itch.io

I am very busy due to collage. And itch.io deindexing my projects for months does not help.

I do not know how you get that message, I can not replicate it. If what you are saying is true (that my page is quarantined) then the only reason I can think of is because I posted a few bug fixes updates in a short time period which could have triggered something; but I do not know how to prove that, it is just a guess. I guarantee my projects are safe, but the system might have seen the few bug fixing updates in a short period as suspicious and deindexed them for that reason. I have thought of this as a possibility, but Ijust have no way of verifying that.

edit: spelling 

-"You assume this is intentional on Itch's side" No I do not; ironic that you assume so for me. I have been clear on the fact that I know they are a small team and are overloaded in my emails and in my last community post. Having said that I also have to take into account that 2 months with multiple emails and a moderator notification should have drawn their attention by now. I would not make a fuss about this if it was not a big deal for me, it is severely impacting my growth.

-I do have regular traffic outside itch.io. The problem lies in the fact that most of the traffic comes from itch.io; and deindexing has caused most of it to vanish. I am a new developer, I am not someone with an established audience, and itch was my plan to gain that audience. I now have a small audience, but newer audience is accumulating extremely slowly as opposed to when the projects were indexed. Also I have been working on updates my whole summer, and when I released biggest updates I have so far, the projects got deindexed and that has severely damaged my future growth.

-As for the malware thing; I do not have malware in my projects, I do not know why it got tripped if it did; and I do not get the given message you provided when tying to download the game using an anonymous browser; so I do not know where that quarantine thing comes from.
If itch.io does quarantine random projects for malware, than I understand why they would not tell the reason.

Thank you for trying to help tough, I appreciate it.

I have not received any response even when you said you notified them; I reached out to them recently with another follow up but still no response. I am aware that support team is small, but 2 months with no response is very very long. If you can notify them again about the issue since this is severely impacting my growth as a fairly new developer. Thank you in advance.

@itchio-support , fellow creators and my fans:

Solo student dev here. My two projects were silently removed from search results without any notification or explanation; despite 4 detailed support emails (Ticket ID: 308203) and repeated moderator involvement, nothing has been addressed in over 2 months (62 days as of writing this post). I am sharing the complete, factual timeline for full transparency to draw attention to the issue and so that my fellow creators know what to expect, also for my fans to know that this issue is one of major reasons I have been not releasing updates.

Affected Projects:

• Furrmatch (free NSFW puzzle game): Fully compliant with adult tags; indexed without issues for months; major summer update published early September; than multiple small bug fixes and at last an android compatibility update (61 days ago); after that update the project got deindexed within 24 hours.
• Sweepurr DEMO (separate, clearly labeled free demo page): Created to restore visibility (released 3 days before the last update on Furrmatch project) after paid NSFW deindexing wave; indexed briefly for 18 hours; deindexed immediately after with no warning; now invisible for 64 days. Structure identical to dozens of currently indexed demos.

Damage To Projects:

• 99% traffic loss overnight; sustained zero growth
• Hundreds of hours of full-time summer development rendered invisible
• Dozens of thousands of potential visits lost (likely far more); critical post-update exposure window destroyed

Support Timeline (Ticket 308203)

1. 10 Sep: Opened ticket with the first email explaining both deindexings
2. 10 Sep (1h later): Second email asking for clarification after I found out that even my now main project is deindexed
3. 19 Sep: Third email following up after 9 days of silence
4. 8 Nov: Fourth email asking why I am being ignored for over 2 months; still no reply

Moderator Interactions

• 1 Oct: Asked publicly why no support response; moderator replied, “I’ll let our admins know.”
• 10 Oct: Followed up 10 days later asking for approximate timeline; moderator: “I have no way of knowing.”
• 22 Oct: Responded with "still no response"; no moderator response

Every tag, metadata field, and guideline has been verified dozens of times over months; no policy violation found.

I am Still awaiting on:

1. Exact reason for deindexing (a specific rule broken if any or confirmation of a major error)
2. Requirements on what to change to restore indexing (if anything needs changing)
3. Approximate reindexing date

Will update this thread if/when resolved.

