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Suddenly delisted again, is banning spambots the reason?

A topic by Red Mackerel created 16 days ago Views: 767 Replies: 10
Viewing posts 1 to 7
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Since yesterday suddenly the two games I have on itch are delisted. Since they are adult games they were delisted two months ago, but since they are completely free they were reactivated a few days later. Now both of them are delisted again.

I am wondering what the reason is. In one of the FAQs it says that a game may be delisted temporarily if "something" happens with the game's page, and I have editted the page of one of my games (though in a rather minor way, I only checked what the effect would be if I would switch from Comments to Community and back). However, the other one I did not touch, and both are now delisted. Which makes me conclude that it is something about my account.

The only thing I can imagine is that I have been banning too much. One of my pages has been the target of a spambot which is getting increasingly active. In the last two days I have been banning (and reporting) the users that that bot creates half a dozen times, often within minutes after their spam message appeared in the comments of the affected game. Is using the ban-hammer "too often" a reason to delist my work?

I'd really like to know. It would be a good thing if itch would inform me if it delists my games, because then I know what is expected of me. Perhaps I should just let the spambots do their evil work?

Moderator (1 edit)

As explained in the rules of this category: unless an admin happens to see your post, no-one else can tell you the reason. Staff doesn't share the reasons for their decisions, as a general rule. In your case, the games will have to be seen by someone from the staff before they're indexed again. But it seems unlikely that it could be related to you banning spambots, since that has nothing to do with your game page and its content.

The games got listed again, after 2 days. That is actually pretty fast. I still don't know why they were delisted, and I'll probably never know for sure.

Reasons to be quarantined and un-quarantined are intentionally kept secret. It is an attempt to not give the malware uploaders a blue print on how to avoid getting quarantined.

If I were Itch, I woud even add randomness in some way to that system, just like it is supposed to be on airport security ;-)

I am not sure if banning those spambots does anything. I do not see them repeating comments on the same game. Usually it spams hundreds of games in a few days. Itch should tackle that somehow, but it might take a while.

There was one particular scam they managed to shut down a few years ago, but even that was going on for quite some time, till they came up with a method to a) deal with that and b) not completely change Itch by doing so. (It was fake download buttons. The reason you see a red outline around external links is that. After they changed that, I never ever saw a fake download button on Itch)

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Well, evidently spambots are not the reason. The reason seems to be that I made a change to the game's page on itch.io.

My two games were both delisted after I made a change to their pages. For one of these games the only change was that I made a word bold. But after two days, they got listed again.

I just made another update to one of these games. This time, I made a bugfix-release, so a slightly more involved change. Immediately that game got delisted, while the other one remained listed. Also, the developer log which I made to announce the bugfix was made invisible.

It is strange. Before last month I could make changes and release new versions and make devlogs without any problems. Now it seems my games have a target on them. If they get listed again after a day or two it doesn't matter much, but I don't understand why I suddenly have to deal with this. If there is something I could do about it, I would, but without communication from itch.io I am veiled in darkness.

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It is extremely frustrating, and a lot of people are being affected. I am at the point where I will never update my listing ever again, except for files and devlogs for updates, until something changes, even if that leads the the page not reflecting the product effectively.

The damage done by being de-indexed for a period is not worth it.

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Yes, Ihave a tendency to regularly tweak the pages for my games. Now I cannot do that anymore without the game being delisted. I do not understand why suddenly my games are affected, while a month ago they were not. 

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Same, updating the game means it’s going to disappear for weeks, or who knows if forever. It makes no sense, and then you see other games getting indexed instantly. It’s extremely frustrating to publish games here.

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I sent a mail to support, and I got a response a few days later. The response was that my games were indexed again (which they are), and there was a link which I had not checked before (because it is called "Search & Browse" and not "Indexing"): https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed. After checking out that page, one line struck me:

"Established sellers with no history of issues will skip this review step and will be indexed immediately."

So, evidently I had no "history of issues" a month ago, but now I do (unless itch has wiped it again, but I am not going to check that as I do not want to run the risk of getting deindexed again). The only "issue" I can imagine is that I reported 6 spam posts in one weekend. But those were really spam posts, so unless "issues" means "this creator is a target of spam posts," I do not see a reason why I should be automatically deindexed.

Anyway, I hope this circus has ended now. If it hasn't, I will notice with my next update and I will send out another ticket.

Interestingly, the spam bot which left all these posts has not been a problem for me anymore, while I did see those posts appear on other pages. So perhaps itch has found a way to stop them? 

Deindexing wouldn’t be such a problem if there was real communication about when or why this happens.

unless “issues” means “this creator is a target of spam posts

I can’t prove it, I have no insider perspective on the decisions, but I have noticed what looks like a tendency of Itch.io to hide pages “for their own good”. Or maybe it’s meant to reduce attention on the site overall? Indexed sites might show up in general website search results.

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...Aaaaand... the spam posts are back...