No I don't expect itch.io to promote my oldest game, as I've mentioned, so far from my experience, being at the top of most recent is what would propel the games (if we at least put some actual effort into the game, page, and poster) into New And Popular
And perhaps if it is very good, it will do well on that new tab and go to the next tab, and as the "most recent" name implies, this is only for new games, and only one chance for a game, if it falls off, it falls off, and I do not expect itch.io to promote it for me
But on the other hand, I also did not expect that the one chance at discoverability through the most recent page could be taken out of the developers hand, which for established and known developers may not be a problem, but would certainly have an impact on newer developers who expected a fair shot for their projects
And again, it might also be that we're not supposed to depend on itch.io at all, no matter how small, even to give a fair shot to us in the Most Recent tab as I've described, this is what I am learning from our discussion. If this is the case and official stance of the platform, it should be very clearly and aggressively communicated to new developers, since most new developers including myself, would expect the platform to behave consistently and not take away the one helping hand the platform gives us at discover ability
And I have to reiterate, my expectations are not to have the platform consistently promote my old games, or on the other hand have the platform completely provide zero help at all by taking the fair chance at discoverability through the Most Recent page.
No, we must not view it from these extremes, we must take the middle ground and look at it realistically for what it is, that is, the platform indeed is not intended or expected to land a helping hand at discoverability in the long term, but it does give you a fair shot for your game by being at the Most Recent tab to be noticed by players through impressions, and if it is of good quality, it will be propelled into the other tabs which, how far it is propelled, is depending on how good of qualities it has. That's why I said by taking away the chance of the project to be at the top of Most Recent, is unfair, especially for newer developers
I don't know if what I'm saying here resonates with other people or not, or it's only for my genre/theme, or maybe even it's only for me personally, but that is the fair assessment that I can give based on my experience and observations so far, and also the reason why I've said and what I said about taking away Most Recent exposure would be unfair