# TABLE OF CONTENTS - Section 0: Preface and Introduction - Section 1: The Game Itself - Section 2: The Community - Section 3: The Developers - Section 4: Conclusion and Discerning Intent - Citations - Notes, Original Research, Clarificaiton, and Statements # SECTION 0: Preface and Introduction This document is collated using multiple firsthand accounts from community members. Both prior and current developers with Cavemanon were also consulted in this document's making. This document has two main goals: 1. To provide a trustworthy, and more importantly provable account of the things that have happened surrounding Snootgame since its inception, without spin or bias. 2. To put an end to current drama by providing this timeline, detailing what actually happened, because certain groups of people are unable to communicate with the community in ways that do not inspire hatred and invite assumptions and rumors, if they communicate at all. We cannot prevent future drama for future failures in communication, only attempt to fix what was already broken. We cannot control what happens outside of this document, or because of it once it is released. Still, we ask that any readers do not harass anyone involved, whether it be someone unrelated disagreeing about the content of the document, or one of the individuals covered within. What we release here is proven as best as is possible given the resources available. Many of the citations in this document reference various screenshots, assets, and images, rather than public websites, which someone will inevitably point out are possible to fabricate, without challenging the content of the images themselves, never mind with facts or sources of their own. As a solution to the inevitable attempts to disclaim this document as a whole, Caliber has volunteered to be the contact for any questions related to it and to vouch for the veracity of the contents of this document. Being both an ex-developer, credited as "Spigot The Bear Anon" in Snootgame (archived copy of Patch 8 including him in the credits here https://web.archive.org/web/20230824013238/https://snootgame.xyz/downloads/game/SnootGame-Patch8_NewYears-win.zip), and a member of groups considered opposition to Cavemanon, that being the Reedroute mod team, and the loose friend group which made up the administration and moderation teams for the game's main public server ("/snoot/"), and the art server, on Discord, he is one of few primary sources with information from both 'sides,' who also does not have a stake in the Wani situation. He can be contacted via Discord (@Caliber_), for anyone who has questions. The alternative here, for anyone who would call this attention-whoring, was for everyone on the project to remain completely anonymous. We decided that would be impossible, since everyone would just shout "lol source?" and treat this as fake, exactly as happened with the fanfiction that was the "GVH IFV team leak," credited to a group which does not exist and was not even present in GVH's credits for translation[77]. None of the team members wanted to be named, but it wouldn't really be trustworthy if someone's ass wasn't on the line for creating and posting it if we got anything wrong. A few points here stem from rumors, whose point of inclusion is to attempt to solve them, or present interpretations that are not reactionary, rather being based on other, provable facts. Points we are uncertain about or which are based on conjecture/opinion are noted as clearly as possible or explained with the 'a' prefixed citations. Some have been removed outright where they could cause more drama than solve. Direct citations from team members or sources which could not be captured with file or web citations are also summarized there. For historical purposes, this document was initially created on 19 OCT 2023, edited into 2024, and was set to release some time after the public release of I Wani Hug That Gator, to prevent in any way impacting the game's sales and downloads, or tainting public perception of the game prior to the initial wave of notoriety dying out. We have removed any potentially identifying information of private individuals to the best of our ability. People are named by their online handles at most. No other information (real-life names, addresses, IP addresses, email addresses, or otherwise permanent or searchable information) about these individuals has been provided (unless it is already public information, such as first names or nicknames used in public chats). At least one PO box has been redacted for privacy. We don't want to dox people. In this same vein, though, we have attempted to prevent individuals from obscuring their identity behind a moniker to avoid taking personal responsibility for their individual actions. People will not be referred to nebulously as "Cavemanon," or "The Reedroute Team," etc, unless a source cannot be recovered for the events discussed (like anonymous posts on image boards), or it refers to the collective action of the bunch, such as the release of a game. There is also a lot of stuff we left out, usually because it wasn't relevant. If you, the reader, have any questions, or feel anything was not explained properly, or we missed a citation, reach out to Caliber. None of the whistleblowers involved in procuring private documents or information will be named in the following, and no information related to them is provided, unless we were granted their express permission. All sources have, however, been vetted for their relationship to Cavemanon, the Reedroute team, and any other named servers or organizations, and we have proven all individuals claiming to have privileged information are who they say they are. We will not publicly release or discuss the methods of verification or the information that was verified. We're not journalists, but we still can't rat people out like that. # SECTION 1: The Game Itself Prior to the release of Snootgame or Goodbye Volcano High, the most recent and similar event was the release of Katawa Shoujo[1], which had much the same form that the events of Snootgame's release did, at least in source and reasoning. They both originally started with some piece of external media (a video game trailer vs a drawing by a respected Japanese artist), which people on one of 4chan's boards (/v/ instead of /a/) latched onto. They're both dating sims, both made in Ren'py, and made by a team of anons. KS released on January 4th, 2012. None of the individuals presenting this document were present at the time of its release, and details of the discussion surrounding it around the time of its creation are scarce, and largely limited to threads on /a/ from the time. Desuarchive[2] does appear to go back far enough to have indexed the board around the time KS was released, though there are plenty of existing documentaries on this game[3] available elsewhere, and it's not something this document intends to cover in great detail. Prior to the announcement of Goodbye Volcano High, on 11 June 2020[4], /v/ had degraded into the usual shit-flinging typical of 4chan boards post-2015 as the influx of randoms and people from /pol/ to other boards overtook everything they could with unrelated American politics. The 2020 American election was leering as well, bringing up the same prior issues as the frog posting crowd attempted to outdo everyone else in their utter obnoxiousness as usual[a01]. Despite (or maybe because of) the waves of people who didn't understand the board culture of the time, and the typical loss of interest among anons leading them to other parts of the internet, /v/'s initial negative reaction to GVH's initial trailer eventually turned into waifuing of the characters in the game, as well as smut being created by various artists[5]. The discussion was, unfortunately for people enjoying the visuals (both genuinely and those making fun of it), being pruned from /v/ because of a janitor, going by the name ABIB[6]. This was supposedly due to it being "furry" and "a circle jerk"[6]. Most of the discussion was moved to /vg/, which then eventually filtered to /trash/, after people in /vg/ started complaining about furry art being posted in the thread as well. The game's development was originally done mostly in secret from the boards' members, as there are no references to the title of the game or any variation of it prior to the release date[9,10]. There are however, a couple threads[12,13] from June 17th, where anons were haphazardly collected for the creation of the game, prior to the name being decided. It appears that all recruitment prior to the initial public release ("vee3") happened on the same day. A greentext representing what would become ending 3 was published on /lit/[14] on 19 Jun 2020. This is also the thread containing the /lit/ anon mentioned in the game's original readme file. Quote: "Aight you kind of get this is an attention seeking thing. But this is as much of a symptom as the gender thing, not the root cause. Bio says she's neglected by her parents because her brother is perfect and gets everything right. He's a goody two shoes with grades and parents, popular, I'm guessing that other girl is his gf too. Fang's response is to adopt an "I need nobody" attitude, and has basically bought an off the shelf personality and identity to compensate. People like this do not feel like they have agency. They lack self actualization. These "store-bought" identities from ideologies like the LGBTQIAAOMGWTFBBQ people and racebaiters offer only the feeling of validation without the essential step of self. This behavior you can find in (You) baiting on 4channel, which is an attempt to find some semblance of "I exist!" instead of realizing you can't get that affirmation from outside. Fang adopting Tradwife, sticking with high school attitudes, or shooting up the school isn't fixing the problem of her gaining agency. You can fix this by having Anon be there as an example of being a self-actualized person, he shouldn't be there to fuck her or save her. Every choice that's not purely cosmetic should be set up with the intent to help her gain agency. She feels like she's always compared to her brother, never judged on her own merits or personhood, so she substitutes this with an identity that comes with excess baggage. It shouldn't matter if she's goth or bisexual, as long as this comes from within, and not because this will make up for her lack of personhood. This is why tradwife is missing the point a bit, it's substituting colored hair and pronouns for Jesus and prayer. She still does it because its an identity without any real substance of the self behind it. Or maybe I am talking out my ass and all she really did need was a man to fuck the degeneracy out of her. You guys do you" This quotation has been disclaimed by the game's developers, as ever having had any validity to it, having been removed from the game's files in patch 7. The change was committed by NutBuster[97] on the game's public git repo, one of the programmers, with the description "Delete README because it's inaccurate" with no further information provided[15]. Of note, in the /lit/ thread, someone added a comment in an archived version dumping on the /lit/ anon who originally made the mentioned post[16]. It's unclear which team member this was, if any, or another anon. A follow-up post was made to this in t he same place, disagreeing with the one dumping on /lit/anon. Other criticism also appeared in the thread[16], such as these, which received responses from the developers: Q: "The main character is incoherent. He has no friends so he attends concerts to try to meet people and he thinks of 4chan boards, yet he has enough confidence to diss a band out loud in public? You randomly switch from first person to second. You use a double negative. I can't tell if the transition from coldness to friendship was natural because I have no idea what happened. The MC has a random flashback of katanas and suddenly apologises? This is schizophrenic. It's ironic that you try to posture you're above the game by calling it garbage when you write this." A: good points. The perspective issue will naturally not be a problem in the full project, but either way i'll keep that in mind in the future. I don't think anon laughing was out of character considering others were already making fun and he was just joining in. But I'll try to keep him more consistent from now on. The apology scene is supposed to be anon realizing that fang is just being weird for attention, like he used to do until it ruined him to the point of having to transfer. I'll make it more obvious when I flesh it out though, thanks for raising your concern. thanks for being critical about it --- Q: "[...]now that you've explained the friendship scene, I can analyse it not being organic better. The girl doesn't have a personality. Her only trait are her pronouns, which is ironic when you think of how 4chan complains about how media writes lgtb people as defined by their labels. She doesn't have a concrete voice or opinions, so when the main character decides to apologise the decision is all on him. He progresses the relationship all on his own, and apparently he does this because she reminds him of when he was a immature kid, so all he feels is pity? Why would I keep pursuing this romantic path in a game when you've told me I should dislike her? It's clear you're at odds between hating her snowflake identity and having to write her romantically. You're supposed to try to sell her as likeable." A: >media writes lgtb people as defined by their labels funnily enough that's exactly what the real character is, that's part of the inspiration to do this. >You're supposed to try to sell her as likeable. ohhhhh, you're right. that's what I'm missing. so she should be doing a good deal more. Now that I think about it yeah, it is anon doing most of the stuff. --- Q: "I said you're obsessed with the outrage, not outraged. You care so much about the identity politics of it that you know the game's official discord banning policies, bro. You had a clear character path to follow and you decided to make her character all about her pronouns, exactly what you complain about, instead of doing what you would like to actually see. You're essentially getting mad at the game before it was released by writing its maddening version yourself." A: >You care so much about the identity politics of it that you know the game's official discord banning policies, bro. actually we found out the hard way when we tried to go there for extra info on the characters >you decided to make her character all about her pronouns it's mentioned twice bruv > instead of doing what you would like to actually see. how would you change it? --- It is not outwardly clear from their writing style which of the developers were replying above. The rest of the game's development history is largely lost to time, held only by the original developers, who have only scarcely shared examples of it outside of their development discord, some of which were uploaded via DMs or shared in voice chats via Discord screen sharing[98], and none of which were included in the official artbook[99]. As no content has been officially released regarding the game's early story prior to the first script draft of the release version of Snootgame ("Beta"), most information beyond the aforementioned leaked placeholder sprites is based on firsthand accounts of the content. Based on what individuals who have seen the very early stages of the game were willing to share, the game pre-draft was created largely or entirely as a joke. It would have used the script from the /lit/ thread, or very close to it[15,100], prior to anyone on the team taking that anon seriously. The game's readme had this to say about the poster[15]: "Whoever you are, you changed the writing direction from shitposty, pandering garbage to a genuine story that out preforms what our competators could do. Whoever you are, be proud of your critique and continue to critique. Story makers need vigilant anons like you. (Of note, we didn't take /lit/anon's word one-to-one about every detail we said. Nuance exists!)" The above quote was edited from how it originally appeared to include the bit in parentheses. It was otherwise unchanged, until it was later removed completely[15], as previously mentioned. Firsthand accounts of the beta script and game indicate that it was mostly period-relevant memes, less-than-effortful art, and extremely obnoxiously loud sound effects. It was described as "like that ugly ass cartoon network show from 2011, 'Problem Solverz' i think. The backgrounds were literally just technicolor scribbles the programmer did in MS paint. Everything was placeholder. If the game was released like that it would have been like a wet fart and nobody would still be talking about it."[a14] One day prior to the game's release, a trailer was slap-dashed together, and uploaded to YouTube to spread awareness[18]. An animated trailer was later dropped, after the game had been released, some time in October of 2021, using Tally Hall's "Turn The Lights Off," to advertise the "Mega Update 6" choreography enhancements[20], prior to its release on October 15th of 2021[20]. Snootgame was finally released on 05 Jun 2021, sometime around 11PM - Midnight EST[7,17]. It was officially finished the day before, on 4 Jun 2021 around 10PM - 11PM EST[8]. This release date was chosen, rather than on the 1-year anniversary of the original GVH trailer, so the game could appear in the /v/3 showcase happening a few days later, on the 10th of June[a02]. On the 10th of June, the day preceding the original trailer's anniversary, the game and its developers appeared at the aforementioned showcase as planned[11]. A brief interview was conducted following a showing of the game's trailer, detailing where the devs came from, and some vague details about the game and their future plans. Not much new information is provided here, and they don't spoil anything important or provide any new insight into the game's development- the only real information is two of the developers' names (included because they are public information), Alex and Michael; Jingo and Joybuke respectively- The lead artist and lead programmer. Both devs have consistently provided their names when asked in other situations, though, so this is not to be particularly enlightening. This is, however, the first public glimpse into the group's lead - Nerd's - distaste for smut of any kind. It also proves from the horse's mouth that the devs started work almost exactly one year prior to release, and finished the game in less than one year. The /v/3 showcase, in short, was a parody of E3, the games conference, much like GDC. It was a one-off event streamed on YouTube, with an accompanying website, that has since lapsed its hosting costs and is no longer available[54] outside of the Internet Archive. The YouTube video for the event still exists, as of writing[53]. Several days after the game's release, on the 19th of June, Archiveanon (of Poland) created what would become the community's central archive[22] for hosting fanfiction, for those who did not want to post to Archive Of Our Own (AO3). It was also used to host several early mods, such as General Proton's Giant Reed Cock mod, and some other small gag modifications, like Deus Snoot (a single-act play full of Deux Ex memes), and the Rosa Hug mod. This also coincided with the creation of what became the main communication hub for artists, which will be covered later. The game's sticky post (a 'sticky' post on 4chan is one that remains on the board even past the post limit, and does not expire automatically), which almost single-handedly propelled snoot to the popularity it initially saw, was made by an anonymous moderator on 4chan's semi-hidden /trash/ board, on the 9th of June, 2021[19]. The initial culture around the game sprung up and developed here and persisted for the lifetime of the sticky. Many in-jokes were had and made, notable ones including the King Crimson poster, Pierce Brosnan, and "goslinging-" the nu version of Katawa Dick Syndrome, where people who use 4chan (usually autistic) finally experience actual desire for an intimate relationship with another human being, and go into a sort of stoic depression for weeks or months. Of the members this affected, most[a03] reported it lasting roughly the duration of the sticky, or at most, a few months after, when most emotions gave way to anger and annoyance, due to drama surrounding the community. The board's unofficial (but near-universally agreed upon) topic before, during, and after the Snootgame thread was chiefly for furry art and pornography, and associated media, like H-games, which greatly affected the community which Snootgame initially attracted. The sticky was removed on Sunday, the 1st of August, 2021- 53 days from its creation, after 67130 posts, containing 20838 images and videos. A few hours prior to its deletion, the song "Amberlight Brilliance," from the game itself, was embedded into the thread and played for all threadgoers. This lasted until the thread's eventual demise. One day prior to the sticky being deleted, a user named Ec8r posted an animation titled "Goodbye /trash/ sticky - Snoot Game", which was an AMV for Vera Lynn's "We'll Meet Again". It had 8,780 views, as of February 17th, 2024[292]. A second video, though mostly incomplete, was released the day following, by a user going as "SnootAnonX", later revealed to be OrangeBongo (a community Artist)[182], coinciding with the death of the thread. Due to the thread's demise, it was posted in the Art server instead, still gaining 1,560 views, as of February 17th, 2024[293]. The sticky eventually inspired a scheduled thread in the same vein as Katawa Shoujo, dubbed "Fang Friday" and "Snoot Saturday," later "Wani Wednesday," in recognition of Cavemanon's new release, I Wani Hug That Gator[21]. These threads started and have continued from the end of the sticky to the time of writing. Not accounting for days where multiple threads were made to keep the posting going beyond the bump limit, that is roughly between 131 and 263 threads as of the time of this paragraph's writing (09 FEB 2024)[a04]. The game itself, upon release, had several patches in the following days, fixing minor bugs reported by the community[23,24,25,26]. The most notable change of any of these was an issue fixed in patch 5, which caused a choice in one of the later chapters to give the same result either way, but only award points for one of them, which caused confusion and complaints. Even after the change, this choice received criticism for being too vague, as it required the player to put themselves in the shoes of anon, rather than relying on the player's moral understanding and social prowess, as the rest of the (meaningful) choices in the game do. Most people who played the game initially, and were present for the threads, played the confusingly named "vee3" release. This was an allusion to the /v/3 event, which the game was released specifically to appear at, but was actually patch 4, as in version 4, not v3 or version 3[25]. "patch 4" was evidently included in the title for the download at some point, but was either removed or forgotten in the actual file[30]. The game's patch history is similarly confusing. There was never an initial, "un-patched" release, the first version of the game to receive a link anywhere was dubbed "patch 2." The version change that was "patch 1" only fixed an issue with the "outside-school" BG being black, due to not being present in the game files. This single change was allowed to retain its version number, but was rolled in to Patch 2, which released on the 5th of June as the game's initial drop on /trash/. Patch 3 and 4 are minor changes fixing small typos, visual bugs, and missing sprites[23,24] that were initially reported by users in the threads. Patch 3 was released on the 7th of June, and patch 4 on the 10th. Patch 5 was released a few weeks after patch 4, on July 9th, fixing a crash bug, and the choice issue with the wiring during the band event scene[26]. Following this release, there was mostly silence, until a few months later, on October 15th, when "Mega Update 6" released. MU6 / Patch 6 was a major addition to the game, fixing many typos, changing many minor things internally about the game (see screenshots), overhauling the choreo for the first half of the chapters, and adding the first iteration of the modding system, and the bonus chapters system, among other features[33]. It has been updated / swapped with the changelog for the 'hotfix' for MU6 instead, as of its release, on the 16th of October[27]. Among the changes and additions in patch 6, was a particular change to the script, which added additional dialogue to Fang, which caused community drama- almost exclusively among ending 3 enjoyers[31]. In short, it was a paragraph added by one of the writers - Rangto - intended as a joke, that was left in by accident, according to the other developers. This paragraph implied that fang had multiple sexual partners prior to Anon, which players were quick to call "NTR."