People posted here not to get their games indexed, but to flag an issue for you. I don't want to be rude, but what you're doing is completely unfair and just makes the only decent platform for hobbyist developers unusable. I don't know what you think you're achieving, but people are just desperate to get some attention, and you call it an "unusual activity" lol. Flagged for human review, we get it, you don't have staff to review things, but idk, add a notification at least? Implement some sort of KYC for the developers? I never dealt with that issue myself, I'm just here on behealf ot others, and what I've seen is kinda disgusting. Sorry, my dude. I know how it is, and you're gonna keep getting a steady flow of games, but for the love of people who are starting out, give them some kind of option 😒 IDK take 1$ payments to post the game without that issue or something if you have to.
We have over 1.7 million indexed pages with around 700 indexed per day, that’s an enormous scale. It would be really bad if a piece of malware made it into one of our popular browse pages or homepage. We have to be cautious by default. It’s not apparent from your end, but I really do fight with scammers and malware on a daily basis. It’s a really difficult thing to balance. (In fact, I literally just restored a user’s hacked account that was used to upload a malware page where the scammer literally made a topic in the forum here asking about their “indexing status”)
Implement some sort of KYC for the developers
Our system already takes into account reputation on our service, the large majority of accounts operate without issues and have established reputation that prevents them from getting flagged. I know it’s very upsetting for those who get stuck with no course of action. Our system doesn’t reveal too much information to prevent scammers from reverse engineering the process.
I didn’t write my original reply to be dismissive of the issue, I know it’s frustrating. I’m just being transparent about the situation. As I mentioned in the previous post, I understand it’s getting to be a bigger issue and I am actively working on changing our back-end heuristics to prevent false positives. In the meantime, the same recommendations I always give apply: operate your account as normal. Your page is still fully accessible to your followers, profile, etc. Any changes we make in the backend about eligibility and risk scoring will automatically apply to your pages.
IDK take 1$ payments to post the game without that issue or something if you have to.
We will never take payment to allow a developer to post a game.
Note: I mentioned unusual activity because because I see comments here with over a hundred up votes in a very short period, that’s not common for our community here, so I’m guessing there’s a thread or Discord somewhere telling people to pile into this post.
Thanks
I appreciate the elaborate answer and thanks for providing transparency on the workflow behind the scenes. I personally didn't experience problems with indexing, but many of my friends did (as shown in this thread).
One thing that could've helped is making this transparent not in support thread, but on developer dashboard itself. E.g. show indexing status near the game and if it is not indexed show the reason and approximate ETA of the game to be indexed. If ETA has passed show the button to ping support.
At the moment it is very frustrating and some people don't feel confident to write to support to clarify why their games don't get traction. In the world where AI generates tons of slope it is extremely important to give fair chance to the games that deserve it and I believe itch is the best platform to make this happen.
> the only decent platform for hobbyist developers
I don't *fully* agree with you as a fellow Dev.
Itch isn't just a platform for developers to publish their game, but also for *players* to actually play those games
Due to how straightforward the uploading process isz releasing malware on here should be pretty easy, yet I barely see anyone complaining about downloading anything malicious
Should the system get *too* lax, the moment players start being afraid they might be unsafe downloading off off itch, then it won't matter if the developers game would be indexed, because the players who actually play the games won't be able to trust said developers.
It would be like those dedicated advertising spaces where everyone is promoting their games, but no consumers are actually there to play them
While I *agree* that the current system has flaws that can be improved and, myself have had a game not being indexed on release, I think what we have is still better than the alternative of malware circulating around the platform freely
I don't see where you got the idea that I suggest making it more lax. I suggested having the KYC process before you publish a game if you want it to be indexed. If you don't want it to be indexed, it can stay whatever. Again, as you might've noticed, I never had that issue myself, and I'm here on behalf of the community. Don't give an excuse for leafo to let this go. Although he doesn't need one.
Your page isn’t indexed because you “disabled” the page with the “Disable new downloads & purchases”
Please check the getting indexed guide: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed
Hope that helps
Your project is available for purchase, download, or is playable in the browser
Meaning if one of these are true, my page should be indexed. My game was playable in the browser meeting the third condition of the statement, the fact that I had available for purchase or download turned off should not have made a difference.
https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#publishing-vs-indexing/getting-indexed
You haven’t limited access to the page via the Public access settings. If you select either “Disable new downloads & purchases” or “Unlisted in search & browse” then you are opting out of being eligible for indexing.
So you have conflicting documentation, and I would say arguably an edge case failure, where web only games should be able to disable downloads and purchases and still be indexed. We know that playing in the browser is != downloading because "disable downloads and purchases" active did not stop users from playing in the browser.
@leafo you have bent over backwards to explain why I was wrong, perhaps look to your own system and see what does not make sense.
Perhaps a banner at the top of the page of pages that aren't getting indexed that have a link to why they are not being indexed. That way its not a guessing game, we can see a non-indexed state.
Hi! Could you please tell, why my game is not indexed?
I spent alot of time making it solo.. i made it free, it is just first chapter, but i'm planning to do a large grim world
I tried to ask question here, but my thread got locked, tried to post to support mail, got no answer (
here is my game https://nop90h.itch.io/meatcube
Just a random heads up, please don’t use CSS in a way that breaks the itch.io UI, scope your changes to the page container. This is explained here: https://itch.io/docs/creators/css-guide
We may remove your CSS access if you use it in a way that messes with the site UI.
Thanks!
Looks like you removed it entirely, I didn’t mean that. Just try to avoid messing with the site header and any dialogs that may appear. I thought you had something cool going on. Thanks!
You spammed your game into a bunch of jams. Don’t do that, you will be banned from indexing https://itch.io/docs/creators/quality-guidelines#game-jams/do-not-add-your-game-to-unrelated-jams-for-promotion
Your game is indexed, and next time please make your own topic! I almost missed your post.
Hello. Please help me with the indexing issue with my game. It hasn't shown up in the Itch search for over 11 days. I sent a ticket by email, but unfortunately, I still haven't received a response. I also uploaded a post on this topic five days ago, which still hasn't been reviewed or published.
https://0bsessi0n.itch.io/without-a-trace
A lot of people are complaining about gettind deindexed everytime they update their game page.
You can try using butler to update your game. With butler you don't need to manually update your game page for a new update. I haven't had the chance to try this yet, since my game is currently not indexed . So I have no idea if this works.
