More Indie Nepotism in Games Journalism

/r/KotakuInAction poster AN4RCHID posted this thread updating a very under-the-radar story about nepotism in games journalism.

tl;dr: Indie devs Mitu Khandaker and Christine Love donate to Cara Ellison’s Patreon. Ellison writes about their games. More digging shows Khandaker is friends with a bunch of familiar names (including GameJournoPros darling Leigh “I am a megaphone” Alexander and Patricia Hernandez) who wrote positively about her game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2nsmve/didnt_see_this_posted_here_yet_some_good_old/

Longer story:

http://archive.today/8F6Bm
Indie clique game dev Mitu Khandaker gives money to reporter Cara Ellison through Patreon.
http://archive.today/QWb3G
http://archive.today/Q1UrD
Ellison promotes her game Redshirt, a game about being a generic redshirt from a sci-fi show networking on space-Facebook, on Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer. Clear conflict of interest here.
https://archive.today/IvzO1
Ellison and Khandaker are also good friends who meet for karaoke, apparently.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/247870/
https://archive.today/2ICek
https://archive.today/rjhCZ
The game has a mostly negative reception according to Steam. It was also met with poor critical reception from Gamespot and Eurogamer.
https://archive.today/l9vvI
Despite being a poorly received game, Redshirt is a finalist at Indiecade 2014. Indiecade has been exposed as potentially fraudulent, allegedly awarding Fez a cash prize despite conflicts of interest that would result in direct payouts for the staff.
Indie-fensible! Bigger Fish to Fry! (Mirror)

http://archive.today/Qtzgs
Christine Love also gives money to Ellison, who promotes her game in the article listed above.
http://tweetsave.com/mituk/status/400268110831165440
They, naturally, are friends.

A whole slew of familiar faces lavished the game with praise and some even reviewed it, including…

Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra (GameJournoPros member)
https://archive.today/fAOnc
Mitu includes her Twitter in her Follow Friday post
https://archive.today/a18QM


Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku
https://archive.today/12deb
Some friendly tweets
https://archive.today/tvjYU
https://archive.today/OX0lu

Danielle Riendeau, Polygon (GameJournoPros member)
https://archive.today/u7FFd
(Danielle Riendeau) [GJP]
Friendly tweet
https://archive.today/u9q8j (Rindeau and Mitu)

Other reviewers under the watchful eye of GamerGate who wrote about Redshirt (keep digging!)
https://archive.today/a7rf4 (Mike Rose, Gamasutra)
https://archive.today/ZWTcN (Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku [already implicated in nepotism with Christine Love and Anna Anthropy])