[32] This resulted pretty much exclusively in people complaining in the threads, with maybe one or two mentions in any of the discords. The Fang Friday / Snoot Saturday threads were filled with people screaming "CUCK CUCK CUCK CUCK" over and over, until the devs removed the offending dialogue, and stepped it back and claimed it was a joke. It is possible that this was a single very dedicated poster, as many have suggested, but this is unfortunately not provable. This event also helped spur the "NTR Stella" meme, a reference to the "Bad Bitch Stella" story[291], which Rangto also did a rewrite of (The original author being Examanon), which was enjoyed by the community for some time, and even mentioned tongue-in-cheek in the revised MU6 patch notes[27]. This is conjecture, but the change would have made Fang more realistic and believable, to anyone who has spoken to a modern teenager ("modern" as of the time the game was made.) Most women of-age, still in later high school grades or college, tend to sleep around. This is just a fact of life, at least in the US, where the devs are from, and which the game's world is a parody of (California, no less). The fact that they had ex-lovers paints them as a believable and humanized character, instead of some shut-in like Anon, which they very much do not seem to be. The extremity of the overreaction to this and the actual situation presented in the game do indicate, at least to us, that this was likely one or two people and not an actual community issue. 4chan as a platform is unfortunately very easy to astroturf with, given the total, irrevocable anonymity. it is also a possibility that this was done as part of some internal developer drama, by Nerd, the lead dev, who has stated implicitly that ending 3 is his favorite, and explicitly that he has headcanon about it that nullifies the downsides[34]. This is made doubly likely because of his religious devotion. This is, however, again, unprovable, due to the anonymity of 4chan, and should be taken only as a theory. Patch 6 received a 'hotfix' on the 16th of October due to the backlash, which removed the "NTR" content, as previously mentioned. This patch did not receive its own version number, and was instead shipped as "MU6 Tradcath Edition"[27]. Patch 7 was released on the 27th of November, 2021, heralded as the "Fangsgiving update."[28] This was the latter half of the choreography update started in MU6, finishing the game's content and attempting to polish everything to a roughly equivalent standard. It also added new bonus chapters to the already extensive list. Otherwise, this patch fixes only minor issues. Patch 8, titled "The New Years' update," and internally as "BloodAndSpainAllOver," as well as "RAGE," was released over a year later, on January 3, 2023[29]. The main purpose of this update was to provide localization support, because of a complete Spanish translation being made by the community, specifically by users credited as Queso and Legalo (AKA "San Martin", who also translated multiple community projects, as well as the entirety of Cavemanon's catalogue). Multiple songs were also adjusted, according to the changelog. Following this patch, no further updates have yet been released, but there have been pull requests merged on the public git for Snootgame, as of writing[39]. It is currently pending release some time in 2024 as Patch 9, titled "Roasted Laika." it contains files for a full Russian translation, and minor bug fixes. In November of 2023, following anonymous individuals claiming the game's music was sampled or stolen, rather than being created by Cavemanon, it was revealed that several of them were in fact lifted in their entirety from other artists who released them under free music licenses, or into public domain, and the remainder relied heavily on sample packs from programs such as Sony ACID studio, and Cakewalk (likely on the part of their original authors, not Cavemanon)[35,36]. Some tracks were also covers or remixes of existing songs, which were previously undisclosed. All of these tracks remain in the game, due to their copyright status, but it was officially mentioned on Cavemanon's twitter which tracks were stolen, and sources were provided to the originals[37,38]. Kotaku writer Noah Laybolt released an article on the game on November 2nd, 2022[40]. It cited no sources, and the references it used in the form of screenshots and quotations all appeared to be from the KO_OP team, who created Goodbye Volcano High. It claims the game "[...] used modified and repurposed art assets from Goodbye Volcano High to create a sort of bizarre, alt-right-leaning “fan game,” packed with anti-queer messaging, made by people that aren’t actually fans at all." While the game did attempt to copy the style of GVH and did use the characters and their designs (necessarily, seeing as it is a parody), it did not use any assets from GVH, leaked or otherwise. The only instance of content being stolen from the original authors at KO_OP would be the original trailer, mentioned above, which was a hasty edit of the official GVH announcement trailer[18]. The claims about it being "alt-right" are definitely exaggerated, but maybe not completely unfounded, depending on your (the reader)'s specific definition and understanding of this term. The lead developer, Nerd, has proven multiple times that he does not like gay or trans people (as with the Reedroute drama, the crux of the issue being that it would make both Anon and Reed gay, and the issue with Lunara being a character in Wani, whose creator originally said they were trans, etc), typically using his religion as an excuse for his disposition to these things. This thankfully does not spill into the game's content, as the other writers don't seem to share the same sentiment, and it is never explicitly mentioned or laid out in a way that any of the game's readers appear to have understood. Nerd being the chief figurehead for Cavemanon in public spaces does however mean the intent could be spun that way, and in many conversations, has been (see section 2). To the author's credit, Nerd did admit in January 2023 that they were originally contacted long in advance of the article's publishing by the writer, but chose not to reply because "we're not stupid."[101] Additionally, while the developers do have a public email address listed on their site (cavemanongames@gmail.com)[49], the lead developer and de-facto "business owner," Nerd has admitted publicly that they intentionally ignore journalists, as happened with the Kotaku employee mentioned above. One of our team members also attempted to reach out several months prior to this document's release, on October 20th, 2023, though we similarly received no answer. They provably received the email, based on discussions between various developers who are present in public servers, and discussion from their private channels[a15]. Caliber initially reached out to Joybuke via Matrix to ask the questions mentioned in the email, but was told directly to reach out to the email address instead. The person in charge of managing the email account is Joybuke[a16]. The article on Kotaku goes on to bloviate about how hateful 4chan and anyone who uses it is, stating the game was a form of "targeted harassment", and parroting the talking points provided by KO_OP's staff members, claiming the game "wasn't made in good faith". It also includes a screenshot of KO_OP's official discord server, showcasing the fact that discussion of Snootgame was banned[46], which was also confirmed by multiple individual community members, following bans for the cited reason of "Bad fit."[47] The official GVH server was largely unused and most discussion that was allowed to occur in it was pointless or trifling, as the moderation team banned or warned people for discussing almost anything other than the game itself or KO_OP's works, leading to a generally fearful sentiment about posting anything, especially among people who were aware of Snootgame, and managed to get past the server's verification, which required them to explain why they wanted in[218], for which a moderator would judge them and approve or deny their entry. The server went largely unmentioned between Snootgame's release and the release of GVH aside from this, other than spurring the "bad fit" meme. On August 7th 2021, 63 days after the game's release, a TV tropes article[41] was created about Snootgame. The original article can be found on the Internet Archive[214] in its almost original form, from December 2021. The article was deleted by moderation vote on November 3rd, 2023[45], which also removed the history and edits page. It appears to have been moved from the "Video Games" to the "Visual Novel" category prior to this, as the history page that was available on the internet archive only goes back to October 5th 2023. The original article's content, when it existed, was on-topic for TV Tropes. The moderation team states that it was removed due to being "[...] pretty openly a project borne out of spite and anti-LGBT sentiment."[42] A user and editor by the name of WolfNanaki also mentioned she had been doxxed by someone in one of the threads[43,44], which further compounded the issue. The problem of users from 4chan attempting to reverse changes and edits by native TV tropes users was also mentioned: "it's gotten the attention of people off-site who we absolutely do not want the attention of, and we especially don't want to invite any edits from them". Many of the edits made were to re-introduce previously removed flowery language, praising the game, rather than allowing the more neutral language to stay[215]. The vote from November, to delete the article and lock its page title, passed 50 to 13[45]. Despite this vote, and the attention attracted by the game's audience, other Cavemanon titles were allowed to remain, such as the page for I Wani Hug That Gator[216], originally created in late June 2023[217]. Prior to this, on August 14th, 2023, a page on KnowYourMeme was created for Snootgame[48]. It contains a fairly high-level recount of the game's release and the broader reception to it, including from KO_OP and communities on art boorus and other platforms, as well as a brief description of the game itself. The game received several reviews from more well-known YouTube personalities not long after, in September of 2023, with a brief overview from Ducksen[286], garnering 405k views as of February 17th, 2024, and a full playthrough and discussion by YMS[287], which was an entire 11-part series streamed live, with the first recorded stream / episode gaining 24k views, and the last gaining 7,409 as of the same date. The game was also present on Itch.io[50], though not for long[219], and Gamejolt[220] at one point, and remains on IndieDB[51], aside from being hosted through torrents and the game's website[49]. It was removed from Itch on September 9th, 2021, following a spurious DMCA takedown notice from a community member named Eztli, which was confirmed by Mono, a developer, multiple years after the fact[52]. This user has a history of their own with the broader community, which will be covered briefly in section 2. The community originally thought this was a takedown on behalf of or by KO_OP / Sony, which resulted in raids being conducted on the KO_OP server. This was the cause of the lengthy introduction / verification sequence they instated to allow new users in, according to members of the official server[a05]. The game's website also contains donation links for different cryptocurrencies. According to Joybuke, Snoot made "about 50 dollars" from crypto donations, from release, to late 2022[a17]. There are issues discussed with its creators, but the game's content, on the whole, was heralded by many as being this decade's answer to Katawa Shoujo. The general sentiment around the game at the time of release, most easily notable in the stickied post on /trash/, was a positive one, even with the game's issues. being allowed to ignore the external components of the game (like the creators' explanations of events) is likely why so many people have hopped on board with the game in the first place- not to mention pulling in multiple users from outside of 4chan to this particular game[a12]. It critiques both "sides" of the presented social issue- the questioning trans teenager, and the maladjusted, selfish, still-in-high-school 4chan user. Both characters and many of their friends learn from their mistakes and actions throughout the game. It is a story of genuine personal growth and change, and in its time, one that would be an idealized version of events that could potentially happen in real life with real developmentally stunted teenagers, minus dinosaurs. The contents of the game, and its story, have changed over time with each update, but the major beats remain functionally the same. The addition of "bonus chapters," or epilogues, provided in later patches (MU6 and beyond) do add a bit more information for people to apply to characters (such as adult Trish's children), but this document is not intended to be a discussion of lore, or a critique of the game's writing conventions or tropes. Spoilers in this paragraph: The only part of the game not already mentioned, worth mentioning, would be ending 1, which caused some controversy, and is notable not because it is shocking, but because it is handled respectfully. It involves Fang going on a school shooting, with their father's gun. In the game, this is due to the player making every possible choice or nearly every possible choice incorrectly. The way the shooting is described is not as one would typically expect of a 4chan group- it is not glorified in any way. It is not used as the butt of a joke, the victims of the situation are not made fun of. The one doing the shooting is not turned into a scapegoat for problems outside of their personal situation, or to make a political statement. It is presented as the interpersonal issue that it is. As the culmination of the events in the game so far, and the characters' personalities as presented up to that point. It is shocking, and most would not see it coming, but it is not flippant. This, I think, despite being the worst ending by the game's metric, deserves recognition for being handled well. Especially considering the brash, childish and comedic nature of most of the game up to that point. It is the culmination of a well-written drama. One of the other draws to the game, for the game's target audience, is the ability to relate to the protagonist- being made by a bunch of maladjusted teenage 4chan users, for such, there is a level of cultural understanding and depth that is typically missed or not bothered with in other media attempting to tell similar stories. This fact is part of why many users, prior to release, suspected Cavemanon's upcoming game, Wani, of being a flop; the game's content revolves around the Tumblr version of Snootgame's Anon y. Mous, named Inco g. Nito, and the story is intended to be a mirror of Snootgame for that group. The issue here, is that none of the developers involved are / were Tumblr users. Certainly not to the degree one must have been immersed in 4chan's /v/ board during the announcement of GVH to create Snootgame. It has been presumed[a13] that the game will likely still retain the quality of writing responsible for Snoot's success, but may come off as preachy, given the concept behind it was to criticize the 2020-esque "Woke liberal" stereotype, for their treatment of minorities and disabled individuals as helpless, a la "The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations." The point may be valid in itself, but given it is not anywhere near a self-criticism, and the game is being sold on steam, many suspected it would fall flat or self-censor in addition to the other, more inherent issues with the concept as the developers executed it. It is perhaps also worth noting the trope of "You die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" here, given the extraordinary circumstances that led up to Snoot, juxtaposed with the mostly mundane situation surrounding the creation of Wani. Ultimately, upon release, Inco was revealed to be a generic 'Zoomer' type, with a personality that revolves around his clothing choices and popularity with various in-groups, rather than anything anyone would consider specific to Tumblr's culture at any point. I Wani Hug That Gator, or simply Wani, stars a character named Olivia, an alligator (or a prehistoric, alligator-like dinosaur), who was originally created by an anonymous individual on the sticky thread[275], later revealed to be a user named Deer[280], which cannot be definitively proven, but is currently uncontested. It was a common misconception around the time that a user named nRool, who was also one of the mods on the art server, created her[277], since he had done most of the work characterizing her, and had drawn several images with her[276,279], including NSFW[278]. The game itself, as released, features several changes to the character's original design, most notably making her much thinner and more normally human-proportioned, and the replacement of her claw-like hands with more typical 5-fingered ones[282,283]. This was done after the game was handed over to Cavemanon, with the character going over at least one other iteration, compared to the oldest complete sprite available, from some time in August 2021[281], which was done using nRool's design. Her weight was changed, according to Mono, who was at one point the lead artist for Wani[269], because she was a "Blob", with "Bad proportions", and was "Not romance vn material"[284]. This was finalized on June 28th, 2022[283], with the iteration prior[282] using the original proportions from nRool, redone by Nerd, being finished on January 19th[246]. As for the game Snoot is based on - Goodbye Volcano High - reception was initially very middling. As of writing (11 FEB 2023), the game sits at 91% positive review score on steam, having over 1,000 reviews. The caveat being, a majority of those positive reviews are only there because of Snootgame, and many may have not actually played GVH. A quick look at the reviews marked 'most helpful,' with no time restriction[95], reveals the page is populated almost exclusively by either joke reviews mentioning Snootgame, or negative reviews discussing the actual literary problems with the game's story and execution (more of the former than the latter). This pattern continues for multiple hundreds of reviews down the list. As a measure of general sentiment, most constructive reviews tend to focus on the game's technical issues - that being performance issues, crashes, and animation weirdness, in addition to lack of features like saving or rewinding, as are common in similar visual novel-type games, and the lacking functionality of the existing mechanics, like any of the rhythm minigames - as well as the forced or rushed feeling of the writing. At least one reviewer remarked that "the storyline didn't make too much sense to me", citing that "certain characters will behave in psychologically impossible ways, which ruins any immersion to be had"[96]. As an example, there is a situation in one of the later chapters, where (spoilers in this paragraph) Fang and Trish have an argument about staying together to play in their band. This is what Fang wants to do, but the argument and many conversations leading up to