itch.io

They index literal scam and malware, for that matter. But the criminals try very hard and more importantly, very often and we only see the successful ones.

That you took "many hours" over "days" says it all. A digitial artist would take how long to create such pictures? 30 x the time you needed? 

As for the guidelines, there is something about ai in there  https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines#avoid-uploading-excessive-amoun... 

There are obviously ai made assets on itch, my opinion is only that ai assets have a higher probability to not get indexed. You did not even change the default resolution of stable diffusion, not even for the "concept art".

Oh, and you currently can not share your free art on opengameart. They will freeze it for unclear legal status.

And not wanting to open a can of worms and yet another ai discussion, but there are people that will debate your claim about "genuine creations". It is like a photographer taking pictures, and printing them on a canvas and then submitting the printed canvas to a gallery of painted canvas. It is a picture, all right. But it is not a painting.

I wonder if your reply is actually AI

That is what an AI would say to avoid suspicion.

But as I said, waiting time is just very long these days. So if your projects will get indexed, it might just take longer.

Your project is not indexed. That is all there is to it.

From what I understand about the process, new published and some updated projects go through an automated black box that says one of three things.

1. index

2. no index and manual review needed

3. no index

If you land in 2, either by random or things like payment issues or certain activities that might trigger manual review, there is a waiting time, that can be anything between hours and several weeks. And after manual review you could also have been sorted into 3 intentional, as is described here. I do not know if projects can land in 3 automatically, but I suspect it could happen, or at least, staff can "overlook" your project. Whatever that means. At least that is what the nice mod always says. If that were the real thing that happened, that would mean, that their internal task system is unreliable. But the mod is not staff, and it probably is just a phrase.

Haaha. Not that your reply is wrong in any way, but I happen to have looked at that particular comment section a while ago ;-)

You can hit load next several times and still be only three days deep... someone might have posted the same problem though. But most likely op will be directed to:

https://nachogames.itch.io/thats-not-my-neighbor/devlog/708650/read-if-you-have-...

Your titles are made up of too common words. This is so. But it has no bearing on the issue of the searchability of your items. Your items are not indexed. If you really mass dump AI made stuff, it might be, that those projects will never get indexed. Check the quality guidelines to guess, if your projects would hold up to a manual scrutinization. Games made with AI are not forbidden, but it could be that assets made with AI are more likely to not get indexed.

But from the age of the projects, the waiting time is just long currently. Maybe you have noticed the recent outage when the site was down. Itch staff has other things to do first. This is not the first time, that waiting time to get indexed would be several weeks. 

This sounds like something that is not usually done in the indie sector. It is common in the "non-indie" sector. But usually it is the whole game studio that gets bought and sold.

Buying a single game from a still existing studio? Are there examples? Professional ones. I have seen hobbyists to try sell their source code for a couple bucks. And I would guess there are unfinished games that changed studios. Or more often, as was said, publishers.

There is nothing inherently ethical or unethical about all this. But in the low budget indie sector, there is the issue of trust and the problem of marketing. If you are a successful indie developer, selling out can cost you or the project fans. If you are an unsuccessful indie developer, why would anyone buy your unsuccessful project? The buyer would have to market it and maybe finish it. And here might be the point where you want to establish yourself, if I read your intentions correctly. Buying such unfinished gems, polishing them and marketing them. Which sounds like a hard thing to do, and offering "only" publishing services sounds a lot easier in comparison.

Also, in the indie sector you have to be especially careful about the legal baggage of things you aquire. Amateur single developers might not have been overly knowledgeable in the legality of the assets licenses they use. Stuff like using non-commerical items and such, for example.

It is the locale code for languages as used by internet browsers. United Kingdom is en-GB, if you want to distinguish from en-US.

My opinion on the matter.

1. What would you imagine they could do? Beyond calling tech support.

2. They do host their own website. But if you have more traffic than a very small company, "hosting" yourself would equate to having a cloud service. Next you ask, if they can't have their own power plants, instead of dealing with the power companies.

And yes, bigger companies actually do just create their own cloud - and promptly rent it out to others. Find out, what aws stands for. And with solar roofing and such, many companies do create partially their own power, but I am not aware, if a company created their own power company.

