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(+2)

OK, from what I can understand from the situation, it seems that itch.io is having cash flow problem. I myself have pending payment exceeding 2 weeks.  I've been selling on itch.io since last year and what I've found out is not many people is willing to pay for games on itch.io. This is the real problem - not enough money to move around the platform. People need to be motivated to make their first purchase. Once they've reached that threshold, they might be willing to keep purchasing in the future.

Do we have a solution to this? Of course, there is. It's about time itch.io enforce something to keep the money flowing. Everyone that want to upload games to itch.io must have bought at least $5 games before they are given permission to upload games. I don't have statistic but if there are 100,000 uploads right now which might comes from let say, 40,000 developers, that could mean 40,000 X $5 = $200,000. This kind of money is enough to sustain as the money goes to developers themselves. This should improve cash flow as well.

Even Google Play Store pose $25 lifetime fee before developers can upload something and that money goes straight to Google but in this case, $5 goes toward developers and some cut to itch.io.  

Deleted 4 years ago
(+1)

I'm not associated with itch.io so I don't know their financial situation but if you have to deduce from available clues and hint, something is definitely not right.  Only leafo can explain the situation as he has the missing details that all of us doesn't know. When people are not given enough details, they tend to speculate. That will lead to people assuming the worse.  Maybe things are not as bad as it looks. Who knows?

Admin(+1)

This is not true, they are incorrectly speculating.

Admin
OK, from what I can understand from the situation, it seems that itch.io is having cash flow problem

This is not true at all. This topic has been open for quite a while, and so the developers who have posted may have payouts delayed for various reasons. Many people filled out the tax form incorrectly and we've canceled pending payouts from developers so they could confirm their information about re-open the payout request. There seems to be some confusion about this though.

I do think your idea of having a seller fee be a requirement for someone to buy a game. It's unlikely we'll do something like this though. The amount of money it would be insignificant compared to the revenue generated from regular sales.