the game. His persona never changed either: he was still an American stereotype -- a lot of swearing and throwing the n-word around. He was an absolute con artist.

Interviewer: 3) What kind of person is lewdlogic?

Me: He is a terrible person who is willing to take advantage of anyone. He will lie about anything, even things that do not matter. He thinks it is funny. He used to say "that's just how marketing works" when someone would call him out on a obvious and meaningless lie. Once he decides that he can't exploit someone anymore, that they got too smart to what he is doing, he gets rid of them. He blocks them on everything. He spins lies about them to anyone who will listen. And as you've seen, the way he makes promises and takes claim for other people's work means he has a lot of people expecting things of him. So they will believe whatever he says and will even defend him.

Interviewer: 4) How do they approach young/inexperienced devs that have erotic games with potential and what kind of "fairy tales" do they tell/sell them for them to accept, such a thing?

Me: They find people who are new to the business and promise a lot of marketing. The worst part is Logic technically can do this marketing, but he never will. Actually doing marketing means doing work and he will not do that. The usual lies he tells are something like "Steam is too difficult to put games on yourself, especially erotic games, so they should sign on with me". Or, "Steam will take down your game if you don't go through a publisher like me". Or, "it is really difficult to market erotic games so sign on with me and let me take care of it". He also makes ridiculous revenue split offers that only sound good to people who are new to this or are English-second-language (ESL) and think there are a ton of fees and legal steps to putting their game on Steam. It is a ton of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Interviewer: 5) Speaking of contracts, just what kind of contracts do critical and lewdlogic conjure up? I mean what kind of things do they put on them, that take devs who once shared everything with the fans/showed development and actual care, end up turning them into silent and uncaring people, that defend the actions of critical and lewdlogic to the bitter end?

Me: His contracts are nonsense. He writes them himself in Microsoft Word, and then has a so-called lawyer look over them and make it sound like real legal language. It is absolute bunk. But to people who are new to this, or not great English-speakers, it looks scary to them and they think it is a real official document.

Interviewer: 6) How real is the success of critical, lewdlogic and the games they have published?

Me: The only success he sees are from games completely NOT made by CB and that CB had no hand in the development whatsoever. The first game he put on Steam, Snow Daze, is a game I made when working with Outbreak Games. CB did absolutely nothing except put the game on Steam. This happened because the owner of Outbreak Games was unfamiliar with the Steam process and wanted an easy solution. I didn't know better at the time, but that is how CB got its fanbase going. Snow Daze made over $100k in the first month on Steam. He took a 30% cut I think, and the rest went to Outbreak Games. He had full control of the revenue so I'm not sure how Outbreak got their money from him properly. I never saw any of that money. Did I mention Logic refuses to pay people? He is a real scumbag.

Interviewer: 7) Speaking of which, lewdlogic talks a lot about having turned the steam algorithm into his "♥♥♥♥♥" thanks to his marketing/analitic skills...yet only a handful of times, did this prove to somewhat be true from my research, namely with Orc massage and another game or two...so my question is, just what his true skills are in this aspect and if those successes were thanks to research or just very dumb luck that ended up feeding his ego?

Me: That is a complete lie. Steam's algorithm is not like Twitter's, which is what he always compared it to. He does not market and he does not know how to read analytics numbers. It is not even dumb luck. The successes come from games that he never touched, already had an existing fanbase -- like Snow Daze -- and he just put his name on them when he put them on Steam. He is stealing the credit and it is fueling his ego. That's pretty much it.

[poli]

Interviewer: 8) One thing that has confused me since the beginning, is how criticalbliss barely shows anything regarding development of their games or games of devs they are "helping" with publishing and when they do actually show something, it's after months upon months of silence and fans getting angry (when they don't just straight up abandon a game like WMNAD) So my question is, just what is the idea here? Why do they barely show anything and make devs that once shared everything, go completely silent?

Me: The idea is to build Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In less technical terms, it is building hype and the appearance of legitimacy. He never plans to release those games, and will actively stall development if serious progress is being made or can be made. The more people that are expectant of a game, the higher the engagement numbers are. More people search for it, which brings it up higher in search results, which increases visibility of CriticalBliss. The problem with this scheme is if you never eventually release the game, you are just known as a liar. This is why the "publishing" part of CB is so important. With that, he can take completely finished games by other people, along with their established fan base, and put his name on it. That way he gets credit for a legitimate playable game that people love while never having touched the game. He relies on the existing fanbase so that he can say he is good at marketing. He relies on his company name being on the Steam page so that he can say he "worked on" the game. People then begin to see CB as legitimate and trust them again, because look they worked on this popular game that a lot of people love. The traffic to the game also brings revenue to CB, because they get a cut of sales since they "published" it. Therefore, more hype brings more traffic which brings more revenue. CB never needs to deliver on the hype, never needs to do actual work, they are making money already. It is a house of lies and Logic is living comfortably in it.

Interviewer: 9) I know this one is a bit personal, but what developers and fellow publishing companies have blacklisted them and their motives?

Me: I honestly don't know. I've been busy with other things in life. It is only when people directly ask me about CB or Snow Daze that I write out all of this information. But I am glad you asked. I hope the public learns how terrible they are everyone stays far far away from them.