it are about Trish not wanting to remain in the band. Despite this argument blowing up, and seemingly out of nowhere, with the flow going from 0 to 100 for next to no reason, leading to Trish storming out of the room, no matter what the player does, Trish ultimately comes together with Fang and the rest of the band at the end of the game to play one final song before the world ends (supposedly, as the game just cuts to black with no indication of what actually happened), completely disregarding her own desires for the sake of what feels very much like a wish-fulfillment-y plot on the part of the writers. Prior to the official release of Goodbye volcano High, KO_OP released two demos for the game, one on May 05 2023, and another on June 19 2023. The demo released in May contained the first 4 scenes in the game, while the one in June was the end of episode 1, and the first 5 scenes of episode 2. The first demo was created for LudoNarraCon 2023[72], which ran between May 4th and May 8th, 2023, and was showcased at this event. Both this demo, and the one released in June, were reportedly based on older versions of the game than were in current production[73], meaning many bugs and performance issues were included that had since been fixed for the release version of the game. The later demo, released in June, for the Tribeca Film / Games Festival, which took place June 7-18th, 2023[74,75], was noteworthy for the fact that it contained the entire script for the game's story[70,71,86] as it was written up to that point, which data miners were able to recover and discuss. The files captured were very close to what was presented when the game finally came out on August 29th of that year, but did contain story beats that were ultimately cut from the game, such as a bus scene, where the driver was meant to misgender Fang[76]. There were also development assets recovered, such as storyboards and unused visual components[76]. In September of 2023, a pair of documents were circulated claiming to be a reconstruction of GVH's original story, written by someone claiming to be from a group of translators called "IFV Team." One document was in Spanish, the other machine-translated to English using third-party software (rather than by this person whose job it supposedly is to translate things to and from English and Spanish, for some reason?). These documents detailed a subjectively more interesting and fleshed-out story than the one that was released with GVH, but they were proven to be fake[81] not long after release. Right from the get-go, GVH credits an organization called Warlocs for the Spanish localization[79], specifically a single person, Ana Avalos Reyes[80,85], with no mention of "IFV" anywhere in the game. This supposed organization is also not listed anywhere online from what we could locate, and the document itself was provided to a well-known community member for proofreading, prior to publication, making it obvious it was fabricated[82]. The documents were originally uploaded to Mediafire, from somewhere in South America (according to Mediafire's IP geolocation data)[83,84]. It is not clear where or who from the document actually originated, as the author was kept anonymous, even from the individual mentioned in [82], but it is likely, given where it was originally shared, how poorly it was translated, and where the files came from, that the poster was a member of Snootgame's Spanish-speaking community. According to members in the official KO_OP discord, who have spoken with the devs, the game originally was going to have 3 protagonists - Fang, Rosa, and Leo[87,90]. This was cut very early in development, as it was quickly deemed out-of-scope, given the resources the developers had to work with. Prior to Kate Gray's removal from the team over drama related to an article she wrote on Medium about Harry Potter video game characters having sex[88,89], the game was also referred to as "Jurassic High." This period was roughly between 2018 and early 2020. Around early 2020 was when the idea shifted from that to what became Goodbye Volcano High. Most of the characters went through significant design changes, though Fang's were the most drastic and apparent; Fang's snout was shortened significantly, and they went from an almost creepy, goth-type character, reminiscent of the protagonist of Hatred, to one with the punk-rock style that was shipped in the final release[91]. Following Kate's removal from the team, the game went through multiple complete rewrites, which (among other issues, such as Canada's movement and travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic) caused delays in the game's release: one in 2021, until 2022[92]. Then again, on November 30th, 2022, until "summer 2023."[93] The game was once again delayed on May 11th, to August 29, 2023[94], when the game actually released on Steam and Playstation 4/5. # SECTION 2: The Community The community itself, following the removal of the /trash/ sticky, and in many cases during it, moved largely to Discord. As mentioned in section one, on the same day Archiveanon created the Mega archive, June 19th 2021[134], a group of users previously from the Undyne General (another 4chan-based group, surrounding the Undertale fandom), created what became known broadly as Snoot's "Art server." This was created by two users, going by "Vanilla Nice" and "Rewdy", for the purpose of collecting artists in the community for collaboration and fun[a06]. Aside from the sticky, several members were also pulled in from Twitter[a07] and other platforms across the web. The truly first server was the "Snoot Emporium," created by a user going by "SnootSupreme" / "CreamOfSnoot" on June 7th, 2021, just 2 days after the game was first released to the public[136], prior to even the sticky's creation[19]. This server eventually fell out of use near-entirely, with community members preferring the /Snoot/ Discord server over the Snoot Emporium, having only 168 messages between the end of 2021 and the date of writing, in 2024[142]. After the other initial servers were created, the Spanish server came in a few months after the sticky had ended, on November 11th, 2021[137]. Throughout its life, up to the time of writing, it largely remained free of drama related to the developers or the game itself. The only notable instance of issues related to the game or its developers also happened on the 4chan server[168], where some users were punished for posting links to a pirated version of I Wani Hug That Gator[167]. Nothing in particular came of this, except for temporary mutes and typical punishments for server rule violations. The iFunny server, or "Snoot Club," was created on November 27th, 2022- a little over a year after the Spanish server[141]. On February 7th, 2024, Nerd did an AMA in the server, put on with the permission of the moderators[166]. Nothing strictly new was revealed in this AMA, and it was mostly banter between him and the community. Much like the Spanish-speaking server, the community was otherwise largely drama-free, outside of issues between individual users, unrelated to Snootgame or Cavemanon, which will not be discussed here. The iFunny server is also home to one of the upcoming mods for Snootgame, called "Snoot Encore,"[189] which is aiming to be a complete remake of Snoot, to include voice acting and completely redone sprites and choreography, being the combination of the Snootgame Dubbed project, and Snootgame Remastered project[190]. A few weeks after the Art server was made, on July 29th, 2021, the public 4chan server, titled "/Snoot/" was created, by a community member named Inkerlink[135]. The server had several changes in moderation during its lifetime, owners changing hands between users Diz and Chrinik in 2022, and finally Lethan in late December 2023, following Chrinik's departure from the community as a whole in late December of 2023[118]. Several other moderators remained on the team for the lifetime of the server, but did not typically participate in inter-server issues, between the art server and the 4chan server. One individual from the early Snoot threads, and the Discords soon after, warrants mentioning solely because of his sheer devotion to harassing people and ban evading[154]. A user named cd0m, who was one of the (potentially multiple[a20]) anons on the threads complaining about Discord[151,152]. He was ultimately harmless, and attempted to make friends with many members of the community, occasionally posting passive-aggressive art to the Discords[154], boorus[155] and threads[153] complaining about how many times he was banned. He was ultimately banned 19 times from the public 4chan server, before either giving up, or moderation was unable to find his new alt account[154]. The art server, on the other hand, was ground zero for the first documented attempt at community subversion by one of the developers, Nerd, which was banned a few months after his joining on September 22, 2021, due to to "breaking of community rules, the things he said or did during community events that made people uncomfortable, and him instigating drama behind the scenes"[55]. He originally joined on July 30th, 2021. The attempted subversion was made known when multiple users[a08] leaked images from within the developers' private channels[65,66,67,68], as well as from reports of direct DMs[a44]. Immediately after the ban, further images were leaked from the developer discord[105,106,107,108,109,110,111,112,113], and a voice chat was started to discuss the matter, where Nerd attempted to use Caliber, a friend of Rool's at the time, but also a developer, as ammunition to coerce Rool into providing information about the leaker[114]. A few days later on September 30th, Nerd called a group meeting, where, due to the Androcles and leaker situation, he claimed he was going to delete the development server[115]. This ultimately ended with nothing happening, only the other devs trying to calm Nerd down and convince him not to delete the server, trying to find the leaker, to no avail. A user unrelated to the dev server was involved briefly - one of Nerd's friends - also one of the people behind the /v/3 event some months prior[116]. The art and primary servers' moderation teams at the time both talked regularly and typically took action simultaneously in both servers, where required. Due to this, it was revealed that Cavemanon (specifically Nerd and Sli(one of the writers)) had attempted, again, to subvert the primary servers' moderation teams, and asked for moderation privileges[69,117], supposedly so they could remove "undesirables"[a11], which was denied. At the time, this was particularly in reference to Narija, who was the head of the now cancelled "Reed Route" mod, which would have featured Snootgame's protagonist, Anon, being in a relationship with Reed, rather than Fang, and exploring more adult issues, such as murder, familial issues, drug abuse, and spousal abuse.[a09] The core of the issue between the developers and the Reed Route team, according to screenshots and discussion between both Cavemanon and RR's team members, was the fact that the characters Anon and Reed would have to be made gay/bisexual in order to allow the mod to happen[59,60], when Nerd's intentions were to make both of them exclusively straight in Snoot, which having a mod that changed them around, if it were to be more popular, may "overrule" his intended perception of the character[61]. It is worth mentioning that most of the main cast in Snootgame, aside from Anon and this game's rendition of Fang's parents, were all created by KO_OP, not Cavemanon. In KO_OP's Goodbye Volcano High, Reed is, in fact, gay / bisexual / pansexual / etc, which is proven by one of the various unlockable photographs, which show him and his boyfriend, Alvin (who is also not present in Snootgame) holding hands at what is likely a prom scene[58]. During a private discussion on Jan 27th, 2022, done in a group DM, brokered by Caliber, between himself, Heartsick, Lazulf (Narija), Nurzlol (Workanon), Rangto, nRool, Sli, and Nerd, all of the individuals involved with the issues brought up between the teams, apologized for the issues between Sli and Narija, where Narija hit on Sli as a joke in a voice chat once, and for the image referenced in [57], where Nerd claimed it was said "at 2am and out of extreme anger" at his Androcles account being banned[62], and he did not truly mean it. The topic of Nerd having rotoscoped a photo of himself during the creation of Reed's sprite was also brought up, though nothing came of the discussion[131]. Multiple Reedroute team members recall a rumor about Nerd claiming he was underage when he was rotoscoped[a16], and there are written records of him accusing Narija of being a pedo[129], though we were not able to find a written source for a direct admisson of this. The chat ultimately ended with Nerd and his team removing everyone from the group, as he was the one to create it[63]. All logs were retained by Narija in video form, prior to being kicked from the chat. There was a period of calm for some time (a couple weeks) following this, despite the ultimate disagreement about changing the sex of Anon or Reed to conform to Nerd's desires for the characters and the game's lore, or an alternative story which Nerd suggested to Rool[119]. It is worth noting that Heartsick, Workanon, and Rangto were only present as "moderators," at the request of Nerd, rather than active participants. Nerd specifically requested and discussed the moderators when speaking to Caliber, and rejected the idea of Chrinik, the 4chan server's admin, being a moderator, as he was "too biased."[64] Outside of the immediate group known to Cavemanon, there were various other users involved in Reedroute's development, who have asked to remain anonymous, even during the mod's development, as they did not want to be involved in the drama between the teams at the time, or afterward[a18]. The Reedroute server was also deleted some time in 2022, around the time Narija left the community in April[165], leaving many logs and records related to both the drama at the time, and the mod's development, lost. Prior to the above chat, on October 27th, 2021, one of the devs reached out to Narija to discuss the topic, and provided more detail than was mentioned in the group chat[207]. This argument seemed to be in-line with what Nerd said in the discussion in 2022, though the argument presented here makes it more obvious that there are clear oversights. For instance, he gives the example of Trish projecting identity issues onto Fang, which leads to Lucy becoming Fang in the first place. He applies this same logic to Reed, since the intended point of snoot, from Nerd's postulation, is that people who identify with the LGBT label "mishandle vulnerable people into labels and sexuality to suit a goal".[103] As applied to Fang, the issue is intended to be that Fang is a victim of Trish, since Trish is putting these ideas in (their/her) head, which makes them into the persona that "Fang" is, separate from Lucy. This being the "point" ends up ignoring the actual issue which is solved in Snootgame, though, which is that Fang finds agency (which is even admitted by Nerd himself, saying she becomes "more self-determinant"[34]), and takes control of her own life to tell Trish to fuck off. It is entirely circumstantial in the story as it was told that it was abuse under the LGBT label. You could replace Fang being nonbinary and Trish being gay or whatever with Fang being a racial supremacist or in a religious sect and Trish being some kind of race-fetishist or religious devotee, and the story would fundamentally be the same, just with different minutiae. If you want to demonize a particular sect of people, it is entirely doable here, and using them as the set dressing for a story about finding agency will do that effectively if framed right, but it does not ultimately change the point, here. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where being gay / bi is "normal" or more common than being straight. Ignoring the obvious issues with this concept, if we apply the Trish / Fang story to this theoretical world, and Trish, being the anti-establishment manipulator she is, could be trying to manipulate Lucy into being a straight, HMOFA-loving tradwife. Exactly nothing has to change about the story to do this other than the labels for the things the characters are forcing on each other. The entire concept that the story is somehow the fault of LGBTQ people or labels just makes utterly no sense, and given the most common interpretations of Snootgame have literally nothing to do with LGBT anything[208,209], if this was supposed to be the point, then the devs missed the mark when it came to making any of the plot hooks relevant at all to the specific label being applied[a29]. While these issues do happen in real life, it is not limited to one 'group,' certainly not LGBT people, or even just people who identify with the political "left." Every interest group is fully capable of applying labels to people to suit a goal, it just takes different forms with different labels. Religious groups calling people "blasphemers" or "infidels," for example. It's understandable that Reed being in the same 'manipulable' category applied to Fang could cause issues with Trish attempting to do the same thing to him, but even by the devs' own admission, the goal of Trish isn't to make Fang LGBT for the sake of it, it is because Trish has some internal motivation that she believes is the right thing to do, which is "making a difference". It is not a necessity that Trish would try to turn Reed gay simply because she knew he was open to the idea. It would not create a plot hole for her to focus on improving Fang's life over Reed's, given Fang and Trish are a lot closer than either of them are to Reed, both in Snoot and GVH, and her reasons for doing this thing are not motivated by the label itself. The label and the issues with it are derived from her actions here, not the intent. To that end, there is no reason why changing the sexuality of any character for the purpose of writing a story has to be the same thing Trish is doing to Fang. The label is not applied to "suit a goal," other than as a device to tell a story. Does it "matter" that Snootgame applied the label that Lucy is "actually the le perfect straight HMOFA tradwife in reality" when the source material has the character be a different sexuality and religion? It goes both ways. It would be hypocritical to say it's bad to do it for one 'faction' but not the other, especially when the devs themselves did this both to Reed and Sage[354] in addition to Fang, doubly so for Sage since the character doesn't even appear in Snootgame and the changing of their sex is exclusively by external fiat because one of the devs doesn't like the design[355]. Making gay characters straight or straight characters gay shouldn't signal anything but people having fun, or just writing the characters how they want to see them. Whether that's because they want to make a self-insert for stupid reasons or just want to appeal to some concept of community or whatever doesn't really matter. What matters is the quality of the media they create. Some people do just apply labels to things because they believe it validates their opinions on things, yes. That does not mean that every single individual who has ever changed a straight character to gay or a black character to white is part of the "gay agenda" or "whitewashing" the media's cast. Even ignoring the accusation that this would create a plothole, why would it need to rely on Snootgame's plot at all? Yes, it's a mod, but that would have been for the purpose of using the world and character assets, not because it's 'modifying' the existing story and swapping Fang with Reed[a29]. Why is it a bad thing to apply or change labels on characters to suit a goal in a story anyway? The entire purpose of a story is to tell about events happening. You can't really detail any events if you aren't allowed to detail personalities at all. Nobody at Cavemanon created Trish or Fang or applied these labels to them, but their creators did. They are fictional characters. Somebody at some point had to decide that these characters are gay or straight or liked bugs or rock music and so on. Even assuming the best here, saying it is bad to put labels like 'gay' and 'nonbinary' on characters is just an admission that you do not like those things. It is just admitting you do not want to see stories about those things. Writers could make any character they wanted a skinhead because they wanted to tell a story about a modern-day Third Reich, and that would not be any different here. End 3 turning Fang into Lucy is no different from KO_OP making Fang nonbinary. The only difference in reality is how it was executed, ironically with Lucy's label being central to her identity, and GVH Fang's label being only seldom mentioned, and the core issue is the world ending, not that fang is NB. All that having been said; it seems like Nerd's purposes for insisting on this interpretation are precisely what he is seeking to criticize, only for the other side of the proverbial coin[210]. As he says himself: "I serve my God, and only him"[211]. Given this statement, and the context presented with the rest of the developers' actions, the issues in these cases seem to be symptoms of having two irreconcilably different social cultures in place within the same community, lack of transparency or understanding concerning this (on all sides), and predisposition to hatred of certain groups for religious reasons. As an example, it is very common for people in the developer discord to use "Kill Yourself" as a joke response when someone says something they do not agree with[120]. Saying that outside of the dev server, where the culture is different, is typically understood to be meant with complete honesty, and is not typically said lightly. This has led to problems with both new developers being 'hazed' out of the group, due to not properly meshing with or understanding the culture of the server, and many of the remaining developers opting to stay out of the public servers altogether[113]. Of the developers remaining in the public and art servers as of writing, this seems to have caused wordless animosity between the people spoken to, and the developers, leading to broader distrust, and similar issues popping up again and again, as people refuse to accept differences and move on, and instead choose to stick to 'factions,' leading to situations like deadassspider's (Spidey's) removal from the development team over a situation that didn't need attention brought to it in the first place, with Orwell-esque informant culture[121,122,123,124] and a zero-trust environment among developers[125]. This worsens the situation and further drives private individuals who are aware of the situation, and their friends, to not want to associate with current developers, for fear of being 'reported' to higher-ups, resulting in harassment or punishment for anyone actually on the team, and even for those not on the team, due to memory of previous and present harassment / targeting of non-dev individuals (Such as Narija[129,130], nRool[66,114,145], HugetteHiakri[132,133], etc.)