Ever wondered about the follow buttons you've seen on itch.io? This guide is here to clear things up and give you some tips!

Following another account on itch.io is a simple way to stay up to date with what they're doing. You can follow as many accounts as you like. To get the most out of itch.io, we recommend following everyone you find interesting.

Here are some benefits of following someone:

• Your Feed will be populated with their activity, including new games published, games rated, things added to collections, and devlog & blog posts written.
• You'll receive an email notification when they publish a new game (unless you've disabled notifications in your account settings).
• The person you followed will receive a notification, which can make them feel appreciated.

In conclusion, following someone is a simple way to support them and keep track of their latest activity. Following more people also helps you create a great source of the latest happenings in the indie game dev world.

Who should I follow?

That’s for you to decide! We generally recommend following anyone with whom you've had positive interactions. No need to be picky; if you end up not liking what they do, you can always unfollow them later.

The itch.io site suggests people for you to follow based on your activity as well. You can find your suggestions on your homepage and on your feed.

Where can I see who I follow?

If you go to your feed, you can click the followers and following sections to see who your followers are and who you're following.

Why should I try to get more followers?

If you're a game developer or creator on itch.io, then getting followers can be an effective way to build your audience. Aside from boosting your account’s credibility on itch.io, having more followers means having more people to market your work to.

• New games or projects you release will be emailed to your followers.
• New devlog posts and any other account activity will be published to your followers' feeds.
• If a project of yours goes on sale, then anyone who follows you and doesn’t own it yet is eligible for an email notification about the sale.

Having a strong follower base means that the next time you launch a project on itch.io, you'll be maximizing the number of people who see it. This can be an important part of getting your project to rise up in our listings or have a chance at being featured on our homepage.

What’s the best way to get more followers?

At itch.io, we love helping developers get more followers. We have many reminders for anyone who positively interacts with your project, including whenever someone purchases, downloads, or rates your project. However, this may not be enough, so we also recommend that creators manually promote their itch.io pages. Simply telling someone to follow you outright isn’t the most effective approach, so we suggest including an incentive as well. Here’s an example:

If you want to see my progress, you can follow my itch.io page here: YOUR URL

If you have a completed project, you can say:

Did you like my game XXX? You can get updates by following my itch.io page: YOUR URL

You can suggest a follow by linking to your profile page. Posting on social media, your blog, and other websites is a good way to increase your audience. If you have a completed work, you can also suggest someone gives you a follow directly within your game. For HTML games, you can consider suggesting a follow after someone has played your game for a bit.