I’ve been going back and forth on what I think about the Itchio staff. There’s even comments from me about the situation in the professional games media press where I’m sympathetic to the staff, but I’m also just annoyed by the incompetence and how chronically understaffed they’ve been.
At some point, intentions stop mattering. Gross neglect is harmful. As you’ve written, the delisting has caused a lot of damage that cannot be compensated at all. I’m still pissed that Uranium Gays went one from the most popular TYVNJ entry to the bottom; its re-indexing has made it bounce back up, but there’s a part of me that wonders if it could have reached more people.
Reading the zine, I think my opinion on the staff remains sympathetic but only slightly. I’m very, very irritated by the radio silence as well. They haven’t done shit for six months and counting. Volunteers are obviously burned out.
On a related point, they have done more than the bare minimum by geo-locking accounts for UK citizens: it’s one thing to hide the game entry but it’s another for the entire account to be hidden for these people. I don’t understand the rationale to this day when other websites have only hidden the game.
I don’t really know how to talk about Itch without getting emotional because I do care about the site. I know everyone is working hard, but there’s clearly a disproportionate amount of care given to people. It’s reminding me that in the end platforms are platforms: they serve the interests of capital, not us.