[a10]. Even within the team, situations like Caliber experienced are being reported to this day, with growing unease between different developers, the forming of an in-group and an out-group ("internals" vs "you," etc)[332,a36]. The dual-use of the dev server as both a friend group and a for-profit development hub has created many problems, especially so as it relates to anything monetary, as will be discussed further down. One day prior to the situation with Androcles, on September 21 2021, Caliber gave one of the devs' discord tags to Narija, as it was believed this dev was the one who did the original Reedroute mod, available on Archiveanon's mega folder. This was not the case, the dev mentioned it in the dev server, Caliber admitted to this, and was reprimanded, being put into a 'lockdown' role, which prevented him from seeing certain channels in the server - though not banned outright. Nerd at this time tried to prevent further issues by telling users to contact Sli directly if they had questions for the developers, designating him as one of two official PR people[163], since he was in the public server and could be easily reached, alongside Nerd. This seems to have either not been communicated properly to the rest of the team, or was not applied equally, as Pshy, who was openly part of the Reedroute mod, reached out to Sli[121,127] to ask which dev did the music, only for the same response to happen, with the developers claiming the Reedroute team was harassing them and trying to "poach" people from them[126], which was against one of their internal rules for developers to oblige, according to Nerd[162]. This later led into the suggestion that people should contact the devs via email[128], which goes primarily through Joybuke[164], but other team members have discussed them previously, when required. This has been the developers' preferred method of contacting them, moving forward[128]. Aside from the above drama, the first noteworthy negative event in any of the Snootgame-related servers, after the initial crying about Discord in the sticky thread, started around August 20th, with the entrance of a user named Eztli[169]. In short, this user catfished no fewer than 6 users simultaneously[a21]. A discussion was brought between the people affected, when one of them decided it was extremely suspicious how Eztli didn't want any of them to mention their relationship publicly, and just so happened to bring it to another user's DMs, who was also being catfished. Various users contacted other users, until it eventually reached the moderation teams in both major servers of the time, resulting in Eztli being banned from the community's major servers[170,171] between December 15th-17th. One of the people affected who was openly OK being named, however, was Yakko, who eventually left Snoot's server[172] to join Eztli's friend group, though eventually cut ties there as well, some time in 2022[173]. Yakko was generally a well-liked user at the time[a19], and a member of Cavemanon up until his departure, having done some of the artwork on Snootgame's bonus chapters, and doing some of the artwork that was previously placeholder in the main story, including parts of the bathroom scene with Fang[188]. He is credited as Hotel Anon[a25]. The other notable and openly affected person involved was General Proton, who, following the debacle, attempted to get 'revenge' on Eztli for what he had done by spying on his friend server[a22], though, by that point, nobody wanted to talk about it, and it just made everyone trust him less[a23] for the fact that he was a serial leaker. He also created multiple pieces of artwork, specifically designed to piss off Nerd, related to the Narija situation, which were spread around via DMs[174,175,176,177], exacerbating the issue of trust between the developers (though endearing him to some, as this was subjectively very funny at the time). Proton himself, who joined originally in September of 2021[199], warrants mentioning due to his mix of ups and downs brought to the community, both in equal extremes. He had an uncanny ability for sketching and art, being able to pump sketches out at a similar pace to Cavemanon's Jingo, with a similar style as well[193]. The downsides, however, were that he openly antagonised most of the members of the art server, for little to no reason, which most people have attributed to sociopathy[194,195,196,197]. He notably attempted to turn people against each other and created drama by spreading rumors about nothing, and at one point doxxed one of them, only to call their phone and nothing further[346]. He eventually threatened suicide multiple times (though this was deleted when he removed his chat logs with everybody)[a27], and left the community's servers briefly, before coming back to the art server[203], crying in a bunch of users' DMs using the userlist he now had access to, after finally being removed for good by nRool[204], on June 6th, 2022[198]. He later deleted his chat logs with most users, around September 17th, 2022[200,201]. It is worth noting that this person is not the same as "Neutron Mono" née "Proton Mono." Wherever Proton Mono is mentioned, he will be called "Mono" or "Neutron Mono." General proton is typically referred to as just Proton. They were both members of Cavemanon at some point, which also caused confusion. Mono changed his username from "Proton Mono" to "Neutron Mono" on October 29th 2021, likely in relation to this issue when it was still ongoing[202]. The community as a whole was also responsible for various spinoff mods. The earlier mods in the game's lifetime, such as the ones found in Archiveanon's MEGA folder[22], were created as direct replacements, requiring users to re-download the entirety of the game's folders, with the modifications in place. This practice largely stopped when Cavemanon implemented official mod support in Patch 6[33]. Later mods include mainly the collection from a group called Team Ptero, including Culture Night[157], Moe Job[158], The Snootmas Carol Mod[159], and Snoot Fiction[160], as well as the, as of writing, unreleased Naomi mod, by Spidey, Hikari[161] and others. Unfortunately, the mod scene separate from Reedroute was also not free from developer-related drama, likely due to Nerd's perception at the time that anyone associated with nRool must share all of the same disagreements with Nerd that Rool held[66,a26], or share the same taste in humor that Nerd objected to[66,353]. The authors of Puppet Pals, and the earlier joke RPG maker game, Bussy Quest, Rool and Faust (who also worked on many of the mods made under Team Ptero), were told by a member of Cavemanon[192] that for Bussy Quest, they were not allowed to use Schizo-chan, a character made by Skeleton Crew, who was also a developer. This was, according to someone on speaking terms with one of the other developers, infuriating, and eventually Nerd capitulated in allowing Faust and the others to use the character for Puppet Pals[191] (though why he claimed he had the authority to control this character, which he did not make and has not even appeared in any officially released content in the first place, is unknown). They ultimately did not use the original schizo-chan sprite, as Faust had already made a replacement character named "Judee." A similar issue took place with Reedroute, as one of the main antagonists of the story ("Phil") was meant to use one of the orange background dinos from the opening CG, though Nerd objected to this[a28]. The character was changed from orange to brown to comply with this request[205,206]. # SECTION 3: The Developers On December 3rd, 2021, Nerd, the de-facto owner of the group, put up an Indiegogo campaign[146] for a demo, for Exit 665, which raised $4,049 USD, from 69 backers (averaging 58 dollars per backer), out of a flexible goal of $5,000. Nerd mentioned that they had received another $1,000 after the campaign ended, from one individual, to meet their goal of $5,000[333]. The campaign ended a month later, on January 3rd, 2022, which also coincided with the last update posted to the page. As of writing, neither the demo nor the game have been released publicly, outside of videos of tech demos, posted to their Twitter[147,148], and three unrelated 'teaser' visual novels, which released on their itch page[149,150,285]. There has, as of yet, not been any word on where the money donated to this project actually went, though at least one individual has asked for a refund up to this point and has been denied[a38]. The promised demo eventually fell outside the release window given on their Indiegogo page, which cited December 2023 at the latest, under the reward tiers, and has still not been released as of February 2024. Exit 665 itself, described as "our commercial project"[221], was, according to the lead programmer, put "entirely on hold" during the development of Wani. This is backed up by their website[268], whose copyright notice has not been updated since some time in 2022, which was around the time development on Wani became serious, and Cavemanon took tighter control of the project, with Loanshark, the lead writer and artist on Wani, leaving and rejoining multiple times around August of that year[235]. I Wani Hug That Gator was released on February 14th, 2024, on Steam[267] and Itch.io[266] for $14.99 USD. Our best estimate, using Steamcharts[272], community sentiment, and review count[267], and not including sales from Itch, puts the game between 1400 and 2000 copies sold, within the first week of release, netting the developers roughly $14,000-$20,000 before tax, and after Steam's standard 30% service fee on all sales. The game's reviews as of writing were categorized by Steam as "Overwhelmingly positive," with 99% positive ratings and 740 reviews. The game was also originally going to release for free, alongside the Steam and Itch releases, on the game's official website[a41], which did not happen. The game was immediately downloaded and re-released for free by various users on the game's release thread anyway[288], as it contained no DRM to be cracked. Many community members appear to have enjoyed the game, with even some Snootgame veterans who were not involved in later drama being brought back to a time when things were better[352], feeling the same way Snootgame made them feel. There is some unsurety about how Nerd treated various individuals in and out of the development server, due to the cultural divide issue between teenagers on 4chan and the rest of the internet mentioned in section 1, but if there was any misunderstanding, it seems he was quicker to excuse his actions than to justify or explain them. There was never an attempt to create a mutual understanding. For example, in the issue with nRool, he excused his actions as due to being "at 2am and out of anger"[62], explaining the reason he got so angry was because he was trying to make friends with various artists in the server[322], expressing prior in the dev server that he was pissed because he was "slaving away for eight hours a day and this is my reward"[111], in reference to creating Snootgame. The discussion that took place after, to resolve interpersonal issues between nRool, Narija and Nerd was as close as he seemed to ever get to trying to foster understanding between him and others, but even this was ultimately just used as an attempt to get more info about the 2021 leaker that led to the Androcles situation, and despite Narija's efforts, no real headway was made in either direction about why Reed and Anon couldn't be gay for the sake of the story. He never mentioned in the meeting what the genuine reasons he cared in the first place were, which were that the mod (and its author) being gay[60,102] signaled death of the author for him[103], and he was worried people would "miss the point" if the gay mod was allowed to become popular[60,61] (even though other writers agreed that Snoot wasn't about that in the first place)[61]. On February 7th, 2024[a43], just a week before Wani was set to release, drama started in the /snoot/ Discord, concerning a character in Wani, named Lunara. The core of the issue was that someone had mentioned she was transgender. This character was originally created by one of Spidey's friends, Hikari, and was originally put into Wani because Spidey needed designs for Mia's friends, and so went to his friends to get ideas[178]. Discussion devolved into two sides, that being "It doesn't matter, because it's not the same character in Wani as Hikari's" and "It shouldn't be in the game because We like her as a female"[132,133,179,181], which are not mutually exclusive opinions to hold, but resulted in disagreement anyway. At least one user also complained on the basis that Hikari got a character of hers in-game, suggesting Cavemanon could charge a fee for such things[181], which was what had already happened during the indiegogo campaign for Exit 665's demo back in 2022[146]. Disagreement seems to have popped up at all due to Hikari clarifying her original statement saying she "made lunara"[183], meaning the design, not the character as written in Wani[184]. This eventually attracted the attention of Nerd, who immediately chose to call Hikari "Just some loser attentionwhore[sic]"[133], then, after more bickering with no real purpose, chose to go after spidey, treating this seemingly as some kind of betrayal, because Spidey did not tell anyone where the character came from[185]. Discussion of the topic died the same day. The following week, when Wani came out, on Valentine's day 2024, it was discovered that one of the artists at Cavemanon[a24] had specifically changed Lunara's sprites to give her larger breasts, and extended her legs for some reason[186,187]. This was further proven to be a last-minute edit by the release trailer[212,213], which shows the sprite already received final pass changes from the demo version, prior to the breast embiggening. Throughout Snootgame's life cycle, multiple community members joined Cavemanon in various capacities, between the Wani team, originally under Loanshark, being rolled into the development server[221,222,236], following Loanshark having emotional and stress-related issues, caused by circumstances in his real life, which prevented him from leading the team effectively, or doing development related tasks[223], and artists and programmers from the community at large joining via email with Joybuke, or simply contributing on their Git page[39]. Unfortunately, most of these members at some point either left[120,234,235,331,a30], were removed / banned from re-entry[125], or, in Mono's case, ended up becoming an informant[122] / public relations 'fixer'[224,225,226,232], like Sli[121]. Mono's actions also led to the distrust of Rangto in some circles where he interacted less often, even if he himself did not antagonize people or obviously rat people out as Mono did, purely because of association[a31], since he was also still in many public servers. This issue seems to have even affected internal developers, with users like Joybuke becoming less willing to communicate outside of the server, or to disagree with Nerd on anything, and overall being a meaner, more money-minded person[221,a33]. This is likely due to the various instances discussed in the dev server where they collectively shit on the community for reacting poorly to their decisions[106,303], causing him to truly not give a shit about anyone in the community, even active developers who hail from it, creating their "us" and "them." In Mono's case specifically, based on reports by the people who used to hang out with him, he was previously a subjectively cool guy, hanging out in VCs and streaming art he was doing for various projects, talking to people, etc. He eventually became more and more distant, only seldom speaking in chats, usually to comment on small things, likely as more of his attention was drawn to public servers and Cavemanon-specific issues[a34]. This behavior ultimately culminated in Mono being shouted out of the Stella server (a private server run by community members) on the day Wani released, the 14th of February 2024[232,335,336,337,338,339,340,341,342,343], which snowballed into him leaving most of the public servers[345], and the art server[344], except for Snoot Club, which he remains in as of writing (25 FEB 2024). One user we spoke to described the mono situation with the following, in February 2024: "i really don't like mono, i have not for a long time now, it sucks because i used to respect him but idk what's changed over the last year to make him like he is now, a lot of the things he does just sets people off cause he is extremely vague and avoidant but also likes to call attention to the fact that he does not like the things people are talking about."[a42] The most pertinent examples of the adversarial relationship between the community and the developers are the various examples where members from the team have come in to defame people who say things they don't like, calling them "Attention whores,"[133,228,229,230] "Literal who"s[231], and generally being pointlessly mean-spirited[133]. The most memorable ones seem to be the cases where developers like Mono have engaged what most refer to as "damage control," shouting down anyone who makes claims about them[232,270,271], even when sources are posted[224], attempting to deflect, or otherwise bully the person to the point that they stop posting whatever they are discussing[224,225,226,247,248]. This has also occurred in cases where users have posted things to the threads, claiming to be ex-developers, resulting in what is typically referred to as "sub-tweeting," or in the case of discord, "underposting," without actually linking to the original post[227]. From the Fang Friday thread around that time (October 2021), it seems to be one of the devs posting screenshots about nothing into the thread[242], in reference to someone talking about the Androcles issue. Instances of this issue have also happened in threads, like the time in September 2021[244,245], where Nerd complained about OCs and background characters being written by community members after the fact, saying it should be "gatekept."[230,238] The banning of non-snoot-related characters on the official booru a couple years later, in September 2023[239,240] was also perceived as a pointless sleight, though was not handled nearly as poorly, unlike the instance where one of the developers[a32] made an absolutely unhinged post blaming and dumping on Workanon in Wani's trailer thread on /v/[241], for the posts claiming most devs didn't get paid[237] on February 7th, 2024. The posts they were responding to were made by an ex-developer[a46]. The fact that these issues and similar ones spread so far give most people the impression that the devs are doing it out of malice, since nothing is changing despite the overwhelming reaction to it, resulting in further and poorer reactions. It is not clear when this behavior with Mono actually started[a39], and Mono is reported as having refused payment[274], making it unlikely this is motivated by money, unless he was lying about turning down payment. Throughout their existence, Cavemanon was insistent on getting potential members under NDA[116,143], for various reasons, though the only explicitly stated one was to protect themselves from legal action by Sony for creating Snootgame, for the first few months after its release[143]. Eventually, these NDAs evolved into full-on "contracts"[144,156,243], intended to bind potential developers through some legally enforceable measure to both not violate the NDA, and also for the developers to be paid. It's possible this had something to do with it, but seems unlikely given Mono readily lashed back at Nerd as recently as September 2023 with the booru situation[299]. The booru situation specifically[239,240] started because Nerd allegedly received messages from users complaining that the "booru moderation is too lax"[306], and this was his attempt at clarifying and appeasing those people by enforcing existing rules that were previously not enforced properly or at all. The clarification was in reference to the 'off topic content' rule. The clarification stated: "09/09/23 - Similarly to the last announcement, fan art of characters only appearing in GVH is off-topic to the site and will be removed."