Interviewer: 10) You mentioned in the forum page of "WMNAD?!" how "Those side games he is “publishing” are an attempt to get Patreon and Kickstarter money off of their work, and then run away with it" and "This method of continuing to push back deadlines allows him to suck up as much Patreon money and Kickstarter money as possible will stringing along expectant fans" so my question is, how does he do/accomplish this kind of thing? I mean I have never dealt with Patreon in general but I can't imagine how the devs would gladly hand over their page and profits...

Me: Oh, this is what I answered with your question 8. The short version is more traffic to his "published" games brings more trust to CB which brings more revenue and more hype for games that they will never release. The cycle continues itself.

Interviewer: 11) Again, this might be another very personal question, but if you don't mind, how did lewdlogic take advantage and antagonize your dev group? What were the methods and what made him stop, if they ended up stopping?

Me: He only paid me two times in the years I was "working" for him. I was waiting for WMNAD to be ready for me to program for it. It was always next week or next week or next week, just a stream of lies. But the fact that I was nearby meant that he had a real Japanese speaker. So he used that to lure in more trust and gain legitimacy. Because how could someone who claims to make erotic games AND can communicate with the established Japanese part of the industry possibly be a scam?

I remember arguing with him to just let me see the game project of WMNAD so that I can program it and at least get a demo out. This was some time after the Kickstarter ended and the number of people interested in the game was still growing. Logic didn't know how well or fast I could code at that point. Still, he only let me see a part of the game project. From that tiny chunk of an ancient game engine I programmed a proper modern scene with sprite movement and camera effects in just a few hours. Those were the bare bones that anyone could use to get a functional demo out. Logic was really surprised by that, and now that I think back on it, probably afraid. He never let me touch the game project again. He begrudgingly agreed to pay me $500. That was the first time I was paid by him. The second and only other time I was paid was soon after Snow Daze launched on Steam. I had to argue with him to finally pay me (he never paid people unless they were insistent with their request). He paid me about $1000. That was it.

The advantage was my presence to lure in Japanese speakers. I think it was about the time he got the Sword of Succubus developer to connect with him that I wasn't valuable to him anymore. I was pretty much ignored in everything, and later antagonized as you saw with the response to what I posted in the WMNAD thread years ago. I don't know when or if he stopped. I just stopped caring. I had more important things to do. After writing all this and what I posted in the NTRHOLIC DX thread, I think the antagonism is going to come back in force lmao

Interviewer: 12) Again, on your forum post in the "WMNAD" there's a member by the name of "Ironstorm" a person that had tried to refute the post you made by claming how you were posting it everywhere and trying to ruin them (something I ended up finding to be a lie, since you truly have only posted it here and steam)
But anyway from my research and from what's available on the forum, I can only assume that they had worked and still work with criticalbliss...so with that in mind, how were the people that stayed with critical and lewdlogic?

Me: You are pretty much right. The only people that stayed are ones with the same values and principles as LewdLogic. I've watched artists show up and leave. I've watched writers show up and leave. A lot of good-meaning people that just wanted to make games and saw this as a promising opportunity. It's sad how much of their time was wasted on a scam.

As far as the people that work with CB, I mentioned them in my post in the NTRHOLIC DX thread. Those core people are pretty much it, at least back when I left. It's always a revolving door of talented people who want to do stuff and then leave when they figure out they are being taken advantage of. It is scummy and really taints people's trust when it comes to working together on a game. I never needed to try to ruin CB even if I wanted to. The way they treat people does the work of ruining themselves. I just spoke up about it. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

[JaegerJaquez]

No wonder they have this attitude towards “their” games and the lack of communication with their fan base.

This is just sad.

[Lrrr]

Thanks for posting this.

[GoatPepper]

oh ♥♥♥♥, Poli's about to get Epsteined

[Betochas]

Ty for the intel, now we know we shouldnt buy games from CB. Better to buy directly from devs, sad to see Tiramisu's intelectual property been treated like a cash grab.

[WinterSouls]

Unwishlisted. IDC how polished this will be, I'll buy directly from Tiramisu if they're on DLSite.

[Kilgore]

♥♥♥♥ CB.

[KumaLai]

難怪原作者選擇將原版遊戲交給另一間代理商發行STEAM版。CB這間公司的八卦真的多。

[Havlan]

Originally posted by Kilgore:

♥♥♥♥ CB.

no no ♥♥♥♥ everyone who is willing to give money to an idea of a game

[AedusXerxes]

I just wanted to throw in my couple cents... did anyone else notice Tiramisu's name has been completely removed from the developer portion?

[kinglionheart]

Originally posted by AedusXerxes:

I just wanted to throw in my couple cents... did anyone else notice Tiramisu's name has been completely removed from the developer portion?

Big Ass Studio is Tiramisu.

[DeadFishGod]

So is there any way to actually verity your egregious fantasy novelette is in any way factual or it it just a 'trust me bro" situation?

[poli]

Originally posted by DeadFishGod:

So is there any way to actually verity your egregious fantasy novelette is in any way factual or it it just a 'trust me bro" situation?

I mean, you can always just look up some the games I mentioned, and look at their development history, the people in their forums for those games, and where those games are now. Everything is easily verifiable. Google it bro.

[bcgibson]

Everyone can just add the dev to the list of games to pirate and really hurt their wallet. Check out f95