BakeKo, love you all!!!

Yea it looks like it, I have seen no response too; I will be making a new community post now to draw attention since this one is getting no response from the mod.

41 days and still no response; my projects are severely impacted, I potentially lost dozens of thousands or even more visits; thousands of downloads because of this; and still no response.

I still have not received any response. May I at least know approximately when to expect a response?

I have 3 projects up. Project Sweepurr is set to allow payments and I know it is deindexed since the drama. That one is not the project in question. I know that paid nsfw games are not allowed on itch.io because of payment processor tyranny with their censorship.

The projects in question are the other 2 projects (Sweepurr demo and Furrmatch) which are set to "no payment". Sweepurr demo is a demo version of the project Sweepurr. I have seen other devs having a "demo page" of their paid games so I tried to do the same and it got indexed and than deindexed a day later.
As for my latest project Furrmatch, it has been set to no payments a long time ago and was properly indexed for a long time, than it got deindexed for no reason and has been since (22ish days ago). (edit: clarity of the situation better explained)

Saw other developers doing the same thing and had no issue having their projects indexed; also there is no rule prohibiting promotion of other products. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the problem myself and found that I broke none. The deindexing was probably triggered by frequent bug fixes I did on the latest project but I can not be sure of that. Thanks for trying to help tough.

Nope, that is only for paid nsfw content. My projects are free so they are exempt from those rules. "If you plan to collect money for your content" is the context of the listed rules you are referring to. But thank you for trying to help.

Thank you. The projects in question are adult but are set to "no payments" so there should be no issues there from what I know. And the projects had a clean indexing past and no problem until the recent issue. Thanks for the quick reply.

Dear itch.io Support Team,

I am checking in again about Support Ticket ID 308203. It has been over 20 days and I received no response. 

My projects got deindexed out of nowhere, with no reason or notification given, even though I have stuck to the rules and had no problems before. This situation has significantly impacted the visibility of major updates I spent all summer working on and effectively nuked all my efforts into oblivion. 

I sent three emails (Sep 10, Follow up 1: Sep 10, Follow up 2: Sep 19), but it’s been nearly a month with no word, and it’s really hurting my projects.

I know you are busy, and I appreciate everything you do, but could you please bump the ticket or something so I can help if I can to resolve this situation.

Thanks, BakeKo.

No problem. Thank you for the feedback; it is very helpful! I want to make my product shine as much as I can; so any improvement I can make; I will make. Love u!!!

I think I found the issue, it is because of notorious architecture of Galaxy A13; sorry. I uploaded a new version (0.57c compatibility version) for android so it is compatible. Try it out now.

I think it is the Samsung auto blocker feature. Try to disable it in the Settings > Security and privacy > Auto Blocker, then retry installation. If this does not work than I really do not know what it is since I can install the app on every android version above 6 in my emulator. I hope I helped.

Android 14 should be more than sufficient. What error are you getting? Maybe the phone is blocking installations outside the play store?

What phone do you have and what is your android version? The software might be too old or new; check if you have system updates.

Thank you very much. The game is a just demo right now, so many more features are coming. I was thinking the same think, and realize the gameplay is simple right now. I will surely add some story and more interactive gameplay attached to the story before release. As for the editing tools for my art, I will add in the description; you are right.

Thank you for your feedback!!! Love u <3

I think I have fixed all the issues now, whoah. Thank you so much for your support and concern. You too have a nice day/night!!! Love <3

I will try to fix those as fast as possible, thank you for the feedback soooo much!!! 

New update just dropped; and I have a feeling you will like it!

Linux support is available in the latest update, check it out.

I get why AI has a bad rep; I agree that it is unfortunately used to make the dead internet theory more true every day. Having said that, it does not mean it, like every other tool, can not be used for both good and bad. It is truly unfortunate that people have chose to use AI to make the internet a worse place; we should be mad at those people, not the tool they use. 

