I hope this board is the right place for this, I know it's more of an open topic but it is related to game jams. I am an independent host of many game jams, over the years I have seen my fair share of spam submissions to my game jams.

 Typically these submissions will be an Android APK, missing an executable or any playable file, have stolen art assets, use a lot of AI generated assets.  But the biggest identifier will that they'll be super generic and have nothing to do with the jam they have been submitted to at all. This is usually accompanied by a massive list on the side of every jam the 'game' has been submitted to, which in some cases will be almost every jam running at that point in time. 

Here's a recent example of a game submitted to my current game jam. Clearly illustrating how many jams these people will spam their submission to.

I understand there's a lot going on with Itch at the moment. But I seriously think there needs to be some way of limiting the amount of jams a game can be submitted to, realistically a game will not be developed for more than 2-3 concurrent game jams. I worry that many of these spam submissions could be malicious software, if a game jam host or team is less vigilant they may accidentally expose the user base to this malicious software. 

I'm curious to hear what over game jam hosts and even participants have to say on this 🙂

This is something that needs to be stopped. I cannot count on one hand how many times i have had to disqualify submissions and on one occasion I have been duked by a downloadable submission.

It would make sense for itch io to set up a system where if a game gets disqualified from more then one jam or the account itself has games removed from multiple jams to shut their account down. These spammers have a massive pattern that is really easy to recognize. That is my 2 cents.

Totally agree, 2-3 jams should be enough for a game.

TBH it is possible for a game submission to fit multiple game jam but I honesty doubt it could fit 10 or more jams at once.

Still, I find this spam issue hard to solve. I could suggest sending warning to creator is their submitted game gets ejected but it won't solve the real issue.

Thanks to everyone who have offered their opinion so far, love hearing what everyone thinks about this and all the possible solutions that have been considered. The idea to form a sort of network/community of game jam hosts is a fantastic idea.

What might be another way to deal with this is to have an Itch API that would allow to get information about a submission and remove/disqualify it from your jam. If that was a thing, it would be possible to create automation that does that according to whatever the preferences of a specific jam host are. I know there are ways to get some data but AFAIK it’s not enough.

As discussed in the other thread, I made a discord server for that: https://discord.gg/eaZYGwQePc 

I have also seen non-spam games that are submitted to multiple jams, which the reason for should be obvious: Creators are looking for ways to gain exposure, and for good reason... they worked hard on their game and if it isn't breaking any rules, it is in their best interest to get more eyes on it.

That said, it dilutes the uniqueness of each jam. To me, a game jam should be an isolated event, not a database of everything that fits the prompt. It should be like going to a specific location and crafting something on-site. You wouldn't bring that creation to the next craft-jam and say "look, I made this here, too!" This just turns into a snowball of duplicate entries... as an audience member, I would rather see fewer submissions, with each one being unique to the single event that it was made for.

Man, this post is necessary. I agree, 2 to 3 jams should be enough for a game.