[307] What happened after this rule was enforced more strictly was that art containing characters from GVH, without strictly Snootgame-specific characters also present, was completely removed, due to being "off-topic." This resulted in a mass purge of posts that were supposedly "unedited GVH content,"[309] but in reality, caught a bunch of fan content as well, which was, in fairness, GVH and OC-related, and not specifically tied to Snootgame[312], like the rule says. Nerd claimed the ban was not intended to cover OCs[310], but was intended to cover GVH content without any snoot characters present[311]. Nerd did try during his clarification to explain why he was doing this, and why it seemed stupid that people were getting upset[308], but didn't seem to take any steps to actually understanding why people were angry, only insisting that they should not be, and he was trying to help. Unfortunately, due to this being a 4chan community, and Nerd not reaching out to the larger community before acting on advice / demands he received privately, everyone immediately shit their pants and started crying and screaming, and a civil discussion was not able to be had. The issue appears to have been caused by a misunderstanding of what people were asking for, mixed with failure to reach out to the larger community prior to trying to placate them. As an example, similar mistakes are what killed the game The Culling[315] around 2017-18, which could be distilled to "listening to Reddit." In this case, it would be "listening to random people who DM or email you." There was no attempt to reach out to see what the larger audience who was playing the game actually wanted. They seem to have confused the few people being really loud with the larger community being dissatisfied with the game, when in reality, the silent majority was perfectly happy with how things are, thus no major outrage until they started trying to appease the loud minority. The issue was clarified further when the rule was changed again the next day to explain what was and was not allowed with examples[316], though this still enforced the rule that people complained about in the first place, which nobody was happy with, and ultimately resulted in the Cavemanon booru becoming less used, having only 12,873 posts as of February 20th, 2024[319], and a new booru[313] being created by a few community members on November 28th, 2023[314], which was used to host content no longer allowed on the official booru, containing 20,397 posts as of the 20th[320]; only a couple months after its creation. Discussion all but ceased beyond minor mentions and recollections of the event after this point. The rule on the Cavemanon booru has unfortunately not been reverted (as of February 26 2024), in spite of or possibly because of the incredibly obnoxious response to it, which people continued to harp on for months after[317]. It did, however, fall out of enforcement again[321], as everyone largely stopped caring about the booru after the September drama, including Cavemanon themselves, which is understandable, given no normal person has the time to moderate an art booru and do anything else at the same time. The community's perception at the time of the event could be shortened to "nerd swinging his dick around because he doesn't like OCs or GVH."[a50] On the other side of the event, the developers discussed this in their private discord, following Mono leaving after getting into a brief argument with Nerd over the rule[299,300]. Unfortunately, despite what appeared to be attempts in the public server to understand why people were mad, rather than participate in shit-flinging, Nerd and his in-group went on to dump on the community as a whole and build a further social wall between them and the larger fanbase, because of the misunderstanding[301,302,303,318], participating in internal shit-flinging, seething with the other developers and making the perception problem worse, without ever getting far enough out of it to bother asking the question of why people got pissed in the first place, or what he could have possibly done wrong, instead jumping immediately to sweeping personal attacks on groups of community members, who, admittedly, acted extremely shitty without being prompted. He did eventually ask why they wanted to post on the booru in the first place[304,305], though this was redirected by other developers into more complaining, and went nowhere of substance. It is a question worth begging, though- why do people want to post on the booru in the first place? Who is the booru even for? If it's not for the community, given nobody likes the rules but the people running it, who were unwilling to change them, who is the 'target audience' here? More importantly, why draw the line for 'off-topic' to exclude GVH specifically, capturing so much fanart based on Snootgame, just because Anon isn't present? In one development meeting concerning the Wani project, on February 7th, 2022[361], where the developers spoke mostly about story specifics and resources for stock images, near the end of the discussion, the topic of payment was brought up, as even at this time, there were worries about how it was going to be handled within the team. This was also around the time the idea of creating an actual LLC and registering a trademark in Houston, TX was floated around. The ultimate response from the one in charge of payment and handling of money (though it has been claimed by Nerd that Joybuke is the 'accountant,' despite Nerd's steam account being the one in control of the page for Wani, meaning he receives all of the funds directly), Nerd, was one of unsureity and a "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" sort of dismissal. The main concern of his at the time appeared to be legality, as nerd and the 'top' / original members intended to handle it in the context of an LLC, meaning everything would need to be reported on their tax information, when this potential future LLC is to be created. Options that were shot down immediately include: PayPal/CashApp/Zelle, cryptocurrency/Bitcoin, and purchasing items as gifts for developers on platforms like Steam or Amazon, as they were all deemed of questionable legality. During this discussion, developers outside the US unanimously or near-unanimously said they would not accept the process for payment, as the ones handling the money effectively fearmongered by mentioning all of the different tax exclusions and rules, and their own lack of knowledge of such, for paying foreign workers through 'official means,' seeing as all developers with any major control are located in the US[a35]. Of the remaining developers, who were also in the US, it was mentioned they would likely be requiring users to submit tax information, as if they were properly employed, for them to send out any sort of payment[180,294,a37]. A percentage cut of the profit rather than a smaller, up-front payment was also suggested, on multiple occasions and even outside of this discussion, though was shot down at every turn[253], despite being what everyone who asked for payment wanted, prior to the ones handling the money bringing up tax excuses and so on. Developers later in 2023 stated that "50% of all wani profit will be going into funding exit"[259], though not where or to whom the remainder of the profit will go, nor what going towards e665's development includes, seeing as the resources and code for it are being made entirely in-house, by Nerd, Joybuke, and other original members of Cavemanon, along with a few members from Snootgame and Wani's development, for which no reason has been presented to believe will be compensated any differently from their previous work on their respective projects, with the exception of one, that longer term employment[104] was discussed with. This user ended up declining the offer, however. Nerd at one point in 2021 said he would "proooobably not" hire voice talent for e665, but it was "not out of the cards"[347]. The monetary issue was briefly discussed a couple times outside of this one specific voice chat, but it did not receive a reply or any real answers until late July - mid October 2023, when the contracts were doled out[144,156,233,243,295,a48]. At that time, in late 2023, the discussions that were had ultimately ended with most people being signed on to the project with a 'gratis contributor' contract, i.e, they agree to work for free. This document also acted as an NDA / Mutual Confidentiality Agreement, which (if it was actually enforceable) would have barred users from sharing anything the devs decided they didn't want at any arbitrary point in time, as the list provided was marked as non-exhaustive (see contracts cited above). It is critically important to note that this contract was also presented retroactively to existing contributors who had already done work for the project, they did not join on initially under the promise or expectation of working for free, as one anon on the Wani trailer thread attempted to make fun of (post ID 666401274)[241]. At most, users were introduced to the project without explicit mention of payment, but were similarly not told outright they would not be paid at all. Anyone who joined the project after December 2022 would have known the project was commercial and would make money, as the game already had its Steam page up at that point[329]. At least three users were offered sums of between $50 and $100 USD, with a couple others claiming they were offered between $200 and $320 at different times[104,249,255], though most we spoke with report being captured under the "gratis" contract, meaning they would not be compensated in any way "express or implied"[156] for their work. The developer in charge of getting members to sign contracts and discussing payment info has also used the NDAs themselves as an excuse to not discuss or reveal payment terms for other members of the company[253], even when the contracts did not include any clauses for this, unless they intended to enforce the NDA individually against their developers rather than preventing them from sharing information to the public, which makes absolutely no sense, and is not how NDAs are handled in actual business. A few days prior, on the 21st of October, 2023, a few developers discussed 'unionizing,' or at least coming together to discuss the payment issues[298]. This was discussed in DMs with other members, and was decided against, as one of the devs who was more familiar with Nerd and Joy mentioned they would likely deny payment altogether if anyone threatened any kind of collective action[297], and nobody wanted to take that risk[349]. Of the users who were reported to be receiving payment, or did not decline outright: - Mappening (a member of Cavemanon who joined in the very early Snootgame days) supposedly received an amount "around the $100 mark"[274] and was one of the "best directly paid"[221]. He did not receive any royalties, and it is unknown whether he provided tax paperwork to Cavemanon (Joybuke), or was paid via Paypal, due to being closer to Nerd and Joy than the others. - Heartsick, a sprite/background artist, was offered $50[a49]. He has not been paid on account of not providing Joy with a W-9 or any other tax paperwork. - Spidey (deadassspider) was removed from the team prior to being paid due to leaking chat logs and being called out by Mono[123], so received nothing from Cavemanon[125]. He did receive $100 via PayPal[250], though this was not from anyone "officially" acting on behalf of Cavemanon (the company), and was instead paid by Rangto out of pocket. - Loanshark left and rejoined the team several times due to aforementioned stress and IRL issues[273], and eventually was ghosted by Nerd after leaving and attempting to discuss monetary issues with him[331], so he received nothing. He was originally agreed to be paid via PayPal[334], despite the devs' earlier refusal of this option[257]. The developers claim he was originally to be paid $50[350], due to his "poor output"[221,269], which was later raised to $100 after discussions with Joybuke, who later replied to monetary questions, saying the "terms are different"[259]. Before the project was even handed off to Cavemanon, in September 2021, Nerd told him via his Androcles account that the project "can even be sold for a profit, which would be split to your advantage"[258]. Nerd also spoke kindly Loan when he was feeling down, encouraging him to take a break to recover emotionally, and allegedly never showed any signs or made any note that Loan's issues would end with him being removed from the team entirely, on top of not being paid[223,296]. Joybuke is also reported as having told loan the paperwork could take "up to 2 hours"[330], when a W-8 typically takes less than 10 minutes, and a 1099 would be completed by Joy instead of Loan. Loan eventually signed the non-paying contract under duress, due to the mountains of legal paperwork he would be fraudulently required to do for the paid contract, and having to otherwise provide his dox to Joy[332,a40]. Mono at one point offered to pay Loan directly, but he declined[274]. - Workanon left due to creative and personal disagreements with Cavemanon's writers[234] before the project was completed, and before the more 'official' contracts were drafted, and so received nothing. His name was removed from the credits[256], after the team wrote over or deleted most or all of what he wrote for the game's script[252,254]. The contracts themselves - a combination of NDA and payment terms, appear to have been created by lazily copy-pasting legal text verbatim from other documents and templates[260], and hastily or carelessly edited into what the developers thought or understood to mean what they want, resulting in nonsensical, legally unenforceable walls of text which reference components and information not even present where referenced, or enforce unrealistic or legally unjustifiable requirements (indefinite NDA, NDA for non-business-related info or specifically HIPAA compliance, etc.), and are full of typos (mostly missing spaces, since a majority of the text was stolen from existing forms). They were also not made with any consultation to an actual legal professional, given they were created and edited in-house by Joybuke, who was also the individual listed on the contracts as the 'representative' for Cavemanon[144,156,243], which as of writing (24 FEB 2024) is not a registered taxable entity with the state of Texas[263] (where Nerd is located according to his Indiegogo page[146]), has no associated trademarks or intellectual property with the USPTO[327], and is not registered with the SEC[326] (from what we and our lawyer friend could find or make requests to the SEC for), meaning the company for all legal purposes does not exist. They should have instead made contracts between individuals, if they really, truly needed to be made at all, given the only manifest purpose of a contract is to bring legal action against the parties involved for any breaches. Legal precedent[323,324] indicates contracts created on behalf of non-existent entities are still binding to the signatories themselves, though, the legal professional we asked stated the contract would likely never even get to trial, due to both the laundry list of other issues with the document, especially given the document itself even says 'monetary damages may not be a sufficient remedy' and asks for specific performance, which is almost never applicable to an NDA, seeing as information cannot be un-revealed to the public, and the fact that individuals receiving payment are still anonymous, and could not be located by subpoena anyway, especially given many of them are outside the US (and they are not going to be extradited for a small claims case). Ultimately, the case, if the petition is even deemed valid, could end up in favor of the developers who were screwed out of the amounts on the documents, especially with the pointlessly complicated legal language surrounding the requirements to send invoices at specific intervals, but only "one time", which makes no sense. An argument could potentially be made for contract fraud on the part of Joybuke as well, with the knowledge that at least two signees did not speak English as their first language, though this is just an initial assessment given the facts at hand. We offer no legal advice to any readers, nor Cavemanon themselves. One member who ultimately turned down payment altogether claimed to have been offered an undisclosed cut of the profit as royalties at one point, though this was predicated upon him putting in "30 to 40 hours a week"[104], which is completely atypical for any sort of royalty agreement. Nowhere in US law is there any reason for payment of royalties, for work already done, or intellectual property such as trademarks or patents, to require long-term employment to be paid out. That would be called a "salary." This user was, at the same time, dissuaded from taking the offered royalty amount, as it was "not a guarantee" that the project would make any profit. Typical royalty agreements require no input or further work from the recipient beyond the contract in which the payer promises to provide the agreed upon sum, based on units sold, total profit, etc. A different member, who was later removed from the team, was at one point in 2023 asked to purchase Clip Studio Paint's EX edition[358,359], out of their own funds, or their work already done in their existing program would be cut[357], despite being able to be transferred over with zero issues. This edition of the software at that time cost $219 USD off-sale[360], and only scarcely went on-sale, usually for around half-price, which even then was still more than $100 this developer was agreed to have been paid for their work, which ultimately was not paid out anyway because of their ejection from the team. The paid contracts do include a clause to allow signees to claim "Travel, living and any related out-of-pocket expenses"[144,243,295], which as-written would not include costs related to doing business or completion of required tasks. The contract also required any claimed expenses to be "authorized in writing" by Joybuke, and "costs associated with the transfer of payment" would be "paid by the contractee", additionally eating into the amount that would have been paid otherwise. Obviously, one could say it is the fault of the workers for not getting payment details in writing before agreeing to do work, but most people in this instance signed on simply because they enjoyed making games, and were OK not receiving anything for their work[262]. This led to fallacious social pressure from the top down for them to follow that trend and to not be 'greedy,' since other developers didn't get anything, or received very little[221]. This is likely a symptom of the aforementioned dual use of the server as a friend group and development hub, creating a plethora of complicated social situations, greatly muddying the water for anyone either just trying to make friends, or just trying to make money, commonly seen in cult settings, if only replacing friendship with religion. This, along with the near-complete unwillingness to even discuss the topic for over a year, nearly 2 for some individuals, since contracts were discussed individually in DMs (May 2022 to June-October 2023), forced most developers into the dark on the issue, and resulted in most of them never talking about it. When it finally was spoken about and contracts were provided to users, extreme and unreasonable stipulations were put in place which prevented users from claiming the agreed-upon funds, if any were agreed upon at all: Joy, in creating and negotiating the contracts, refused to pay users via normal methods for person-to-person transfers, like PayPal, despite agreeing earlier with at least one developer that they would be paid this way[257], and instead insisted on it being paid via a pointlessly complicated and outdated invoice + bank wire / direct-mailed check process. If read correctly, this contract would require each user individually to negotiate a method for payment outside of the contract, which may never be successfully negotiated even after signing, for which only one developer (Loanshark) is recorded having PayPal be an accepted method of invoice (though he and never sent the invoice and was ultimately never paid before he left the team anyway), after which payment would be sent by "check or wire transfer"[144,243], presumably also using the individual's real name and banking information, rather than being paid digitally, which would have the same benefits of recordkeeping that physical payments would. Before even that was allowed to happen, though, despite this not being stipulated in the contract at all, for any developers in the US, they were required to submit IRS form W-9[a47], aka the "Taxpayer Identification Form", which includes their full name, address, and social security number[251], in order to receive payment[180]. Users outside the US who did not agree to the gratis contract were offered the option of payment, but similarly required to fill out form W-8BEN[294], which is the equivalent of a W-9 for nonresident citizens[289], and additionally requires taking a 30% cut of all money sent to pay to the IRS[290], unless their country was given an exemption or different tax rate due to treaties and the like. The developers have not agreed to provide equivalent identifying information in exchange, or to de-anonymize themselves in any way to the users who were asked to send this information to them and have even gone as far as supposedly "legally registering" pen names[334] (though we could not find any of the ones mentioned in ANY legal registry within the US, in any of the developers' home states, or federally with ANY agency, not the USPTO, not the SEC, nothing), creating a one-way legal shield, like the kind typically seen in the modern day in shell companies and proxy LLCs, created for landlords to prevent or delay tenants bringing legal action against them[325]. If the W-9s were collected for legitimate purposes, Nerd or Joy would be also be made to prepare form 1099 for each worker paid, and for themselves, though the amount paid, to the group as a whole, never mind for one singular person, would not meet the IRS minimum of $600 per recipient to require that Nerd and Joy file this paperwork or collect W-9s[264,265], which presents an issue of either incredible negligence, given they do not understand when or why the forms they are requiring people to be filed are made to be filled out (though this is not unheard of, given how unrealistically complicated US tax law is), or receipt-taking behavior, which would allow them to use the real-life identifying information of the individuals who receive payment as 'ammunition' for future retaliatory doxxing and/or legal action for any actions taken by the individual they did not agree with, or they believed were in violation of their contract, which they have also claimed to change the terms of after signing in at least once instance[221]. This process would be required for people to receive between $50 and $100 USD, with the process remaining undiscussed