As for my usage,
I upscale and edit my images with AI because it saves me a TON of time; time I do not have. And I have to do it in order to make my art presentable and worth my audience in my eyes. The art that I draw is too low res and low detail to fill up a native HD, let alone 2K or 4K screen and still be presentable; and I just do not have the time to draw them in native resolution. Maybe when I get to make some other games where I do not need the art to be this high res, I would put out the original art with zero digital editing.  Or maybe when I get enough money to make a digital drawing setup to speed up the process; but until than I am forced by my time and money constraint to resort to using whatever is available to me.

And I am very thankful for your feedback. I will try my best to please as much of my audience as possible. Love is all I want to spread!

I gotta moderate my own comments because itch.io bot spam system is failing for some reason. Do NOT click ANY links that are not directly posted by me.

I will probably do linux support next update; and thank u very much for your support

I mentioned that I use AI to help me; and I use appropriate tags. I spend dozens of hours (most of my "free time" from collage) per image. It would be impossible for me to draw it on my 12 year old PC pixel by pixel, so I have to scan my paper arts; than digitalize them manually. I do not have money to buy expensive equipment to draw on the screen, I can barely afford a decent mouse.  Because of this I use all available tools to speed that process up; and yes, that includes AI (mostly to upscale the image) since I do not have time to make a large image on paper at "native" resolution since that would take hundreds of hours instead of dozens. 

I also use AI to add some detail where I cant do so with my cheap pencil kit on  a small drawing or where I cant use my mouse after I digitalize the art. I try to use as little AI as possible, but I just cant spend hundreds of hours adding thousands of small details pixel by pixel; and I can not add them on paper since my paper drawings are very small (thus I upscale them after I digitalize them).

I hope people will appreciate my work, dedication and creativity but above all else enjoy it. If you personally do not like it, you have all rights to do so and to express that criticism; I just ask for it to be constructive so I can better my artwork and provide a better user experience.

I do this hobby not only because it brings me joy to create these artworks; I do it to bring joy to my audience so that they can enjoy it too. I hope you like the game and the art; thank you for your feedback.

Love you all <3!

I will probably roll out linux support next update, so stay tuned!

If it pleases my audience and I have time to do it; I will do it. Dont be sorry, I am glad you are giving me ideas. Thank you!!

Certainly, I will look into either making a special version of the current game, or just a toggle in the game to switch to gay content. 

This of course will be a significant challenge since making art consumes most of my development time; but I like doing it so as long as I have time it will not be a burden.

Thank you for your support! I hope you like the current version too.

I will consider making a gay version of some kind if demand is present. Thanks for your feedback!!!

Android is available now!

Android is available now!

Hello. Sweepurr was my first project, so I chose minesweeper minigame because of the coding. I have been getting complaints that people do not really like minesweeper style games so in my next project Furrmatch I have changed that.

The Furrmatch project is still not released due to me being busy with collage (lots of exams). I am close to releasing it tough, so I think it will be released soon with all the features in its description and maybe even more.

As for the save files; the first game uses PlayerPrefs (meaning there are no real save files; they are in the registry). In my new game Furrmatch I am looking to build a real save system to solve the issue.

I am so glad you like the games and I am VERY grateful for your support!!! I am here to answer any more questions you have, have a wonderful day/night!

Hello. You unlock the gallery by beating the levels. Every level has an image that will be unlocked in the gallery.

Your antivirus could be preventing you from opening the game. I am not familiar with mac devices because I do not own one. I think it is called "Gatekeeper" which prevents some apps (usually unknown or unverified 3rd party apps) from opening. Try making an exception in the security settings or maybe disabling it.

It should be just a simple extract and run. I am not sure what your specific problem is so I can not help you without more information.

I am working on it. It is finals week for me now, a lot of obligations that are slowing me down. I am glad to hear that you want to support my work, I really appreciatethat. Thank you for your support!!!

Do not worry about it; I am tankful of any feedback.

When I make it, I will post an update devlog. Follow the game page and my Itch.io account and you will be notified.