3. Steam and Google have a lot more redundancy and backup systems. 

https://itch.io/games/lang-en

https://itch.io/games/lang-es-419

There is. But I do not know, if there is a button for it. Anything in the more information box that links to url beginning with itch.io/games is a search filter for browse.

You can use "site:itch.io keyword" on most search engines ;-)

The search box is just not a keyword search box and it seems that many people do not understand this at first. Also, it is not clear at first sight, that you can write in the tag box and are not limited to the suggested tags there.

For those suggested tags, the search box does give those tags as results, just not the titles that have those tags directly. You have to click the "strategy" tag shown to you, after searching for strategy.

The title of that project has 8 search term tokens. Yes, even the "-" is a search token. Typing the "name" of your game is not enough. You need to use all of the title.

(Your game could still have been deindexed for a while though.)

I literally wrote  "search results will typically have all of the full title matches and fill up with about 60 partial matches"

I might have used other wording for the fill up, it is just an observation that you will often have around 60 matches.  I guess those are the searches where there are few exact title matches and many partial ones. Try searching for tetris. Or try searching for something unpopular like chronometer and count the results.

But search is being overhauled right now. But if you really do search strategy, it will show you the tag strategy, where all games are to be found that have tagged strategy and are indexed.

There is css issues when zoomed or when the browser windows is slightly less wide. . Similar css issues, as when you have a sale, that moves the feed button under the search box. Or when on your own profile, the feedback button is not visible.

I do not see where you can search or find creators. On the plus side, it does seem to search the display name, or rather games from accounts that match the search query by display name, where you previously had to use the exact profile name. On the downside, this will make impersonation and search engine optimisation by name change to something famous more effective.

I do not know if that is related to the itch app search, and I do not really use the app, so I am not sure how much of this is new or always was so, but when I tried to used it now to see if the css issue is there too, since the display area there is less wide, search there seems broken to me and it shows me a login button, even though I am logged in by app.

To rephrase: I log in with the app, I click explore, it shows me the url itch.io with popular tags on right side, instead of left side. And there is a log-in and register button. The footer is cut off by css with the popular tag section that is on the right side. I do not find the feed button. 

There is a search button on the left side, but it does not search. It only suggests and when I write the suggestion, like "poem" just now, and press enter, it does not show search results for "poem" it just opens the first game in that suggestion box.

--

Oh, the separation by assets and games and such works. Maybe consider using the same drop down box design as seen on https://itch.io/games to select those subcategories to save on horizontal space.

What makes you think your project is unlisted?

Search does show you tags. But not all tags, only the ones that are in the suggestion box. Try searching for fps.

Bottom line is, why should people search for your game's name. Also that name is not a name, but a generic description like those:

d&d rpg

mushroom platformer

See?

And both of the words in your game's title are also used as tags. And tag search is not cut off. It will show you all 10000 games that have fps as a tag.

Well said.

I would not exactly call it a developer's site, but the ones that do post in community are more often than not. The ones posting on games, it is the other way round. The vast majority does not post comments anywhere.

But not many people read community, at all. It is a tiny fraction of the users. Just look at the view numbers of threads. And those seem not unique views. It seldeom reaches 3 or 4 digits. There are accounts that have 20k followers and more.

Gaining viewers and followers is extra hard, if you try to do that by existing on itch. It is a trickle. Have a game people would want to play, and chances are, the traffic from google will be higher than from internal links of browse pages. And of course, from all those streamers and youtubers that might play your game and send traffic over.

The recommendation feature on itch is quite underdeveloped. Like, really. Let me phrase it like this: Some people are not even aware of that feature, just as some people are not aware that you can search for tags on Steam. There, the situation is the opposite. The recommendation features are overwhelming. You do not even feel the need to tag search for new stuff.

The consequence, as I see it, is this general lack of internal promotion. Oh, there is a little bit, some boost here and there, but I see people here complain in comments about missing features in tag search all the time, and not about missing features in game recommendations. This tells me, that people use itch fundamentally different than steam. And there might be a feedback loop on both sites for this behaviour. The algorithm on steam rewards itself for recommending games that the player does play. The algorithm on itch is so hidden that people use the browse features by tags.

