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All my games have been removed from search?

A topic by Ecchi Games created Sep 21, 2023 Views: 1,054 Replies: 18
Viewing posts 1 to 8
(1 edit) (+1)

Hello and hope someone can help me.

I make adult games. About a week ago I checked my payout tab and seen...

"You can no longer use Itch.io to collect payments"

I though was strange , but no big deal I connect my PayPal. Over a few days I notice no daily followers, and nearly 0 sales.  I check out whats going on and its seems all my games are not searchable on itch. 

You cant find them unless a direct link to the game.

I sent email to support, almost a week ago with no response, no message to me , no email nothing. I know this is a free platform but I've used revenue sharing nearly for 2 years no ,so i give back.

That being said , no message, no email , pop up  or anything about removing all my content is a pretty sharty thing to do, in my opnion.

Any help, has this happened to others?

Also on another note. My games are not anything too crazy on the adult side, way less erotic than alot of games that I still see are up so that also confused me.


Lastly, it's been over 20 days now since I've been waiting on payout. 

The longest i've had to wait, so any info on what may be going on is very much appreciated.

Moderator(+1)

All your games have been deindexed. Please contact support.

Thanks, I have already still waitng on the email.

Is there any general reason this happens? Also would you happened to know how long to expect for a email back on average? Thanks

Moderator

I don't know, and it depends.

As for my Payout that was started before I was deindexed.

Do they hold payout for people are deindexed?

Moderator

I don't know, sorry.

(+3)

It might or might not be related. You will find some games that complain on their page that they had to switch to direct pay out. Since I found those pages, they are very probably not deindexed. So, no, that is not the package itch shartily deals out: deindex+switch to direct pay out. They deal out both separatly.

But you could have been the target of a troll that mass reported your games for false reasons. Itch rather deindexes games than deal with the false reports. Or so it seems. They very recently were duped into banning a very popular account. It took a week or two to restore that account. And since they do not talk about this, no one knows why it happened or why it was restored. And since it was restored, why they banned it in the first place. My speculation is, that no human was involved in the banning.

There seems to be a general shortage of staff dealing with any kind of support issue. So things that would usually only take days, take weeks or over a month. And meanwhile accounts like yours with paid games and years of being published are deindexed and accounts like the one in  R-71648 are indexed. (There are several stolen games on that one. The whole account uses a fake profile. I told them 3 times alreay. No human dealt with those tickets or some lazy intern ignored them. The first pirated or malware was published over two months ago, the last only a week ago.)

I know your account and checked it out over half a year ago. No, your stuff is not in any kind edgy. To the contrary.

It also is my opinion that silent removal is a sharty thing to do. About 75% of sales on itch are for adult games, according to ranking in browse. They should steal the cake from Steam not drive people to use Steam, Patreon, Subscribestar and so on. I would rather give money to itch than to patreon.

Yeah how this happened is soo unexpected and unfair in my opinion. Thanks for the context on the other situations, for I very well believe my account may have trolled like you said. Just crazy I've been up for 4 years mostly positive review and only 2 refunds i had to real with. 

Meanwhile I look through the store page and still see people with their adult games, rape , loli and all the other but my simple games which most the content is a real game, with ecchi stuff added is banned.

Welp like you said, goin to steam is proably the best option. Rather wait months for a email or explanation I probaly will never get.

(+1)

Note, that this is all speculation on my part. But there is a thread every day that someone has to wait a month for a thing that should only take days. So obviously support has too much to do and things will get delayed, done wrong, not at all or some sort of automation does it wrong.

It costs money to give support and since it is easier to just deindex creators to reduce tickets, they might have bitten in that vile fruit. Or maybe there is a completely different reason. But this is not how you deal with creators on a platform. Steam requires 100 bucks to publish, so they obviously can afford some hours for every creator to give support if necessary. Even if that creator does not sell much.

Itch should consider some similar approach to have some kind of verified accounts or whatever. With money verified. It is too easy to post stolen stuff and malware and too easy to fake-report real creators. Like, ignore most of the reports from un-verified accounts and against verified accounts. So you have a hard time fake-reporting and the real reports have more weight. Even a small amount of money is a big deterrent against the kind of crap itch has to deal with. They could keep things mostly like they are, but they could mass-ignore many tickets from fake troll accounts and make it easier to remove the fake publisher accounts.

