Hello Zetan,
Come to think of it, if you keep creating a new game's page at every update of the same game then how does this affect payments?
I mean people who choose to pay something to buy the game to support you, their game can't be updated because since you create a new game's page at each update then you make Itch believe this is another game instead of an update of the same game which makes it unable to actually update the game from buyers' library, doesn't it? 🤔
the point of a new page for every release is so supporters can get the early access release. After every early access, the game update becomes public anyway, this way it is fair to my monthly supporters on patreon because it follows nearly the same early access logic. It could be that we will change this soon and make it more like steam
I'm sorry but I don't understand your logic because I don't see how creating a new game's page at every update grants early access to supporters because since you create a new game's page at every release then Itch thinks this is another game instead of an update of the same game and treats each release as different games thus ignoring previous payments because "this is not the same game they paid for, this is a new game" or did I misunderstand something? 🤔
Or wait, is this actually why you do it this way? So people have to pay again for every early release because Itch ignores their previous payments since you make it think they are other games instead of updates of the same game? 😲
And what do you mean by "make it more like Steam"? 🤔
yes, you read correctly and I explained it before, as only monthly supporters get early access and non active supporters don't, that's how patreon works. so to make it fair, the price for early access is the same for itch, and dropping lower and eventually public, no matter if you supported the game before as patreon also doesn't care about it. I hope after three attempts I explained it good enough for you. And by steam I meant one time buy - get future updates for free (after the initial early access for patreon & SS). We will go for this with steam and possibly have to do some changes regarding early access on itch, but it is too soon to talk about this.
TLDR: The pricing tier was always just a means of supporting for those that feel like it, since I posted on itch, the game becomes available for free in a short amount of time. So people are not obliged to pay for every release.
I see, so you did trick Itch to treat each update as a different game on purpose to sell your early releases before public releases. 😏
To be fair, this is only the second time that you actually explain your way of using Itch and this second "attempt" of yours merely confirmed what I theorized which is why you started it with "Yes, you read correctly" as I already understood the first time but needed confirmation that I was correct or if I got it wrong.
And you are explaining this only now because up until now, when you were asked why you keep replacing the game's page, you pretended that you did it out of ignorance because you didn't know how Itch works but now I see that you very well understand how to trick Itch, you sly fox. 😼
While I now understand your purpose of creating a new game's page at each update of the same game in order to sell each early release even if people already paid for the game, I'm still not sure if this is necessary because there might be a way to add new paying content without replacing the game's page as I seem to recall this occurring onto other games' page where their creator merely updated the page to add some new paying content such as DLCs so Itch might have already thought of a way to let you do orderly what you have been doing in your own messy way and this might be worth checking, don't you think? 😉
And come to think of it, if your goal is to sell every early release then you might as well create a new game's page for every update in order to make people pay again for each early update while keeping the main game's page that you actually update with every public release and onto which you could present the game's description and keep your development log which would be more stable than replacing everything all the time and you might even not need to create any other page if you can add new paying content to a game's page as I think then you might simply sell your early releases as DLCs which Itch would then treat as new content even if people already paid for a previous early release as Itch would consider "this is a new DLC and people paid for another DLC so they have to pay for this one as well" then you would simply remove the "DLC" and update the main downloads with public releases and that's it, how do you like it? 😉