Are you referring to this?

https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines#avoid-obtrusive-advertisements-...

That is quality guidelines. Not tos. If people complain about your game, it might get removed from index, if staff agrees.

In other words, obtrusive ads are not forbidden. What is forbidden, is "adware".  And from context it can be assumed that they talk about the malicious kind of adware and not the technical definition of games that get revenue by showing ads, like so many mobile apps do.

The search results will typically have all of the full title matches and fill up with about 60 partial matches that are selected by dark magic.

Search for "fps" to see what I mean.

Is that what they have verbatim in their rules? Contains sexually explicit or graphically violent material

Because, well, that would allow sexually non-explicit and non-graphically violent material.

I assume this was about lgbt stuff, that op did not approve of and started a flame war over it. So let's not continue any flame wars here.

The way I heard that term first time, long, long time ago, it was player versus player and player versus environment. But the context was multiplayer, massive multiplayer online role play game, to be precise. 

mmorpg servers could be split into pvp and pve, where you can attack other players without their consent on pvp, and only with consent on pve servers.

The way I perceive the terms nowadays, pvp is used to indicate competitive multiplayer. For "pve", the more popular term used is coop/co-op.

The term(s) probably evolved. Maybe not as bad as rogue-like. But I never heard pve used as a synonym for single player. 

Which is better, chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream?

Pistachio Ice Cream

Chocolate is for brownies and vanilla for cream pudding.

You are not comparing pvp and pve. You compare multiplayer vs singleplayer. Both pvp and pve are multiplayer.

All three have their audience. If you are single developer, multiplayer is hard. Especially real time multiplayer. And there is the question, if it is mandatory multiplayer or optional. Is the core game a multiplayer experience, or is it just something that could be shared by several people playing together. Or is the game fun only there, because you can play against other players.

In games, pvp is very popular. It's just, that pvp is so often seen in real world. Be it chess or any sports.

I am hard pressed to find real world examples of pve. I believe those evolved from the fact that in computers and board games, you have to face the problem of a sore loser - and of grievous play. And pve is somewhat easier to implement in a computer game, than in a sports event. So they are there, because it is possible. You now only face the problem, if the pve game should be playable by one person or if multiple persons are mandatory.

It is a complex question and there is no straight answer. I depends too much on the type of game. And of your capabilities to actually implement any such game.

See also https://itch.io/t/3744851/help-me-get-this-virus-page-removed-from-itchio-blogs#...

There are many such accounts. People here are notoriously lazy to report things. And blog posts do not even have a report button, so even less people will mail a report to support. The interesting part is, how many followers some of those fake accounts have. The other one had over 50. Were all those people not recognising the scam for what it is? I certainly did not, but when I saw those, there were no links on the pages.

They should close this and other exploits the scammers are using. The more popular itch becomes, the more attractive it is for scammers, so attempts will increase. I see too many hacked accounts already.

Abandonware can a game get removed cause of it?

Of course. To whom would the store front pay the revenue?

doesn't the payment stuff apply to both platforms?

No. Steam is multinational. They could just transfer money internally and pay money to your bank account. I do not know what they actually offer, but they accept a lot of payment methods. It stands to reason they they also offer more than a few methods of getting payout. Itch on the other hand does not want to act as merchant in some situations or the developer configures it such. This is called direct payment. Ever saw projects where you can pay in Yen or Australian Dollar or Euro? Those are direct payments.

Also, if you pay a game on itch, taxed are handled ... not very well. Prices on itch are vat exclusive. Prices on steam are vat inclusive where it is local law, because they are multinational and actually do offer the items in the local markets. And they are converted to local currency in the shop, by the shop.

But in the end, each removed game has its own story, why it was removed. Some stories might of course be similar.

There are lots of possible reasons why a game gets removed.

Abandonware and no clear legal situation about the owner. No One Lives Forever for example. You cannot buy this game new for that reason.

Legal issues about used assets, licences, other things and legal disputes. Even though some issues could be solved, it leads to the next reason. Only Up has some of these problems.

Stress. Some people do not want to be public and famous. Some viral apps went that way.

