better than patreon thats for sure. devs on patreon have a tendancy to abandon games but keep charging supporters. they also want to push you to third party sites for update information only they ignore them completely. to be honest alot of these gave devs are just scammers. i mean an update should contain new content especially if it is a 6 month plus wait but alot of these devs push an update with no new content just say they changed this or that which most of the time is crap that most have already played through or dont care about ( grammar and spelling come to mind).
The fake projects I was talking about are not fake in the sense that the creator just tries to milk the users. This is called vaporware, I believe. Although for indie developers that usually is not by design. Real life can have a huge impact on a single developer. And most of the developers are hobby game devs and therefore unprofessional or untrained in the business. But I also saw projects that came to Steam after 5+ years of development. "Indie" means more than non mainstream.
Anyway, the fake projects I talk about are vehicles for malware. Viruses. Trojan downloaders. Malicious software that steals your data.
It is the things warned about in the try my game on discord thread, but with a different method. Instead of luring people directly to the page, the criminals just put such fake projects on Itch and wait.
As is said in the try my game thread:
- On itch.io, it is safe to view the page, but do not download any untrusted software
And to elaborate: being hosted on Itch itself is not enough for a software to be trusted. Being indexed is not enough. Being months old is not enough. Having some ratings and some comments or followers is not enough. It is a combination of many things and the criminals try very hard to circumvent any automatics and to trick users.
but your argument isnt 100% accurate, there is just as much of this stuff as well as other BS on patreon. i personally have had far better luck on itch than patreon, in fact i have had such horrendous experiences from devs i have supported on patreon that i cancelled all support and will no longer supprt the devs there, i was just throwing money away supporting devs who ghost projects and putting out updates that wee basically just a file name change as no real improvements or content was added.
yes i have seeen vaporware, ransomware, AND malware on patreon as well as a worms and (trojans which is funny with the VN's i was downloading and supporting LOL). however i have seen NONE on itch so your claim is baseless and false from my personal experience with the itch platform. i would recommend you NOT make posts spreading lies or at least present proof of your claim when you make such posts or at the very least present your evidence to the platform as i did to patreon.
The way you mention vaporware and ransomware together with malware as an extra does not make me think you talk about the same things as I do. It is like saying you bought bananas, apples AND fruit.
Ransomware, worms, trojans are types of malware. Mal-ware is mal-icious soft-ware. It does harm. A virus scanner would detect it, if the scanner is good. Depending on the harm even a heuristic should detect it.
Vaporware is not malware. It is announced, but unreleased software. A "classical" example would be a kickstarter software project that does not deliver. If this is intentional, it is a scam. If it is just a long time, it is fans complaining. Duke Nukem Forever and Cyberpunk 2077 were both vaporware - till they eventually did get released.
There is no dispute over malware being spread on Itch. Read the public service announcment by leafo. Wanna call the people in that thread liars too, just because you did not see it happen personally...
My point and reason for this thread is, that direct messages on discord with a link to a password protected "game" are not the only method the criminals use to distribute malware. They upload malware as a regular game and wait for unsuspecting players, that never saw viruses on Itch and are trusting and happy to have found a shiny new game.