Post by Ratsnake Games in Is Itch not responding to my fraud complaint?

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Itch.io takes significantly longer than two days to respond to support requests.

All game asset packs on itch.io are required to disclose if they used generative AI. If the game asset you are complaining about does not have this declaration or claims to be AI-free, you may have a decent fraud case and I recommend also contacting your payment provider if itch.io fails to respond in a timely fashion. If the game asset does declare that its contents are AI-generated, you are unlikely to receive a refund.

edit: based on the title, it looks like you bought a bundle by HoriHoriPixel. Their content is correctly declared as AI-generated. While I personally would not buy this and do not want to see stuff like it on itch.io, there is no fraud here.

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Sagharth8 days ago

The problem is that their content may be "marked as AI-generated," but at the time of purchase, there was nothing that said, "Hello, caution, this content is AI-generated." They just sold me the package as a sale without mentioning that only about 500 items are unique; the rest are painted versions of each item, repeated ad nauseam. This is a sale with malicious or dishonest intentions at best.

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Ratsnake Games8 days ago(+1)

No it isn't.

You can always check what products are part of a bundle. You can check if the products are AI-gen for any of these products.

Unless the bundle actively tries to deceive you into believing that no part of it is AI-generated, this is not fraud. Fraud requires intent to deceive in any legislation I am aware of. Making information available, but making it less obvious than you personally want it to be, is not fraud. That is a failure on your part to look at what you are buying.

Containing multiple recolored versions of the same sprite is also extremely common for tilesets, including high-quality ones like those of GuttyKreum or limezu. It will be very hard to argue that this constitutes fraud.

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Sagharth8 days ago

You might be right, but it still wasn't "obvious" enough for a novice like me when it comes to buying game assets. Perhaps I was naive.
Do you have any pixel art content creators you could recommend for 2D games?
(Depending on your response, I'll just consider the purchase a loss and learn to be more discerning when selecting what to buy.)

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Ratsnake Games8 days ago

Yeah, writing those 25 bucks off is a good idea. I know it sucks to buy something with no apparent use completely by accident, and it would be nice if itch.io had a refund policy for cases like that, but so far, itch.io will only refund you in very specific cases.

Some pixel artists whose stuff I have lying around on my NAS are limezu, v3x3d and GuttyKreum. To my knowledge, none of them use generative AI. I've also made a game using this tileset: https://vurmux.itch.io/urizen-onebit-tileset.

Urizen is free and limezu's graphics are very affordable. The other two are a bit more expensive but still well worth the investment if you have an idea of what to do with them.

Aside from that, you can search itch.io with the "No AI" tag, e. g. https://itch.io/game-assets/tag-no-ai/tag-pixel-art

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Sagharth8 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the guide and for taking the time to reply, it's appreciated, best regards!

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Ratsnake Games8 days ago(+1)

No worries, I like shouting out people whose assets I like.

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