We don’t reveal email addresses or let you email directly people who download or interact with your game, that would be a huge violation of privacy and spammy emails. Instead, we recommend that developers encourage their players to follow their itch.io accounts. Digest emails containing devlog posts are automatically sent to your followers (unless they have opted out). You can mention on your page that you will be pushing updates and recommend that anyone downloading should follow your account.
So I am confused by this. If you say that you do not let game devs directly email people who download our game because it is a huge violation of privacy, then what does the interact feature do? When I click on the interact tab it literally says:
"You can contact those who have access to your game by writing an email. Be mindful of spam, recipients can unsubscribe from your emails. You can send at most one email per day, please double-check & preview your emails before sending them."
The only thing is that it will only let you email people who have purchased your game, not only downloaded it. Does that mean if users purchases a game it is not a privacy violation to email them but if they download a free game, it is a privacy violation?