Post by Ludonauta in Getting unsolicited emails from game creators even after adjusting profile settings

Viewing post in Getting unsolicited emails from game creators even after adjusting profile settings

The email feature is the best relationship channel a creator has with his audience.

I send emails to my customers every week and I get replies from them frequently. From project updates, to asking how they are using the project.

It's better to just add an option to bundle creators to disable email collection or something.

Plus...you buy a bundle with many projects, these creators likely only subscribed to the bundle to get access to buyers' contact. That's exactly what co-op bundles are meant for: sharing audiences.

You get dozens, maybe hundreds of projects for a cheap price...it's more than fair that these people get the opportunity to offer you more products...otherwise participating in co-op bundles becomes worthless.

To be honest, it sounds kinda entitled to not give something back for paying cheap for multiple games.

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redonihunter1 day ago

Subscription to a mailing list is not advertised to nor consented by the customer. Not when buying a game, nor when buying a bundle.

And there is no way to either give consent or revoke consent before getting such a mail.

I see mulitple problems here. This feature needs a major rework.

For your needs, there needs to be a way to resubscribe to the mailing list - without having such a mail.

As for your assumption that people give consent by buying a cheap bundle, and that developers would join bundles to be able to send mails, I have serious doubts.

This mail feature is not bundle specific. It is active for all purchases. It only gets visible on big bundles, because some developers are bound to send some mails. Prompting overly negative reactions from most users, usage of spam filters, deactivation of mail options alltogether and complain threads in community. People know they did not consent to a mailing list and are alienated by receiving mails this way.

That mailing list thingy needs an opt-in button on the purchase page. Not an automatic subscription with an opt-out.

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Ludonauta1 day ago (1 edit)

It's literally on the Terms of Service you read before signing up to itch.io...thus opting in to this marketing tools. It's also in the Privacy Policy terms.

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A Fals Fiction1 day ago

The ToS is an agreement between the site user and itch.io and does not extend off-site to other users.

Devs who join a bundle to collect buyer contact info are being sleazy.

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Ludonauta1 day ago (1 edit)

The ToS explicitly prohibits using or sharing buyers Personal Information with third-parties.

The "Interact - Send Email" tool is an itch.io functionality, thus it's part of your agreement and it's explicitly warned about on itch.io ToS and Privacy Policy, to which every user agreed to.

If the Seller is using Third Party services to send emails, then you can report them.

Devs who join a bundle to collect buyer's contact info are following an officially recommended practice to grow their audience.

I understand this is annoying. But itch.io gives tools to batch unsubscribe to game emails. Here's the complete guide:

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Ludonauta1 day ago

I think that an easy solution would be to add an "Unsubscribe from All Projects" button in the Bundle Page, like that:

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redonihunter1 day ago

The mails from such a mailing list might come from the Itch mail server, but they are not sent by Itch. As is evident by the reply-to mail adress, which is the developer's.

Also, this is not a bundle issue. This automatic mailing list opt-in goes for all purchases.

The actual Itch mailing lists and other emails you would receive are configurable in your settings.

What would be ok, is a button and a suggestion to subscribe to a mailing list on the purchase page. Or at least an unsubscribe button there, instead of only showing it to users when they receive a mail.

But frankly, I believe this whole feature is outdated and deprecated by the follow mechanism and devlogs. The mailing list thingy might be of interest for people that do not have an account and cannot follow. But you can not configure it on the purchase page. Also it is just not common for developers to mail their customers. Especially if they did not actively subscribe to a mailing list.

Imagine the outrage if you would by a game on Steam and the developer (not Steam) would suddenly email you. It's unprofessional and in some countries it would be illegal. Even if someone might interpret parts of the tos to mean something like that. I have a different interpretation of what those tos parts mean.

But this is not relevant what we interpret the tos to say. I am not that familiar with Californian consumer laws. AI tells me, it is extremely crucial to ask for consent for a marketing mailing list subscription at the time of purchase and not hide the mailing list consent somewhere deep in the tos.

It might or might not be in clear violation of CCPA. But it is clearly against best practice to not give a checkbox at purchase time to opt out of a mailing list.

That law is from 2020, and I would guess that feature Itch has there is older.

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Ludonauta1 day ago

I disagree with everything you said. You're coming up with legalism and technicalities to justify not being accountable for accepting a ToS without reading it or being annoyed by the consequences of accepting it anyway.

itch.io is very rigid and strict withh how creators can use the email tool, to the point we can't even know who we are sensing emails to and we can't send more than one email in less than 24h.

The follow + devlogs features are not enough, especially when you want to build a relationship with customers to make a living out of your honest work.

It's easy to get 100 games for $5, but if you don't want to hit a simple "Unsubscribe" button when you get and email from someone with genuine concern to offer you something you might like...maybe just purchase the bundle without giving off your contact info, that's a simple workaround. As a DCM free platform, itch.io let's you download without providing your contact info. You can even request the download link whenever you need it.

It's inconvenient, but at least you don't get "annoyed" by people trying to make a living out of their passion.

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redonihunter1 day ago

Sigh. If you refuse to see the issue, I will not be able to convince you that there is an issue.

Also it was you who cited the tos and thus bring legality into this.

And about being "accountable for accepting a tos without reading it" is why there are consumer laws. They are there so that companies cannot just hide something in a tos in legalese, so no one understands the consequences.

There is not a word about mailing list subscriptions that are handled by developers in the tos. So please do not try to interpret it to mean such. It specifically mentions Itch and marketing. But Itch does not send those emails. They do not even go through an approval mechanism, so Itch would have any sort of control over those mails. Except those hard limits like 1 mail per day. And to go further: to make sure they can easily access any files you may have updated is from the example Itch gives. This is what devlogs are used for nowadays. It hints that this feature was not intended for marketing, but for updates.

Also, I will say it again: this has absolutley nothing to do with bundles. So do not try to cite cheap bundles as a moral justifcation for this mailing list business. If I buy a single game for $ 20, I am also on the mailing list for that game. Without ability to even refuse the subscription or manage my subscription before I get the first such mail.

The reason why this comes up with bundles, is the trivial fact that there are many developers involved and some might use that feature. And if there are indeed developers that only join such bundles to later use the mailing list feature to send out advertisements, than this feature should be reworked yesterday.

In case you missed my suggestion for this, I shall repeat it. Because I did not have the impression that you disagreed with that in particular.

What would be ok, is a button and a suggestion to subscribe to a mailing list on the purchase page. Or at least an unsubscribe button there, instead of only showing it to users when they receive a mail.

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