itch is apparently blocking announcements about this game from appearing in people's feeds. At the very least, I have not recently received any notifications in my feed regarding this game, despite following consistently for years.
Itch's own statements about de-indexing claimed that it would only affect visibility on public searches, so tampering with users' private feeds is a violation of their own promises on the matter.
I have contacted support regarding this, and am waiting for a response, but this could theoretically become a legal matter if they don't fix this.