for the individuals supposedly receiving a higher amount, as at least one was confirmed to have declined payment at some point prior to the contracts being discussed[249]. They were also allegedly offered a lower cut, but a permanent position at the company as an official PR manager[274], which was also declined. None of the developers contacted, as of writing, claim to have provided any privileged tax information to any members of Cavemanon. # SECTION 4: Conclusion and Discerning Intent It seems to us like the intention here is to posture and present the image of Cavemanon as this great, powerful, yet mysterious business, that nobody can touch, so the creators can remain anonymous both online and in real-world business dealings, shielding them from any personal responsibility for the actions they take. The creators of Snootgame, and the games after, appear to want all the benefits of running a business - Money, popularity, control - but do not want to take on the actual serious responsibilities required to run a game studio. Nerd has previously expressed that he is "mak[ing] gamedev a reality"[227] for the people working beneath him, but does not seem to want to actually provide the pay, structure, internal culture, or resources to do so, nor to comply with any regulations on finance, tax, or otherwise, which he very well may just not be aware of, given how uninitiated he and Joy appear to be in every interaction they have had involving such things. They do not even offer their workers who ask for payment the same niceties of anonymity that they desire themselves, requiring users to dox themselves to receive payment, rather than accepting any solution that a normal person would be willing to use to send money to people across the US, or the globe. Do not be fooled by the posturing. The few at the 'top' of the pile - Nerd, Joybuke, Sli - they are not running a business, never mind registering one. They are not professionals. We do not mince words here. We are sorry we have to say this - these people are scammers. They want to be game developers, née saviors of the downtrodden of 4chan's many boards, lifting them into their Dream Job[227], as Nerd would put it, but drop all pretenses and act like apes as soon as money becomes involved. They have proven over the last 3-ish years that they are not only impersonal and incredibly disagreeable to interact with, regularly seething in private over the interactions they have with the community they extract value from and forcing their morals onto others where they are unwanted, but utterly lacking in empathy or any desire to change, or learn from their mistakes. They do not care to justly compensate the people who willingly put in the months, or in some cases, years of time and effort, required to get them to where they currently are (just as Nerd and the original crew put into Snootgame), or at the very least, uphold their end of the contracts they had these developers sign after most of the work was already finished, or the things they told the developers prior to even taking the project over and signing them on[258], and pay them the peanuts they eventually agreed to paying[221]. They have become utterly selfish individuals, abusing the implied authority of the US legal system, using legal-flavored gobbledygook and an incredibly naïve misunderstanding of anything involving contract law, tax law, or law in general in order to extort and scam people working beneath them who are not already themselves naïve enough not to ask for payment in the first place (and have at one point attempted to use the actual authority of it[261], albeit for far less awful reasons). Behind the money issues, there are, or at least were at some point, genuine concerns and motivations behind their actions. It seems they have either been forgotten or taken a back seat to spite for the community they supposedly are making games for. Perhaps they lack the integrity to understand what means those new ends justify, or the social wherewithal to understand when they are at the end of their rope. When to give up trying to convince people they are wrong, when to stop imposing rules on others, whether it is for 'their own good,' or to the benefit of "Cavemanon." This situation is not as cut and dry as "everyone is completely evil," for better or worse. Most situations aren't, that would make it too easy. Nothing truly boils down to an "us" and "them." We could not attempt to pin all of the wrongdoings by this group on one person, even if we wanted to. It is the collective effort of the brains making the gears inside turn to create such a force for bad in the world, yet each of those parts have their own upsides and downsides, when examined outside of the machine they have put themselves in. Nerd was an overbearing dick to many people in the dev server, yes. Incredibly complacent, utterly lacking in communication skills, quick to anger, etc. - yet incredibly caring to many others, sharing artwork and socializing as you would with any other friend. Talking to many in public servers in what seemed to be an attempt to socialize. His social conventions are unusual and bombastic, but there are clearly people who mesh well with him. He's done many things to attempt to clarify and bring light to situations, but every time so far has managed to end with a miserable reaction from the community, sometimes for no fault of his own, simply being born of disagreement. He has done his best and sacrificed an incredible amount to maintain secrecy of members' identities- though how fervent he was in this regard, for whatever reason, seems to have ultimately been his downfall, if not one of the major reasons he failed to integrate with the community from the start He is incredibly principled - to a fault. Joybuke did what may very well amount to contract fraud and conspiracy to commit identity theft (even if he did not know what he was doing), yet Snootgame, the booru, the group's various other sites, and Wani may not exist if not for his willingness to put up with Python. He has his own artistic niches (just as Nerd does) which we will not discuss here for respect to his privacy[a51]. Sli put in a significant amount of writing for the projects he worked on, even with his inability to converse with people outside of the dev server, and his insistence on being Nerd's "Yes Man" to people in and outside the dev server. Every person has good and bad in them. Some bad is just too much for people to put up with, for what good those people provide to the world. This goes both ways. Many community members are going to be entitled, that is just what happens when the things you make become so popular, especially in communities like those formed in and around 4chan. It does come with the territory. But, to that end, it doesn't excuse acting like a dick to nearly everybody, even your own devs[299], doing things to your own benefit, just because a few people are stupid assholes. You just end up pissing off the good people too. Then you become their villain, and the enemy of your enemy becomes a giant fucking problem. The cogs of the rumor mill turn again. You, the devs, unquestionably do deserve the right to talk in a place away from any community members you choose[57], but talking in private does not excuse anyone from having integrity. To restate our goal here: Our intent is not to simply defame the developers and point out all the bad things they have done to make them look like villains. The community has far and away done that on their own. The goal is to point them out so they stop doing these things. So the drama stops. So people stop falling for these tricks and damage control tactics, given how poorly it has turned out for both sides. If the drama stopped altogether, and we never had to write this stupid essay- didn't have to ask 20-30 different people and do research into the depths of 4chan and Discord servers and DMs, we would be immensely grateful. But, one does not learn without making mistakes. And we are collectively making those mistakes right now. The goal here is to stop everyone from continuing to make the same mistakes they have in the past 3 years which have made countless people incredibly angry, and led to individuals on the either side of this behavior being excluded from groups they otherwise had a chance to integrate with, or being screwed out of what they are rightfully owed. To encourage people to make good decisions moving forward to make up for the mistakes they have made up to this point. To stop what remains of the initial communities around the game from disappearing because people keep having pointlessly stressful screaming matches, or arguing over trifling details. We realize full well where this community comes from - we were here when the sticky was still going - and we realize nobody gives a shit what we want or think. We ask this not to anonymous posters on an image board, but to the ones with usernames, whose actions can face any consequences- If you want to have a place to talk to people, instead of them packing up and leaving as so many have before. If you want to have somewhere calm to discuss things everyone is interested in, please; stop summoning arguments out of nothing. Assume the best of even the worst of people. Even people you disagree with. You don't need to agree to be civil. You don't need to put anyone else's head on a stake to prove you're right. You don't even need to prove that you're right in the first place! It doesn't matter! It's all opinion! Starting arguments and riots in reaction to small sleights are how we got here in the first place. The 'enemy' here is not Nerd, or Mono, or any of the community members. It's not Narija, or nRool. The enemy is internal, reactionary behavior. The "enemy" is acting without considering your actions and how they affect people. Some impulsivity is needed to function, sure, otherwise we'd all be so incredibly slow-moving as to never speak in the first place- but basic understanding, given to even the least agreeable of people, can reveal a lot more than telling people to fuck off right away based on a gut reaction. Name-calling doesn't help anyone. There's no point getting into an ego battle over a cartoon dinosaur. If you want to be friends with people, de-escalate where you can before you start acting offended[225]. Take everything here with a rightful amount of skepticism. Many of the events which are not cited directly from images and chat logs rely on first-hand recounts, since not every ex-member of Cavemanon is a careless leaker or receipt-taker, as some may intend to portray them. But, at the same time, take criticism of these facts and allegations presented with that same level of skepticism. Words from Nerd, or "Cavemanon" alone will not prove the statements here wrong, and we have done our best to prove ourselves right. Perceived authority from having followers on Twitter and a Steam page for your game does not make you any less human or less flawed than anyone else (often the opposite). At the same time, don't vilify people on the 'other side,' of whatever 'side' you're on. We are all people here. Every 'give' has a 'take.' To Nerd, Joy and friends directly: What would prove us wrong, and what would help everyone the most here, is transparency. Allow the people compensated for their work to speak freely about their involvement. Not you on their behalf. The people themselves. Allow developers to talk as they please, about internal and external goings-on. Show the same group who has read this document exactly, without a shred of doubt, how everything went down. Show everyone where the money went- web hosting, background assets, translation, bills, whatever. Show everyone what the money for Exit's development is going to. Show us what that Indiegogo went towards. Show your receipts. Prove to the people who pay your bills how wrong we are in writing this, and how much good you're actually doing for the people involved with you, and what they think about your actions versus "ours," whoever "we" are. Whoever "the community" is. Whoever the enemy your side has created in your head is, the same as the community has created their own caricature of you. Talk to the community about how you truly, really feel[301]. Half-appealing to the social pressures you know for a fact you do not like, to a community you have said yourself does not respect you, just comes off as un-genuine. It sucks to do, you should know this, having used the Androcles account for so long. It sucks for everyone, being fake. It is trying to make amends that cannot be made, to right wrongs that cannot be corrected. You cannot appease everyone. It'll probably suck to be truthful too! At least then you will not have to suck to yourself, keeping everything bottled up and creating further issues down the line, tangling yourself in a web of omissions and lies. Some devs, many of them even, don't want to talk at all. That itself is the issue here. The creation of an "us" and "them." All this is to say you should just *talk* to people, instead of keeping so many secrets from so many people, being so stubborn on your reasoning and opinions, and acting outward instead of inward when the known shit-flingers start flinging shit again. You have to be a bigger man than the kinds of people who use 4chan at some point. All of you. Most things, to a point, can be excused as lack of social prowess. Until money gets involved. Then it becomes fraud, and everything becomes 100x worse. One cannot flagrantly mishandle a raw representation of value and not expect everyone to immediately react in kind. Most people know what is just or unjust. Even monkeys know this; real, actual modern-day chimps can discern right from wrong[351]. People will never react well to anything perceived as a violation of justice, be it in dollar bills, land, time, whatever. There very well may have been a good reason behind the NDA and everything that it ended up turning into, but the original intent is so lost beneath layers and layers of shit, it may as well be ancient history, given how few people even come close to understanding what happened up to this point, or who even can, given how reluctant you and everyone else are to share details about internal goings-on. About what makes you do the things you do - the same way Nerd's original intent for the message of Snootgame is totally lost to 99% of people who play and are not predisposed to that specific conception themselves, about it being about the 'system' that creates LGBT people via systems of abuse, making them all necessarily bad, or whatever way he has attempted to thus far describe it[103,211,356]. There will always be detractors, but clearly in communities where they are the ones lying and astroturfing, users push them out, even if those members doing the pushing are not on their own agreeable. It seems you are on the wrong side of their fence, here, burning what little faith you have left in the community with every action you take that sparks another unreasonable reaction from people that makes your emotions flare against it all the same, never realizing or questioning why people act this way or what you can do to prevent it blowing back in your face, or how to stop it from happening in the first place, opting instead to complain with your friends who all give you more reasons to hate even people who have not done anything, simply by proxy. Clearly there has been enough wrong done here for the 3 years we have been in this mess together. Too much has come out - too many people have been screwed over and bullied in the same ways, for years now (you included), even after lengthy discussions about this, for this to be a simple misunderstanding anymore. Something has to change. Serious bad has been done, and expectations and opinions have been built off of these wrongdoings. Perceived evil turns into real evil when one acts on it, then both sides of any issue do horrific things using the other's actions as justification. Capitulations must be made if you do not wish to be seen as a villain. Even if you personally hate the community and want nothing to do with them given their responses to your actions and reactions[301]. If not a compromise on opinion, or behavior (neither of which we personally can change, either of yours or the community's), then on participation - When and where. If you truly do not value the community, you can always put your effort to good use elsewhere, instead of finding new reasons to be pissed off every time someone opens their mouth. Find a different niche. You don't need to ride out the tainted success that became from Snootgame to be popular. Go be happy. Let the people here be happy in their own way. Do not ruin their fun for some perceived violation of principles on your end, for 'their own good.' Don't "gatekeep" anything[238]. It's nobody's place to stomp on anyone else's proverbial sandcastle. If you're truly worried about the issues you are stating, maybe you should track down and attack the source, instead of creating your entire career around a furry visual novel created by a bunch of Canadians, just as you laugh at your own detractors for using things your friends have made[248]. You can do good on your own terms, but do good for people who will respect your effort. You don't have to take on the responsibility of Messiah to the crowds of the damned, on top of everything else. Some people are just not fixable, and it seems the community collected around Snootgame is one such case, for your given purposes. There is no greater evil, than evil done for the good of others. A petty criminal is motivated my short-term gains to the exclusion of the people around him. He'll stop as soon as he meets any resistance. A tyrant is motivated on moral grounds, and will not stop until his will has been executed on those beneath him, even those who do not wish for his help. Just let the community do what it wants. Things like this were not meant to last forever. Communities around any piece of media will die eventually, or morph into something else- but let it be what it wants to, before it ends. What purpose does preventing it from turning into "samey cancer"[301] serve, to anyone? Even you? What will it turn into if you steer it where you want it to go? Why not let the current moderators take their communities where they want them to? What do you gain from hovering around it and forcing your will onto the people who make it up? Why try to gain authority and power, if your goal isn't to do things with that power people do not want? What purpose do administration privileges in a discord server serve[69], or moderation access on a booru? The only reason anyone would ask for power like that is so they can use it. We can only speculate, since you never speak to anyone about your reasons for doing things, outside of the single, private server that you ban people from for even daring to share something that "isnt even a serious comment"[122,125]. We would love nothing more than to say everyone involved was a wonderful person to speak with and could do no wrong - and many of them are - but that is unfortunately not the case for all. We would love for everyone to be pleased with what they're doing, to be able to talk amongst each other as friends, as was the case in the early days of this community. But that will not happen if this spy-movie charade keeps up. Especially not if money continues to be an issue. Nothing is more sobering, or more depressing to many, than the reminder that they need to worry about money on top of everything else. Seeing that be stolen from people is a great way to cause immense anger. Be transparent. Be better. Stop the drama and the bullshit. Not just for yourself, but for everyone around you. We didn't make people leak stuff. They leaked these things because there was an "us" and a "them," and they didn't particularly like the game that was sold to them. You have the capacity to learn from your mistakes. To discern mistakes in opinion, from mistakes in execution, from mistakes in others' reactions. To question your opinions - your beliefs - No matter how old, or how important to you, just as we do. You have the ability to change, just as anyone else does, and if that seems unfair or too hard, you can always move on as many of us have wanted to for some time now. Use it, instead of making excuses for the same mistakes over and over, or strong-arming people into agreeing with you, and creating opposing factions of 'attention whores' who could clearly never be anything other than wrong. Others will respect you for it. # CITATIONS (Primary / Secondary / Tertiary) 01.T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katawa_Shoujo (KS / KSJ wikipedia page) 02.P https://desuarchive.org (/trash/ archive) 03.S https://youtu.be/EJGImDpQKOQ (Katawa Shoujo documentary, one of many) 04.P https://youtu.be/ahCPSAUKFR4 (GVH official trailer Jun 11 2020) 05.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/33276653/ (A fang thread on /trash/) 06.S https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNt-bHC6GM0 (The Story of Snootgame, part 2) 07.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/39170054/#q39186294 (first-ever post announcing the game is out, likely a dev) 08.P https://git.cavemanon.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame/commit/0ca782a56110ff226eb1aa3dd18c1172d85f1dd7 (Initial commit to public gitea) 09.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/search/text/snootgame/end/2021-06-05/ (no results) 10.P https://arch.b4k.co/v/search/text/snootgame/end/2021-06-05/ (no results) 11.P https://youtu.be/B22rhXd4dtE?t=2375 (Developer interview. Earlier in the video, there's a trailer for the game.) 12.P https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/512870123/#512878706 (17 Jun 2020 discord link in thread, 6PM EST. Link expired.) 13.P https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/512837556/#512839797 (17 Jun 2020 discord link in thread, 1PM EST. Link expired.) 14.P https://warosu.org/lit/thread/15645450#p15648530 (19 Jun 2020 lit thread with a greentext describing the events of the game (what became ending 3)) 15.P https://git.cavemanon.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame/commit/04785e0f67c80091aff092367e1a68702bbfed20 (History of changes to the readme file on the snoot gitea) see also https://git.cavemanon.