Might be naive, but there is a problem with the way things are handled now. At least I see this problem. Or is there another explanation, why reported stolen games are indexed within a day of publishing* and stay that way, and creators like you get deindexed and others complain about not being indexed for a month? (Yeah, you will probably be the last person knowing an answer to that one, sorry for asking rhetorical questions ;-)


* I kid you not. The games I report have an account less than a day old, publish their stolen game/malware and are in the browse section. Meanwhile there are threads about games that are not indexed after a month. How sick is that? Or did I mistake indexing and publishing mechanism and your publish date and account creation date are re-adjusted once you are indexed? But I do not think so. The game date might be adjusted, but not the account age. It is R-72021, if someone with access to tickets should read this. The account was created 15 hours ago, the game and creator are searchable and in browse and to my understanding that means, they are indexed. But I can tell after a few seconds, that the game/profile is 95% fake and after less than a minute, I can tell with 100% certainty, that it is fishy.

(1 edit) (+2)

I think you are not aware, this topic was discussed several months ago, the posts must be buried in the forum and unfortunately I do not have the links.

But in short, what is happening to you has happened to many other NSFW game developers.

The admin said that there is no change in itch's policies and that this only affected a number of games that put itch at risk. (I don't remember the exact words) and there is not much more official information.

All the rest is just speculation on the part of users, some believe it is because of the percentage that those games deliver to itch, others because they violate paypal rules, etc.

The problem is there is no clear pattern, there are games that share 10% with itch (the default value) and have been affected.

There are games with vanilla content that have been affected, while others with much more controversial content have not.

The facts are that NSFW games have been receiving that message and so far I have never heard of anyone who managed to reverse the measure, this suggests that it is not an error, but that there is something that led to making that decision, but that officially It has never been clarified.


EDIT: Here
https://itch.io/t/2809361/will-adult-games-be-forced-into-direct-payments-instea...

(+2)

Thanks for the tip. I'm not sure what to do at this point. But, seeing all the adult games on the site still with  way more controversial content than my games still up and good is just BOGAS.  

THEY COULD EASILY FIX THIS MESS WITH 3 STEPS.

Take notes any mods or people working on the inside and report this to bossman.

aka Leaf Corcoran

1. They need to make minimum revenue sharing. You guys need to make money if your selling and promoting peoples games.

2. Have a actual full rule by rule  guidline of this is allowed and this isnt allowed. 

3. Hire a actual support team the new income from revenue sharing.


- If you guy cant even respond to a email from Devs that have been working with you for years and can't offer any type of resolution or support to the devs that makes your site acutally work.  

- I've followed all the guildlines in TOS and my account get delisted.

to the devs that makes your site acutally work

This. I would not even know that itch exists at all, if not for adult games. And I did buy games here that are on steam.

I first saw itch like 2-3 years ago via a direct link from an adult creator. I was not sure what this site was supposed to be and did not bother much, as I was not sure how legit the page was, that had the link to here. It could have been an impostor. And this year, I tried buying a game on an adult platform and wondered, if the game was available on other platforms as well and wanted to compare pricing. So I saw itch again and decided to check it out, as it seemed to be legit after all.

(+1)

Why are you games deindexed ?

I understand payment blocking by collected by itch.io. This is happening to all adult developers

Are you making incest or any other taboo stuff. No right. Then why the hell itch.io deindexed you. I assume this was your only source of income and itch.io killed it 

This is very sad ๐Ÿ’”

And the lack of clarity and communication is the worst. I HATE ITCH.IO FOR THIS!

(1 edit) (+1)

Exactly thankfully it wasnt my only source of income. But a big part of it. I emailed support maybe a week before i made this post.

And I have yet to recieve a notice why they did it, or if I did anything wrong at all.

EDIT... And no to your question, no incest, no loli , no gay , no futa, no rape , no hacked props or characters. All regular games with gameplay, and sex or female masturbation included. SUCKS!

(+1)

I sympathize with you because this is a pretty bad situation. I live in fear of this also happening to me.

Just out of interest, what percentage had you set to pay to itch? They've said that the percentage does not matter, but my theory is that it must do, because there's always a level of risk for a platform hosting a game that it considered taboo.

Yeah it's pretty tragic and I hope it doesnt happen to anyone else. Also my share % was at 5%.

Deleted 182 days ago

Most likely you got deindexed for violating the Adult content must be labeled rule.

No I 100% always marked my content as adult.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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