The developer has regrets about publishing the game. For various reasons. Flappy Bird was removed for such a reason.

Fake games and impostors. Less likely to happen on Steam, but depending where you find a game, it might not be the real one, and got removed. Some "demo" versions on a free platorm might actually be malware scams.

Lack of time and commitment. If you release a game, you are somewhat responsible for it. Some games here have disabled comment sections because of that. (And others have it disabled, because they are scams). Indie developers are usually more to the ground and approachable, so they might feel uncomfortable to give support for a years old game they maybe not even have source code anymore.

Embarassement or other reasons for not wanting the game to be known. There is this thing with the director's cut in movies. If a creator of a work is unsatisfied, they sometimes try to fix it and sometimes just move on. It is artists and there is this trope of a painter destroying his own paintings.

For releasing on Steam as paid and not on Itch, specifically, there are idiosyncratic reasons. Payments are handled not in a way on itch the same way as on Steam. It is sometimes not possible to sell on itch for a developer, for some reason or another. Remember, that while itch is US based, the developers and users are all around the globe. There are projects here, where you can even get a steam key with your purchase. Of course not releasing on both platforms can have all sorts of reasons. The most trivial can be, that it takes effort to manage several distribution places. And let's be honest, itch is a puddle compared to the steam ocean. A game can have thousands of reviews on steam and have single digit ratings on itch. I kid you not. This game here has 2.8k reviews on steam and 4 ratings on itch.

Of course there are counter exampels. This one has 2k ratings on itch and 5k reviews on steam.

I have mixed feelings about this.

There are times where it would be nice to contact someone in private. But then I imagine what this feature would be used for. And I have seen many scams in open message system. Especially developers get scam offers often, that are tailored for small business. This one here should be a warning for all small content creators, not only games: https://pbfcomics.com/comics/hacked/

If the developer has no contact info, no socials on profile and project, maybe that developer does not want to be contacted.

That being said, if there is a project and that project has ratings enabled, you can write a review that is only shared with the developer, if your reviews are private.

For general collabs there is a message board here.

And if I remember correctly, some sort of profile message board might be considered for the future.

(oh, and if that project is licensable, there might be contact info in the downloaded project in a readme or some such)

What if the game you search was released in winter, but you only found it in summer.

I am not implying anything. But try to download an older version in a store like steam or gog, or other places. It is not a common feature. If you want upload and offer older versions you can do that on your project page, just use different file names. You can even have links to external file hosting.

I doubt they will tell you why your game is quarantined. It is speculation, that this has to do with the positive results of virusscanners. Could be any reason. There are many godot games on itch...

I also was surprised when I first read about that. One would assume that the game engine makers would be aware of such things and tried to avoid it.

Why would you preserve previous builds on the game page? Itch is a store front and not a code repository. If you want to do this, why not simply use a version number in the file name.

No, your newest exe flags as malware when scanned. No auto flagging it because it is unknown, it is heuristic positve. Many godot games have this problem, you can google it, and maybe ways of distribution to avoid that. Like a portable version inside a zip, instead of runtime package or whatever this is. It is very bad, because, how are we supposed to distinguish godot games from real malware inside a godot game? 

When you send an email to support you get an automated response with a request id. Did you sent those mails with your mail client or with the feedback button?

Your mail provider should have given you a response within 7 days, if the mail is undeliverable. You did check the spam filter of your mail provider / client, did you?

Also, please reconsider uploading different versions as different projects. It makes you look like a spammer and, well, you quoted the faq: "Avoid uploading ‘reskins’, or many project pages for minor changes"

Another thought, maybe your mail provider is on a blackhole list.

Oh, and it does not help, that your game flags as malware. You might have been reported for that, and it might take some time for itch staff to investigate if it is a false positive. Godot exe packing should not be used in my opinion. It only creates strife and makes people ignore positive scanner results.

It is similar to how people watch youtube videos of amateurs, instead of pay-tv/streaming high budget series and movies.

Or rather, they also watch it. It is just different.

It gets kinda tricky, if you do try to compete with big budget games toe to toe. I guess this is one of the reasons, why there are not so many 3d indie games. And not so many big budget "rpg maker" games.