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame/commits/branch/master/README.md 16.P https://warosu.org/lit/thread/15645450#p15690007_1 (somebody dumping on /lit/ anon) 17.P https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/558234035/#558254647 (first release ever documented, on /v/. Predates /trash/ announcement by about 40 minutes.) 18.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iLIDRWHSyw (Snoot official trailer (the original shitty parody version), 4 JUN 2021) 19.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/chunk/39297776/ (/trash/ sticky, 9 JUN 2021) 20.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU0agHKd3oU (MU6 trailer, 01 OCT 2021. 147k views as of 09 FEB 2024) 21.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/63151560 (Wani Wednesday thread, 07 FEB 2024) 22.P https://mega.nz/folder/7X4USRYK#64dv5dVjKPZ-yWBsNC5Kmg (Archiveanon's archive, started 19 JUN 2021) 23.P https://snootgame.xyz/patch2-changelog.html (Patch 2 changelog) 24.P https://snootgame.xyz/patch3-changelog.html (Patch 3 changelog) 25.P https://snootgame.xyz/patch4-changelog.html (Patch 4 changelog) 26.P https://snootgame.xyz/patch5.1.1-changelog.html (Patch 5 changelog) 27.P https://snootgame.xyz/Monster-Update-6-Tradcath-Edition-changelog.html (Patch 6.5 changelog) 28.P https://snootgame.xyz/Patch7-changelog.html (Patch 7 changelog) 29.P https://snootgame.xyz/Patch8-changelog.html (Patch 8 changelog) 30.P https://git.cavemanon.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame/issues/5 (patch 4 original name shown in image, 12 JUN 2021) 31.P https://git.cavemanon.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame/commit/d06e744e6517afd03032018505797e2f1b0c6a61 (MU6.5 patch for end 3 people, 16 OCT 2021) 32.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/42497909/ (People complaining about MU6 being NTR/cuckholdery, 18 OCT 2021) 33.P https://snootgame.xyz/Monster-Update-6-changelog.html (Patch 6 original version changelog) 34.P "Nerd says he has headcanon about e3 that the other writers dont.PNG" (filename, 30 JUN 2023) 35.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JmF1ooWO8I (song that the start menu theme was stolen from) 36.P https://cavemanon.xyz/nov-28-2023-bad-wani-news.txt (List from Cavemanon which contains all the sources for stolen tracks, 28 NOV 2023) 37.P https://twitter.com/Cavemanon/status/1729587826335838595 (The tweet they posted the list in) 38.P "STATEMENT.png" (Accompanying image which appears to have been removed from their twitter page. The text document remains.) 39.P https://git.cavemanon.xyz/Cavemanon/SnootGame (snootgame git) 40.P https://kotaku.com/goodbye-volcano-high-ko_op-snoot-game-4chan-ps4-ps5-1849731598 (Kotaku article on the game, 02 NOV 2022) 41.P https://web.archive.org/web/20231029102402/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VisualNovel/SnootGame (TV tropes article, marked as primary because the purpose of inclusion is that it exists, not its content.) 42.P https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16972292090A69722400&page=1 (TV tropes removal discussion, 13 OCT 2023) 43.P https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16773354560A73593500&page=6#comment-132 (WolfNanaki claims they were doxxed, 07 OCT 2023) 44.S https://www.tumblr.com/wolfnanaki/730384602611531776/i-guess-in-the-end-for-as-terrible-as-this-has (WolfNanaki talking about being doxxed on their tumblr page. 05 OCT 2023) 45.P https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16972292090A69722400&page=5#comment-113 (TV tropes article ban vote tally, 03 NOV 2023) 46.S https://i.kinja-img.com/image/upload/c_fit,q_60,w_1315/4acdd165af77ddba3ab3cec463d00125.jpg (kotaku discord screenshot, 02 NOV 2022) 47.P "bad fit.png" (A user named Crow remarking on his ban for "bad fit", 15 JUL 2021) 48.P https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/snoot-game (KYM page for snoot, 14 AUG 2023) 49.P https://snootgame.xyz/ (The game's website) 50.P https://web.archive.org/web/20210605230544/https://cavemanon.itch.io/snoot-game (Original snootgame page on itch.io, prior to 09 SEP 2021) 51.P https://www.indiedb.com/games/snoot-game (snootgame indiedb page) 52.P "eztli did the itch DMCA according to mono.png" (mono confirms eztli was the one who DMCA struck them on itch, not KO_OP, 16 JAN 2024) 53.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B22rhXd4dtE (/v/3 stream, 10 JUN 2021) 54.P https://web.archive.org/web/20220920180919/https://thev3expo.com/ (/v/3 website, captured some time in SEP 2022) 55.P "21 SEP 2021 androcles (Nerd) removed from art server.PNG" (Vanilla Nice's explanation of Androcles' removal from the art server, 21 SEP 2021) 56.P "IMG_6115.png" (Sli DMs nRool to ask him to reveal who sent the screenshots, 01 OCT 2021) 57.P "no actually, you don't.png" (Nerd says, after the Androcles account was banned, that the community members have no expectation of priacy, despite the developers expecting such. 22 SEP 2021) 58.S https://goodbye-volcano-high.fandom.com/wiki/Alvin?file=PHVision_14.png#Gallery (GVH wiki hosting an image of the Reed x Alvin photo) 59.P "Nerd says reeda was a better option than femanon.PNG" (filename, part of the 27 JAN 2022 discussion) 60.P "sli and Nerd dump on reedroute and Nari.png" (Nerd specifically mentions the problem with RR is that it is gay. 20 SEP 2021) 61.P "devs talking about reedroute and it creating a separate canon 20 SEP 2021.png" (filename) 62.P "Nerd says the thing to rool was out of anger 27 JAN 2022.PNG" (filename) 63.P "Nerd created the 1-27-2022 group chat.PNG" (filename) 64.P "Nerd says chrinik is too opinionated for a moderator.png" (filename, 26 JAN 2022) 65.P "dev server leak - Nerd complains on about being banned on both accounts.png" (Nerd talking about being banned. 01 SEP 2021) 66.P "devs talking about rool 20 SEP 2021.png" (devs discuss rool's presence in the art server, one day prior to Androcles' ban. 20 SEP 2021) 67.P "devs talking about rool and Nari 20 SEP 2021.png" (filename) 68.P "devs talking about gays and community members 20 SEP 2021.png" (filename) 69.P "Nerd and sli ask inkerlink for admin privileges or ownership of the public server.png" (filename, 02 DEC 2021) 70.P https://www.reddit.com/r/SnootGame/comments/14ygdk8/they_say_out_there_that_in_the_gvh_archives_in/ (Reddit post discussing the GVH story leaks in the demo, 13 JUL 2023) 71.S https://steamdb.info/depot/2393111/manifests/ (SteamDB page showing all of the versions of the demo released on steam since the initial release on 04 MAY 2023 to the final change on 20 JUN 2023) 72.P https://www.ludonarracon.com/lnc2023 (LudoNarraCon 2023 site, event scheduled to start 04 MAY 2023, ending on the 8th.) 73.P https://steamcommunity.com/app/1310330/discussions/0/6664812048268491947/ (KO_OP developer states in the game's steam discussions page that it was based on an old version, 19 JUN 2023) 74.P https://www.tribecafilm.com/press-center/festival/press-releases/tribeca-festival-unveils-2023-games-program (Tribeca film / games festival 2023 participants announcement, 11 MAY 2023) 75.P https://www.tribecafilm.com/press-center/festival/press-releases/tribeca-festival-announces-2023-dates-and-calls-for-submissions (Tribeca film / games festival 2023 initial announcement and call for participants, 23 AUG 2022) 76.S https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1k5LcI4eur4oJ6e43ue3OdbgHY4VcQNpf (Goodbye Volcano High development dump, 2018-2023, including files from the demos.) 77.S https://twitter.com/norovern_bro/status/1712865206693507460 (Alleged GVH leaks from a group or person calling themselves "IFV team". 13 OCT 2023) 78.P https://www.reddit.com/r/SnootGame/comments/16m4xe0/script_and_development_of_gvh_filtration_gui%C3%B3n_y/ (Source post of the alleged leaks, on Reddit. 18 SEP 2023) 79.S https://www.mobygames.com/game/207915/goodbye-volcano-high/credits/windows/ (GVH credits listing containing Warlocs employees, no mention of IFV.) 80.S https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12497076/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cl_sm (IMDB page listing GVH credits. Again, no mention of IFV, and only mentions Warlocs employees for translation.) 81.P "gvh leak is fake according to lead community archivist who speaks with the devs.PNG" (filename, 11 FEB 2024) 82.P "fake gvh leak was probably a hitpiece of some kind originally.PNG" (filename, 12 FEB 2024) 83.P https://www.mediafire.com/file/gj58ckn0t3urhog/Gvh_original_leak_2.0.docx/file (fake leak, english version, 18 SEP 2023) 84.P https://www.mediafire.com/file/vjlp3vv6rg6nb5y/DESAROLLO_Y_GUION_DE_GVH.docx/file (fake leak, spanish version, 18 SEP 2023) 85.P https://warlocs.com/translators/ (Warlocs website, listing Ana as one of their translators) 86.S https://archive.org/details/goodbye-volcano-high-demo-05-may-2023 (Archive of the demo files released on steam, for those who cannot download steam depots directly) 87.S "GVH original story discussion.PNG" (Chel discusses information the developers mentioned in their official discord, 11 FEB 2024) 88.P https://kotaku.com/animated-video-game-porn-could-be-a-lot-sexier-and-less-1838335168 (Kotaku article that Kate Gray was dismissed from KO_OP over, 24 SEP 2019) 89.P https://twitter.com/hownottodraw/status/1271625707332997125 (Kate Gray's personal twitter post on the matter. 12 JUN 2020) 90.T https://goodbye-volcano-high.fandom.com/wiki/Goodbye_Volcano_High/Development_history (Community article written about GVH's development history) 91.T https://goodbye-volcano-high.fandom.com/wiki/Fang (Community article covering fang and their early designs) 92.S https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dino-teen-drama-goodbye-volcano-high-delayed-to-next-year (GVH delayed in 2021) 93.S https://www.gematsu.com/2022/11/goodbye-volcano-high-delayed-to-summer-2023-teaser-trailer (GVH delayed in 2022) 94.S https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dino-rhythm-game-goodbye-volcano-high-has-been-delayed-to-avoid-crunch (GVH delayed in 2023) 95.P https://steamcommunity.com/app/1310330/reviews/?browsefilter=toprated&snr=1_5_100010_ (Steam reviews for GVH sorted most helpful with no time restriction) 96.P https://steamcommunity.com/id/echidnaguardian/recommended/1310330/ (Steam review going over the game's writing. 09 SEP 2023) 97.P https://git.cavemanon.xyz/nutbuster (nutbuster's git profile) 98.P "placeholder snoot assets.png" (filename. Also see "snootgame placeholder assets" folder. 19 OCT 2021) 99.P https://snootgame.xyz/downloads/artbook.zip (Snootgame's most recent artbook, most recent files from 21 OCT 2021) 100.P https://pastebin.com/gHDeQCRE (Original Snootgame greentext, 17 JUN 2020) 101.P "Nerd claims he was contacted by the kotaku writer.PNG" (filename, 24 JAN 2023) 102.P "mono says the nari issue was straight up just him being gay 27 OCT 2023.png" (filename) 103.P "devs talking about reedroute and death of the author 20 SEP 2021.png" (filename) 104.P "anonymous dev discussing payment and royalties.png" (filename, 06 OCT 2023) 105.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 106.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned 2.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 107.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned 3.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 108.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned 4.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 109.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned 5.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 110.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned 6.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 111.P "Nerd getting angry he was banned 7.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 112.P "devs talking about how to reply to rool.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 113.P "further dev discussion.png" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 114.P "Nerd dms with rool about andro's ban.PNG" (filename, 22 SEP 2021) 115.P (REDACTED FOR PRIVACY - SEE [a45]) (filename, 30 SEP 2021) 116.P "individual and caliber initial conversation following Nerd's andro VC meeting.PNG" (30 SEP 2021) 117.P "inkerlink says devs asked for admin privileges.png" (02 DEC 2021) 118.P "reason chrinik left the public server.PNG" (filename, 01 FEB 2024, original date of leaving was 28 DEC 2023) 119.P "13 JAN 2022 Nerd suggests an alternative reedroute story.PNG" (filename) 120.P "splash blue was told to kill himself then left.png" (filename, 17 AUG 2023) 121.P "pshy got ghosted by sli and then sli reported this to Nerd.png" (filename, 23 OCT 2021) 122.P "mono talking about it immediately prior to spidey's ban from cavemanon.png" (Mono noticed one of the devs mention a character with a similar name to a background character they put in Wani. 03 NOV 2023) 123.P "mono talking 2.png" (Mono immediately reported this interaction to Nerd afterwards. 03 NOV 2023) 124.P "mono talking 3.png" (Further comments from mono. He did not, in fact, drop it, which the next citation proves. 03 NOV 2023) 125.P "ultimate reason spidey was banned from the dev server.png" (filename, happened directly after Mono's comments in Hikari's server. 03 NOV 2023) 126.P "8 rool talking about dev poaching.PNG" (recount from rool about the dev communication issue, 28 SEP 2023) 127.P "pshy got ghosted by sli.PNG" (filename, 23 OCT 2021) 128.P "Nerd replies to jj's drama comment 3 days later.PNG" (filename, 08 FEB 2024) 129.P "Nerd implies Nari is a pedo.png" (filename, unknown date) 130.P "the issue between sli and Nari.PNG" (filename, Nari, Nerd and sli discuss the issues between them, 27 JAN 2022) 131.P "Nerd mentions reed was traced based on a photo of himself.PNG" (filename, 27 JAN 2022) 132.P "lunara 2.PNG" (Nerd and various developers and community members discuss the Lunara situation In Wani, 08 FEB 2024) 133.P "lunara 4.PNG" (Nerd continues talking about the Lunara issue, 08 FEB 2024) 134.P "art server epoch.PNG" (filename, 19 JUN 2021) 135.P "public server epoch.PNG" (filename, 29 JUL 2021) 136.P "snoot emporium epoch.PNG" (filename, 07 JUN 2021) 137.P "spanish server epoch.PNG" (filename, 10 NOV 2021) 138.P "ifunny server epoch (snoot club).PNG" (filename, 27 NOV 2022) 139.P "matrix chat epoch.PNG" (filename, 09 DEC 2021) 140.P "matrix mass admining.PNG" (filename, 13 JAN 2022) 141.P "casserolle ifunny server origins.PNG" (Casserolle's description of the origins of the iFunny server, 26 JAN 2024) 142.P "snoot emporium message count after 2021.PNG" (filename, date of recording 14 FEB 2024) 143.P "28 JUL 2021 andro loose NDA.PNG" (filename) 144.P "NDA worker-2.pdf.png" (more "official" NDA that was given to programmers and at least one other member, dated 26 SEP 2023) 145.P "sli DM to rool about the rr drama.jpg" 146.P https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/exit-665-demo (indiegogo page for e665 demo) 147.P https://x.com/Cavemanon/status/1492568785819254802?s=20 (twitter post for e665 development video 1, 12 FEB 2022) 148.P https://x.com/Cavemanon/status/1482372010164506624?s=20 (twitter post for e665 development video 2, 15 JAN 2022) 149.P https://cavemanon.itch.io/a-star-in-her-eyes (itch page for "A Star in Her Eyes," 06 AUG 2022) 150.P https://cavemanon.itch.io/she-likes-you-alotl (itch page for "She Likes You Alotl," 05 MAR 2022) 151.P "it's over.png" (semi-infamous art from cd0m from one of the threads, from a post where he was probably complaining about discord. unknown date.) 152.P "various cd0m mentions.PNG" (Various people mentioning cd0m, 02 OCT 2021) 153.P "cd0m complains in the thread.PNG" (cd0m mentioned in the server for his post on a thread, 01 OCT 2021) 154.P "14 SEP 2022 diz mentions cdom is banned a lot.PNG" (filename, he was banned 19 times) 155.P "19 SEP 2021 cd0m booru post.PNG" (filename) 156.P "gratis.pdf" (revised NDA for free ("gratis") workers, explicitly stating "this document does not imply or expressly state that any financial compensation to either side is necessary for the work done", dated 29 OCT 2023) 157.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xobcF3bDnbU (Culture Night launch trailer, 17 JUN 2023) 158.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfXiK9l8jNo (Moe job trailer, 8 APR 2023) 159.P "Snootmas carol mod announcement.PNG" (filename, 31 DEC 2023) 160.P "snoot fiction announcement.PNG" (filename, 16 SEP 2023) 161.P "2022-MAR-10 naomi mod mentioned by hikari.PNG" (filename) 162.P "Nerd and oj dms.jpg" (filename, 27 MAY 2022) 163.P "Nerd and oj dms 2.jpg" (filename, 28 MAY 2022) 164.P "01 JUL 2021 cavemanon email to cal.PNG" (filename) 165.P "last message from nari in the art server 20 APR 2022.PNG" (filename) 166.P "Nerd AMA on ifunny server 07 FEB 2024.PNG" (filename) 167.P "spanish server banning people for wani piracy.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 168.P "14 FEB 2022 jibbles deleted a torrent in the 4chan server.PNG" 169.P "20 AUG 2021 eztli joins.PNG" (filename) 170.P "17 DEC 2021 eztli in the thread.PNG" (Eztli posts his ban from /snoot/, with a DM confirming it by Chrinik. 17 DEC 2021) 171.P "15 DEC 2021 eztli gone.PNG" (Rool mentioning Eztli was banned from the art server, 15 DEC 2021) 172.P "yakko left 27 DEC 2021.PNG" (filename, he left the art server) 173.P "09 DEC 2022 spidey says yakko cut things with eztli.PNG" (filename) 174.P "proton nerd drawing 1.png" (filename, 24 JAN 2022) 175.P "proton nerd drawing 2.png" (filename, 24 JAN 2022) 176.P "proton nerd drawing 3.png" (filename, 24 JAN 2022) 177.P "proton nerd drawing 4.png" (filename, 24 JAN 2022) 178.P "hikari quote on lunara 2.png" (filename, unknown date - original message deleted) 179.P "lunara 1.PNG" (Discussion in /snoot/ about the issue, 08 FEB 2024) 180.P "joy saying loan has to fill out tax forms for payment 26 SEP 2023.png" (filename) 181.P "lunara 3.PNG" (Discussion in /snoot/ about the issue, 08 FEB 2024) 182.P "bongo is snootanonx.PNG" (filename, 15 SEP 2022) 183.P "hikari says she created lunara.png" (filename, unknown date) 184.P "hikari quote on lunara.png" (filename, unknown date - original message deleted) 185.P "nerd going after spidey for letting wani use the character 08 FEB 2024.PNG" (filename) 186.P "spr_lunara_happy DEMO.png" (Original demo sprite for Lunara, pre-FEB 2024) 187.P "spr_lunara_happy FINAL.png" (Finalized design for Lunara, 14 FEB 2024) 188.P "bathroom3.webp" (Bathroom scene from Snootgame post-MU6) 189.P https://twitter.com/SnootGameEncore (twitter account for the Encore project) 190.P https://twitter.com/SnootGameEncore/status/1744950819282370830 (Post from the Encore project declaring what it is exactly, 10 JAN 2024) 191.S "nerd forced mod authors to remove a character that wasn't his.PNG" (filename, unknown date) 192.S "puppet pals disallowed from using schizo-chan by fiat.PNG" (filename, 30 MAR 2023) 193.P "some proton sketches 22 NOV 2023.PNG" (filename) 194.P "proton doxxed bongo for a meme 27 NOV 2023.PNG" (filename, unknown date of occurrence) 195.P "09 DEC 2022 art server discussion of proton.PNG" (mentions of the general sentiment around him.) 196.P "more art server discussion about proton gaslighting 09 DEC 2022.PNG" (filename) 197.P "09 DEC 2022 bongo recount of proton.PNG" (filename) 198.P "06 JUN 2022 proton's last message.PNG" (filename) 199.P "29 SEP 2021 general proton joins.PNG" (filename) 200.P "proton purged his dms.PNG" (filename, sometime in September, based on a message he sent randomly for no reason, in [201]) 201.P "proton random message after purging DMs.PNG" (filename, 17 SEP 2022) 202.P "mono changed from proton to neutron on 29 OCT 2021.PNG" (filename) 203.P "proton joins back on june 6 2022.PNG" (filename) 204.P "rool banned proton 06 JUN 2022.PNG" (filename) 205.P "phil neutral.png" (filename, 2022 Reedroute asset) 206.P "rool original phil sketch.png" (filename, 22 AUG 2021) 207.P "dev explaining why reed can't be gay 27 OCT 2021.png" 208.P "youtube comment 1.png" (filename, 25 SEP 2023) 209.P "youtube comment 2.png" (filename, 13 SEP 2023) 210.P "2023-09-28_18-15.png" (Nerd explaining the significance of the "snootgame is about lgbt people taking advantage of vulnerable populations" thing, 17 AUG 2023) 211.P "2023-09-30_19-49_1.png" (Nerd's quote about his actual reason for pushing the above thing for the last 3 years, 30 SEP 2023) 212.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLktsDflPWU (Wani release trailer, 7 FEB 2024) 213.P "wani trailer lunara screencap.PNG" (filename, taken 16 FEB 2024) 214.P https://web.archive.org/web/20211202161242/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SnootGame (archived TV tropes article on snoot, 02 DEC 2021) 215.P https://web.archive.org/web/20230316174559/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=VideoGame.SnootGame (archived history page for the original version in the 'video games' category, only showing edits around 16 MAR 2023, since the page was not archived before then.) 216.P https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VisualNovel/IWaniHugThatGator (TV tropes page for Wani, created 28 JUN 2023) 217.P "wani tv tropes article created 28 JUN 2023.PNG" (filename) 218.P "official gvh server bot bloviation.png" (filename, 08 JUL 2021) 219.P "removal from itch.png" (filename, 09 SEP 2021) 220.S "10 SEP 2021 art server talk about gamejolt.PNG" (art server users discussing the game's non-presence on gamejolt) 221.P "loan never received payment (joy_being_a_prick).png" (joybuke says loan cannot bargain about payment because he didn't do enough work on his own project, 26 SEP 2023) 222.P "loan discussing wani being handed to cavemanon 24 MAR 2022.PNG" (filename) 223.P "2023-09-28_05-15.png" (Loan speaking to Nerd and saying he is not fit to lead at the moment, 22 JUL 2022) 224.P "09 FEB 2024 mono shitting on snek for posting leaks.PNG" (filename) 225.P "mono shitting on snek again 09 FEB 2024.PNG" (filename) 226.P "more mono dickriding 09 FEB 2024.PNG" (filename) 227.P "01 oct 2021 nerd talking about a previous expose.PNG" (filename) 228.P "nerd calling someone an attention whore again.PNG"(filename, 03 SEP 2021) 229.P "attention whore quote again.PNG" (filename, 03 SEP 2021) 230.P "nerd quote on community character drama 03 SEP 2021.png" (nerd confirms he was the one in the thread shitting on people for making and writing about background characters / OCs.) 231.P "30 JUN 2023 nerd literal who quote.PNG" (filename) 232.P "10 mono appears.PNG" (mono in the Stella server coming in to do damage control for Wani. He was bullied out of the server for attempting this in there, after doing it in the iFunny server. 