Post by eezybreezy in New game instantly quarantined and unindexed

Viewing post in New game instantly quarantined and unindexed

I don't know what else can possibly be required from me at this point, I've followed every rule, advice and guideline to the letter.

The game now has 2,000 visits and coming up to 1,500 downloads all from outside traffic and in the past 16 days of emails and messages, trying to get a response from anyone at Itch the only response I've had is from No Time to Play on this thread.

Waiting for indexing i understand can take time but 16 days of "This page has been Quarantined" ACTIVELY discouraging players from downloading the game is unbelievable.

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hechelion129 days ago(+1)

I don't know what else can possibly be required from me at this point

Possibly nothing.

Staff don't usually provide explanations for why a game isn't indexed, but what I've seen over the years:

Most likely, they simply haven't been able to manually review your game yet. Many of us believe that Itch must have an automated system with a secret algorithm that initially decides whether a game is indexed or not.

If that automated system flags your game for manual review, there's not much you can do but wait. The problem here is that there aren't enough human staff to handle the full volume of requests that need to be reviewed, and that generates the delays we see.

Surely, being quarantined is a sign that your game has been flagged as dangerous, and that likely complicates the process further, as it means staff must confirm that it is indeed a false positive before lifting the quarantine.

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eezybreezy129 days ago(+1)

I think the frustrating part is the lack of communication.

I would happily have provided any info required, attached virustotal scans, given copies of my custom scripts etc. if i had any communication whatsoever. Yes, i know things like this take time but 16 days of quarantine is absurd. Especially as Itch can easily see the amount of downloads and views the game has.

To not even receive a single email or message to say it will be looked into within a week/month/year is so disheartening as a new developer.
Especially when I'm spending 12 hours a day working on the game and advertising the game to new players to bring them here.

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redonihunter129 days ago

I think the frustrating part is the lack of communication.

This.

Also, that they are obviously not able to reduce their big heap of unfinished business down to the normal expected size, so waiting times for staff to intervene would be the few days that are mentioned in the faq. It is not a few days. It is several weeks often. This is not since yesterday, this is going on for quite a while now.

Because it is not a few days, all these threads pop up. Be it about payout time, unresolved quarantines, index status or removal of malware and pirated games.

I have seen about a thousand malware games (that number is not inflated to impress) and scams here. Trust me, nothing you mention would be proof that your game is not, including a clean virustotal scan. I have seen malware vehicles that did not trigger anything. If it were possible to simply proove that nothing is suspicous, the criminals would start faking it to get through the automatics and through the staff approval. And yes, I even have seen a case, where the criminal made a thread here in message board and was approved after that. I hope they learned their lesson. I also am pretty sure I encounterd cases where the developer had an infected developer machine and uploaded viruses without intention.

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