Of course this is a way of thinking about pitching the game to, say, a publisher. But you do not pitch a game to a player. You might advertise it, certainly. But you would not use all the same advertisement material in a pitch and vice versa.

Also, the scenario was a bit narrowed down to convince personal friends to play the game, and they responed with, oh yeah, you made a game with that topic, we already have big budget games with that topic, why should we play your's? (to paraphrase it). And than it got expanded, to literally, the question, why play racing game, when top racing game exists, why play city builder, when top city simulator exists, and so on.

It is pointless to compare what games offer in this direct confrontation. We all would only ever play big budget games, and only a handfull at that. And reality shows, that players do not select their games by this logic. 

So I stand by my answers. "Because it is fun to play. That is why you should play my game. And because I made it, and you are my friend. And when you tried to cook that awful pizza, you made my try it too, and I did not ask, what does your pizza offer me, when there is a good pizza restaurant nearby."

And yeah, I do think there is a difference to whom and why you pitch your game. There is a reason why indie is indie. With the exception of small studios that still call themselves indie, just because they are small, all indie games are essentially games that were not pitched to a publisher to do the publishing. Either by choice or because, well, because while they might find their audience, they are not exactly pitchable material. Just look at rpg or visual novels, or, gasp, horror games. Everyone and their dog is making a fnaf clone. Rpgs are hero saves the world from big evil, visual novels are boy meets girl and so on.

But bottom line, the trivial and good answer to both, why should you play my game, and why should I even make that game should be: because it is fun. We do can play more than one game, even if they are the same genre and topic.

When player runs a program containing sensitive strings("Cheat Engine" or somewhat), the game will automatically shut down itself. it's only a self-close.

The game may occasionally ask you to enter a 3-digit verification code.

When the game asks for a verification code, please come to this page to download the latest verification code.

Please be careful, as entering the wrong code will cause the game to exit.

Please keep your internet connection stable. The game will only use the network to transmit the verification code and won't transfer any other data.

That sounds like your game has a lot of things in it, that would trigger antivirus.

I am curious what type of drm and anti-tampering mechanisms your game will be allowed to have on Steam.

Personally, I would not trust any self made drm of any indie developer and a requirement to be online to play a single player offline game, and to tolerate anti-cheating software for an offline singleplayer game ... it does not sound inviting.

Oh sure, you can argue about competitor games, but actually, your competitor games do not really have those things. It is an exception. I have seen many indie game descriptions, and the number of games that have some kind of drm, let alone anti-cheat is very near at zero. I have seen sometimes things with codes or online stuff, but I think anti-tampering is a first.

You can of course protect your game any way you like, but the non legitimate users will just download a cracked version of your game, that has those things removed. We do not need to hate or love drm, but pragmatically, it has little use. And there is the risk of hurting legitimate users. Like when they can not play your offline single player game, when their internet is down.

But you do you. And I am really curious what Steam will allow your game to have.

Not all games are indexed, not all games are indexed immediatly, some games will never be indexed, some games will be indexed and deindexed later.

And itch will generally not tell why a particular game was or was not indexed. If your game is not indexed, it can be assumed, that it is in a waiting queue, and that waiting queue might be longer than expected. It would not be unusual to wait longer than two weeks.

---

Why do developers think, it is a good idea to let an AI write texts? And who did write the original texts, that those AI learned that style from?

The problem with that question is, that it just does not apply. I implies some arbitary restraints that offer you two choices: play this game (yours) or play another game (not yours), that somehow still is like your game, but "better". Or rather the other way round. Your game is inferiour to that hypothetical other game. Oh, and you can't play both, of course.

In reality, preferring to play that polished ww2 game does not hinder them from trying out an indie take on the genre. If they dislike indie games as such, meh, bad luck.

You are on itch. If you would take this philosphy of only playing the "better" game seriously, 99.99 of all games here would be a waste of time. Actually you could go full out Highlander (the movie), and play meta death match with all the computer games out there, till there is only one game left, the game that is worth playing, more than all the others. (You could split it for genres, and have the best ego shooter, the best rpg and so on.)