14 FEB 2024) 233.P "talking about bongo talking about it.png" (bongo, white name (account left) in the dev server with Joybuke's matrix bridge bot, 14 MAR 2022, unknown capture date) 234.P "workanon leaving wani.png" (filename, 13 NOV 2022) 235.P "loan quits.png" (filename, 17 AUG 2022) 236.P "cavemanon quitters.PNG" (anons claiming to be two ex-devs in the Wani trailer thread on /v/. We have confirmed the people who said these things were actually ex-devs via Discord DMs, but they have requested not to be named, for fear of backlash from Nerd and his team. 07 FEB 2024) 237.P "anon blames workanon for the leaks.PNG" (filename, 07 FEB 2024) 238.P "anon nerd claims OCs should be gatekept.PNG" (filename, 03 SEP 2021) 239.S "public server discussion about it 09 SEP 2023.PNG" (discussion about the official Cavemanon booru issue) 240.P https://booru.cavemanon.xyz/ (Official cavemanon art booru) 241.P https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/666382230/ (Wani trailer thread on /v/, archived. 07 FEB 2022) 242.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/42060715/#42062914 (thread with developer 'leaks', 01 OCT 2021) 243.P "worker.pdf.png" (early version of the document provided to at least one of the developers, 26 SEP 2023) 244.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/41362070/ (thread 1 in the OC vs snootdev issue, 03 SEP 2021) 245.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/41370727/ (thread 2 in the OC vs snootdev issue, 03 SEP 2021 246.P "wani olivia sprite edit dates.png" (filename, unknown date of capture) 247.P "wani 50 dollar payment issue 2.png" (nerd dismissing accusations of paying devs poorly from an agitated user in the public server. 09 FEB 2024) 248.P "samantha mentions mistreatment 2.png" (extended conversation from the above. 09 FEB 2024) 249.P "anonymous dev opted out of payment.PNG" (filename, 06 NOV 2023) 250.P "rangto paid spidey - REDACTED.png" (filename, 09 NOV 2023) 251.P https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf (IRS form W-9) 252.P "workanon talking about getting shot down by nerd on wani (only one to have been married ever).png" (filename, 08 NOV 2022) 253.P "joy discussing payment with loan 2.png" (Joybuke used the NDAs as an excuse to not discuss payment with other members of the team, which is not how the contract was written. 26 SEP 2023) 254.P "nerd wiped workanon and loans shit.png" (filename, unknown date, post-Wani launch 2024) 255.P "payment info about rangto.png" (filename, unknown date) 256.P "nerd says he doesn't credit workanon.png" (filename, 10 OCT 2023) 257.P "loan mentions mistreatment 1.png" (loanshark was originally going to be paid via paypal but that was adjusted for some reason. Unknown date) 258.P "project gets subsumed by cavemanon.png" (dms from Nerd on his alternate account concerning Wani being handed to Cavemanon, 22 SEP 2021) 259.P "joy discussing payment with loan.png" (joybuke discusses payment with loan, says 50% of wani funds will go to exit. not where other 50% will go. 26 SEP 2023) 260.S https://www.lawinsider.com/clause/with-respect-to-confidential-information (Example of quotations from the 2023 (2nd) iteration of the NDA being stolen, technically 3rd if you count them just asking people not to leak anything around 2021-2022) 261.P "nerd tried to sue someone already, 30 SEP 2021.PNG" (filename) 262.P "others dont care about payment.png" (filename, unknown date) 263.P https://mycpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/search.do (texas taxable entity (business searching tool). No results for anything related to cavemanon / cavemanon games / cavemanon.xyz, etc.) 264.T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_1099 (wikipedia article summarizing IRS form 1099 265.T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_W-9 (wikipedia article summarizing IRS form W-9 266.P https://cavemanon.itch.io/i-wani-hug-that-gator (Wani itch page) 267.P https://store.steampowered.com/app/1895350/I_Wani_Hug_that_Gator/ (Wani Steam page) 268.P https://web.archive.org/web/20240216073729/https://exit665.xyz/ (archive.org version of e665 from 16 FEB 2024, showing the copyright date has not changed since 2022.) 269.P "mono damage control in the art server 3.png" (filename, 28 SEP 2023) 270.P "mono damage control in the art server 1.png" (filename, 28 SEP 2023) 271.P "mono damage control in the art server 2.png" (filename, 28 SEP 2023) 272.S https://steamcharts.com/app/1895350 (steamcharts page for Wani) 273.P "loan discussing how they stole wani.png" (filename, unknown date - FEB 2024) 274.P "who got paid what.png" (discussion with ex-developer about Wani's payment, unknown date) 275.P "original olivia post on 4chan 04 JUL 2021.PNG" (filename) 276.P "rool olivia rat.png" (filename, 03 SEP 2021) 277.P "rool says he did not make olivia 24 SEP 2021.PNG" (filename) 278.P "rool olivia nsfw.png" (filename, 13 AUG 2021) 279.P "rool olivia 1.png" (filename, unknown date. There are a lot more than the two we have included here.) 280.P "user named deer admits they created Olivia 01 NOV 2023.PNG" (filename) 281.P "original olivia sprite.png" (filename) 282.P "olivia sprite before final release.png" (filename) 283.P "olivia final sprite by mono.png" (filename) 284.P "12 AUG 2022 mono says he doesn't like olivia being fat.PNG" (filename) 285.P https://cavemanon.itch.io/shes-a-bit-sluggish (itch page for "She's a bit sluggish," 02 MAR 2021) 286.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kOei9JbI-0 ("4Chan VS. At Least 20 Canadians" by Ducksen, 30 SEP 2023) 287.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEwzs_4oGEU&list=PL3FLe35dimGTcrqm1C0m-uTBFjygOS8gm (YMS playlist, 8 SEP 2023) 288.P https://desuarchive.org/trash/thread/63294079/ (wani's release thread on /trash/, 14 FEB 2024) 289.P https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf (IRS form W-8BEN) 290.P https://www.irs.gov/instructions/iw8ben (IRS instructions for W-8BEN) 291.P https://archiveofourown.org/works/32478673?view_full_work=true (Bad Bitch Stella remake by Rangto, originally posted 10 JUL 2021) 292.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oo1i1PIEoM ("Goodbye /trash/ sticky - Snootgame" by Ec8r. 30 JUL 2021) 293.P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjcsqq2P5-M ("Goodbye Fang-board (Snoot game) by SnootAnonX. 01 AUG 2021) 294.P "joy saying loan has to fill out tax forms for payment 2 26 SEP 2023.png" (filename) 295.P "redacted contract.jpg" (filename, discussed some time in July, exact date not provided) 296.P "nerd encouraged loan when he was down.PNG" (filename, multiple dates JUL-AUG 2022) 297.P "cavemanon union busting 17 FEB 2024.png" (filename) 298.P "cavemanon members organize because of mistreatment and no payment.png" (filename, 21 OCT 2023) 299.P "2023-09-28_04-29.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 1, 09 SEP 2023) 300.P "2023-09-28_04-29_1.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 2, 09 SEP 2023) 301.P "2023-09-28_04-34.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 3, 09 SEP 2023) 302.P "2023-09-28_04-34_1.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 4, 09 SEP 2023) 303.P "2023-09-28_04-34_2.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 5. Joy posts a video with a sentence-mixed guy saying "I'm Cavemanon, I wanna throw up in my mouth whenever I hear the term 'snoot community.'" See also [328] 09 SEP 2023) 304.P "2023-09-28_04-40.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 6, 09 SEP 2023) 305.P "2023-09-28_04-51_1.png" (devs talking about the booru issues 7, 09 SEP 2023) 306.P "public server discussion about the rule itself.PNG" (nerd explains why the rule was implemented, 09 SEP 2023) 307.P "the exact rule's wording.PNG" (filename, 09 SEP 2023) 308.P "nerd explains why this is stupid.PNG" (filename, 09 SEP 2023) 309.P "nerd immediately contradicts himself.PNG" (filename, 09 SEP 2023) 310.P "nerd says ocs won't be deleted.PNG" (filename, 09 SEP 2023) 311.P "nerd says anything just gvh is banned.PNG" (filename, 09 SEP 2023) 312.P "community member says why this was dumb.PNG" (filename, 09 SEP 2023) 313.P https://snootbooru.com/ (the new booru) 314.P "new booru announcement 28 NOV 2023.PNG" (filename) 315.S https://youtu.be/D8LFkAkDLyQ ("Why The Culling Failed", by RoboKast. see timestamp ~4:58. 02 MAY 2018) 316.P "cavemanon booru rules as of september 2023.PNG" (filename, 10 SEP 2023) 317.P "discussion after further clarification 14 OCT 2023.PNG" (filename) 318.P "nerd's quote about the rule.png" (filename, part of the booru issues discussion between 2 and 3. 09 SEP 2023) 319.P "snootbooru 02-20-24.PNG" (filename) 320.P "cavemanon booru 02-20-24.PNG" (filename) 321.P https://booru.cavemanon.xyz/index.php?q=post/list/goodbye_volcano_high/1 (search page for GVH content on the cavemanon booru. Many images containing only GVH characters or characters which do not appear in snoot. Captured 20 FEB 2024) 322.P "nerd did apologize to rool.png" (filename, unknown date, 2021) 323.P https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2021/2021_08211.htm (Sutton v. Houllou 2021) 324.P https://static.schlamstone.com/docs/2018_32874.pdf (Olympus Am. Inc. v Greene House Surgicare 2018) 325.S https://youtu.be/Uq59qGkwXlE ("I Tracked Down My Anonymous Landlord... Here's What Happened." by More Perfect Union, 01 JUN 2023) 326.P https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/full-index/ (United States SEC EDGAR archive) 327.P https://tmsearch.uspto.gov (USPTO trademark search) 328.P "sentance_shifting_cavemanon_snoot_community.mp4" (video Joy likes to post when the community does something stupid, unknown date of creation, some time prior to 2023) 329.P "community knew about wani steam page since 2022 09 DEC 2022.PNG" (filename) 330.P "joy asks loan to complete paperwork 18 OCT 2023.png" (filename) 331.P "29 DEC 2023 loan dm with nerd.png" (Nerd notices 2 days later (he left on the 27th) that loan left the server and asks why. Loan explains. Nerd did not reply to this DM. 29 DEC 2023) 332.P "joy gets loan to sign the non payment nda 29 oct 2023.png" (loan foregoes payment because of all the paperwork, 29 OCT 2023) 333.P "cavemanon got extra donations 24 JAN 2022.PNG" (filename) 334.P "loan was going to be paid via paypal.png" (filename. Note Joy saying he "legally registered" his pen name. We could not find this or any permutation of this in his home state's registry, or in Texas where the main LLC was supposedly registered, nor on any federal registry, or on any filings published by the SEC via EDGAR In the last 4 years, or via any records our law friend was able to get a hold of. There are also no registered trademarks or intellectual properties related to this name as of writing (25 FEB 2024). If his pen name is "registered," it is not registered properly. date of screenshot 26 SEP 2023) 335.P "11 mono gets dogpiled 1.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 336.P "12 mono gets dogpiled 2.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 337.P "13 mono gets dogpiled 3.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 338.P "14 mono gets dogpiled 4.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 339.P "15 mono gets dogpiled 5.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 340.P "17 mono gets dogpiled 6.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 341.P "18 mono gets dogpiled 7.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 342.P "21 mono gets dogpiled 8.PNG" (filename, 14 FEB 2024) 343.P "28 another meme.PNG" (from mono getting dogpiled above, 14 FEB 2024) 344.P "mono leaves the art server 14 FEB 2024.PNG" (filename) 345.P "mono leaves the public server 14 FEB 2024.PNG" (filename) 346.P "proton called bongo.jpg" (filename, 08 APR 2022) 347.P "31 aug 2021 nerd discussing e665 budget.PNG" (filename) 348.P "nerd admonishing cal for talking about diz.PNG" (Cal mentioned Diz, the admin of /snoot/ at the time, and also his boyfriend. unknown date) 349.P "loan discusses organizing for better pay 29 OCT 2023.png" (filename) 350.P "joy discussing payment with loan 3.png" (filename, 26 SEP 2023) 351.S https://youtu.be/G6iifr7nzRg ("Fairness Experiment with Capuchin Monkeys" reuploaded by "Taufique Joarder", 07 APR 2018) 352.P "snoot veteran review of Wani.png" (filename, 20 FEB 2024) 353.P "raptorjesus3.png" (final page of Rool's joke comic the devs called "raptor jesus molestation" in [66]. Unedited. unknown date of creation, sometime in 2021.) 354.P "nerd quotes on sage.png" (filename, various dates 2021-2022) 355.P "nerd says sage is for pedos.PNG" (filename, 31 AUG 2023) 356.P "2023-09-30_19-49.png" (nerd discussing the intent of Snoot's story with another dev, 30 SEP 2023) 357.P "dev told to buy clip studio or their animation would be cut entirely.jpg" (filename, 11 AUG 2023) 358.P "dev told to buy clip context 1.jpg" (filename, 17 MAY 2023) 359.P "dev told to buy clip context 2.jpg" (filename, 22 MAY 2023) 360.P https://web.archive.org/web/20230513212808/https://www.clipstudio.net/en/purchase/ (archived version of the Clip Studio page, showing prices at the time. They have since moved to a different pricing model. Archived 13 MAY 2023) 361.P "02.07.22 Discussion Notes.docx" (Wani meeting notes from the cavemanon server on the given date.) # NOTES, ORIGINAL RESEARCH, CLARIFICAITON, AND STATEMENTS ("a" prefix) a01. This can be confirmed by going through various threads from the time, but I really, really do not fucking want to, so I will leave this unsubstantiated. Nobody else wanted to either, but there are plenty of memes from the era still floating around on Facebook groups. a02. We reached out to the devs to confirm this. We have not heard back as of 25 FEB 2024. a03. Conjecture based on people we spoke to. a04. Entirely based on how many weeks have passed since the sticky was closed. Nobody wanted to count them. There are likely many more because threads sometimes happen multiple times in one day, or multiple days in one week, and nobody was keeping track like Katawa Shoujo's thread makers. a05. We asked people there that have spoken to the server's moderators. a06. Several of the individuals responsible for this document are originally from this server. It was definitely fun. a07. Caliber, nRool, Yakko, and many others who posted snoot content publicly, or mentioned the link to the game, during the early days of the game's release (pre-September 2021). a08. Many different developers, ex-developers, and regular community members were involved. To prevent harassment of private individuals, they will not be named here. a09. At least one of our team members previously worked on the Reed mod (Caliber). a10. Whole paragraph is made of observations based on the totality of the circumstances. Ideas based on conjecture from at least two people. a11. "Undesirables" quote taken from memory, we could not locate the screenshots in which Narija was described this way. It is possible this is an instance of the Mandela effect within members of the group, or is misattributed to Nerd, and was actually an exaggeration of the request mentioned by nRool. a12. Multiple members of the community, mostly artists, and those creating this document, have reported finding Snootgame and GVH through recommendations their friends, and posts from people they follow on Twitter. a13. By various community members during discussions in public servers and private chats. a14. From one of the devs working on Snoot prior to 2022 a15. Multiple developers were spoken to privately about this, and it was mentioned in their more 'open' discord channels within the main development server. Screenshots not provided to protect people it was discussed with. a16. Again, possible Mandela effect, due to similar words being mentioned by similar people. Caliber also had an OC named "Amber," sharing a name with Anon and Fang's daughter in Snootgame, and Nari often made sexual comments about people's OCS, which made people who were not aware of this particular OC uncomfortable around Nari. a17. Mentioned in a voice chat, unrecorded. a18. Quote cannot be sourced for obvious reasons. Caliber will vouch for this in lieu of naming names. a19. Yakko was liked well for making various pieces of art and being a generally nice person, as far as any of us remember. a20. As with most anonymous people complaining about oddly specific things on the threads, it is both very likely but impossible to prove it was actually just one person astroturfing and manufacturing outrage. a21. Known to us, but their names will not be released. Nobody would want to bring this up again, and it's not relevant to the larger. community. a22. A user named "Dane," specifically, was involved, who was also a component in the investigation that led to people discovering this was apparently just Eztli's past time. A youtube video was also circulated containing Eztli's true voice, which was notable only because he refused to speak in VC, during the time he was catfishing. a23. First-hand recount from Caliber. Sources are no longer available as Proton wiped his DMs with everyone in Snoot, and the group chats where these issues were originally discussed were deleted. a24. Likely Nerd, based on the art style and circumstances a25. Yakko previously worked at a hotel, and was known for posting hand-drawn artwork on the sticky while he was working the front desk. There was also a very funny video he recorded as a joke referencing Snootgame around this time, that he has unfortunately requested we do not share. a26. Educated guess based on what is available related to the RR drama, since there is no officially given reason for this, and Nerd was the only one angry about the Judee thing. The character's artist himself appreciated Faust using them, and at one point complimented his style. other examples, see: Narija, Pshy, desire from other Reedroute mods to remain anonymous to prevent being targeted, etc. a27. Caliber can attest that this was a thing which happened. Members of cavemanon likely also remember this or may have remaining logs in the development server, since he did not appear to purge logs from any of the servers he was in. a28. Firsthand recount by Caliber. Logs discussing this were reportedly lost with the Reedroute server. a29. Examination and conjecture based on reasoning and available evidence. a30. Caliber also left of his own accord, for perceived harassment / unequal treatment[348] and associated drama. Bongo left after no longer being required for the project. a31. Subjective perception from multiple people asked, not talked about publicly as it would cause a stink betweeen those involved. a32. Likely a dev, though not definitively provable. Very few others were aware of the level of Workanon's involvement, or his leaving from the team, outside of the development server. At least one anon claimed they didn't know who workanon was. a33. Firsthand recount by Caliber. Joy had at least one disagreement with nerd in a VC prior to 2022, where he and Caliber were discussing some programming concept that Nerd didn't understand, and took it to be arguing, and attempted to shut the conversation down, to which both people said they are not arguing, and kept talking anyway. Joy later refused to answer even simple questions via DM and directed Caliber to his email for further questions, in addition to being a 'Just Business' wall to even current developers, such as loan[221]. a34. Subjective observation from multiple people around Mono from 2021-2024. a35. Discussion took place in a voice chat, which was not recorded, and only briefly in text chat for certain portions of the issue, which were largely unrecorded. Majority of the paragraph is a recount from multiple ex-developers, and two others which have requested they not be named. a36. Reported by a current developer who wishes to remain anonymous. a37. Developers were required to provide tax information and dox themselves in order to be paid, but this was only mentioned to them after work was already done - stated by multiple US-based developers contacted in addition to Loanshark, which have otherwise requested not to be named. a38. They have asked to remain anonymous. a39. Best estimates for this timeframe are all mid-2022, when he started picking up the slack for Wani. a40. He told us directly why he took the contract, though this was not explained to Joybuke. a41. Originally discussed in the same voice chat meeting the payment issues were discussed in. Issue was scarcely brought up again, and ultimately didn't happen, since Nerd is the one who gets to make that call. a42. User requested to remain anonymous. a43. Date written down in incomplete meeting overview when Workanon was still on the team a44. Various individuals received DMs about this but have asked not to be implicated. a45. Caliber can vouch for this event happening. Source was originally DMs between two users talking about it, who have requested we redact them entirely. a46. Confirmed by Loanshark, who claims it was one of the original pre-cavemanon Wani contributors, to whom he asked not to share info like this again. a47. Multiple users who were going to be paid have confirmed this. They requested not to be named. a48. For citation 233, Bongo was only present briefly in the Cavemanon server at the request of Loanshark, for code help to get the mod done. He was not part of Cavemanon or officially part of any team, and he ultimately left before completing any work due to the drama. a49. Reported by an anonymous developer, though not verifiable, as we were not able to get a copy of this contributor's contract. a50. Entirely subjective, based on what various people we asked told us about the situation. a51. Joy and nerd like very particular genres of artwork and media that we will not discuss here. The point of inclusion is to show they have something to bond over, but if we revealed what it was, it would just seem like mudslinging.