The important question should be: is your game fun to play? And it better be. Why else make it. Or rather, whatever it might be, if it ain't fun, it ain't a game.

You might want to counter ask why the most popular game ever, Minecraft, has such horrible graphics. Huge pixels. Why do people not play games with nicer, state of the art graphics? Why is pixel art popular, despite advanced high res graphcis? Why are 2d platformers a thing still, when there are  3d platforms for over two decades now? (This was to illustrate, that it is not about a game being "better")

My point is, it is pointless to compare games in such a fashion, with asking provocativly, why should I play your ego shooter, when I could play this established ego shooter that I already know?

Possible answer: Because it is a different experience. If you do not like it, ok, not everyone likes that game you would rather play either.

Now, of course, if you only made a clone of an existing game, ... asking why play your knock off, if they can play the original is a pragmatic question.

This thread makes me think about this meme. Mom, can we have ww2 shooter game? We have ww2 shooter game at home!

Because it is your game.

But seriously, what kind of a dumb philosophical question is that. Why play any game? Or why play any fps game other then the one you already played?

Why try new food, if you can have pizza everyday.

Why bake your own pizza, if you can just order some.

Why even create any game? All has already been done this way or another. It is so repetivite, that we can identify tropes happening or codify a game/movie/story in such a way, that you only need to change a few words to have the same description for several things, makeing it seem like they are plagarisms.

But back to your question, for the same reason, they would watch your holiday pics you try to show them. Demanding that your single developer game has anything to offer in terms of competition against AAA games, is a bit much to ask. If you make an RPG they compare it with Baldur's Gate 3, I imagine.

Oh, and the best game of that type I know, is Hidden&Dangerous. (Disclaimer: I do not know all games ;-) )

If you never heard those concepts, they are hard to grasp. It is not a fake user. It is just a different profile to use, to play potentially unverified and amateur made games. I think it is telling, that the itch app even offers this feature. Maybe there were other reasons, or they just implemented it, because, why not. It is rather easy to implement, and it does kinda protect the main profile from shenanigans an amateur might have done. Some horror game developers try "clever" things, to spook the player.

Note: you do not need to use that feature. But maybe follow the advice you cited. Do not download and play the newest things, when they are new. They are mostly unfinished anyways, and full of bugs.

You might want to seek out solutions that have nothing to do with game making. Any activity requires some sort of focus, so it should be a general problem, and I would assume what helps someone to express art in a hobby with conditions such as yours, would maybe help in creating a computer game as well.

For computer stuff and a game project you can of course use time tested approach that anyone could and should use, regardless of any conditions: Divide and Conquer. Break down the project into smaller chunks. Finishing them should motivate you. And you know your own limits, so do not hesitate to break down small chunks into even smaller chunks.

There are only two maturity settings on itch. On or off. And nudity is generally put in the category "on" . Even if it would be artistical or could be shown in day time tv. Ok, maybe not in the US.

I understand what you mean, but itch is US based, and they do not differentiate between different shades of nsfw. At least not in this case.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox

https://itch.io/docs/itch/using/sandbox.html

It is the same as run as administrator, only in the opposite. You do not log in as that player, you just start the games this way. Should you decide to run all itch games this way, you might want to copy some of your save games over. The link above has some explanation how to do this.

To answer your earlier questions, I use 2fa, but later found out, that it will not protect against account hacking by credential stealing. Mixed feelingers here. And I do not use the itch app, but I sometimes use the same method of sandboxing manually. Generally, I just do not download suspicous games, but wait a while. I put them on collections for later viewing. Chances are, after some weeks, the comments and ratings will indicate better, what kind of game it is, and if I would like it. Also, most scams are gone till then. Stumbling on old scams is the exception, but it can happen.

Read about Sandtrix. Read the letter they got. Read about what constitutes trademark infringement. It is not about exact copies. If they can make a case that the combination of elements can make someone mistake your game as a game of their franchise, they probably will sue at some time.

If your game is at a glance clearly not of their franchise, you should be safe-ish. And it is not helping, that you named that shield skill glitched shield skill. As I said, it is the combination of elements.

Maybe read about other games that have parodied known franchises. How far could they go, and were there troubles.