itch.io

If you check the forum, you'll see that this question has been answered several times (and it appears in the documentation). Itch only validates interviews when you request your first withdrawal, not before, since validating the interview costs $3, which is deducted from your first withdrawal.

I think you're overthinking this (my commentary).
The guy asked for help with a music issue, and I simply told him he's better off getting help through the link I gave him than by asking here. That's all.

As for things like "licenses need to be read carefully" or "the costs of hiring a professional artist can be very high," etc., I agree with you. But I don't think those are the point of the conversation, and while you have some valid points, it would be better to elaborate on them constructively so the person who asked the original question can receive meaningful feedback.

EDIT:

and you are right my post was shit i deleted it im sorry this is my point thx

I replied before reading this.

As I mentioned before, I think you have valid points, but you should address them to the original creator. I expressed my general opinion on the topic above. Here, I was simply pointing out where it's easier to find help if they want to work with someone.

For my part, there's no problem. I've also been there—annoyed about something and ending up saying things that I later realize weren't entirely correct, so it's all good ;)

I didn't understand your irony.

In that section of the forum, there are people offering and asking for help (art, music, programming, etc.), both free and paid, so I can't see where your criticism lies.

The problem is that the Itch staff is often overwhelmed with work, and response times can be very long, so all I can say is be patient.

You can try copying the ticket number from the forum and politely asking the moderator to inform the staff about your case.

First, this forum is answered by the community, not the staff.

Second, it seems the automated anti-scam filter has flagged your posts as suspicious. To clarify, this doesn't mean you did anything wrong; it simply means the automated system detected something suspicious, and your posts must be reviewed and approved by a human first. The best course of action is to contact Itch support, explaining the error message and what you normally do (posting links to YouTube videos where you share gameplay of those games).

You're not the only one, and I agree with what you're saying. I also think a menu that allows filtering by language would be a good idea.

A tip: when I want to search for games in another language, I use the URL:

itch.io/games/lang-<CODE>

Where CODE is the 2-letter ISO code.

To search in German, it would be:

itch.io/games/lang-de

For Spanish:

itch.io/games/lang-es

The great thing is that when you're on the games page with the language selected, any other filters you use are automatically added to the language filter.

Could you specify which rules you're reading?

I ask because I don't recall any that mention contacting "mod," which I assume means "moderators" and not "modifications."

Community moderators don't have access to indexing and can't help you resolve the issue, which is why it seems so strange that you're citing a rule that says you should contact the moderators.

I agree with what you're saying; it would be a good idea to have a couple of moderators dedicated to reviewing and approving these messages. Currently, as far as I understand, only the staff can do it, and they're already overwhelmed with work without having to review comments.

The creator of a project is supposed to be able to act as a moderator of their own page (and approve pending messages on their page), but it seems that Itch doesn't notify them when they have messages awaiting approval. Unless you manually go to the moderation menu, you won't know, and I think that contributes significantly to the problem of many messages remaining hidden for months

What is the problem?

I'm going to assume you're genuinely looking for an explanation. If you simply want to express your frustration, it would be best to post it here:

https://itch.io/board/10017/general-discussion

But since you're posting in "Questions & Support," I assume you want to know a bit about the reason.

I also want to clarify that I'm only explaining the reason we've seen; I'm neither defending nor attacking your position, just explaining the facts.

Several months ago, there was a surge in comments with malicious links on Itch's game pages. Every day, this forum was flooded with people complaining that Itch wasn't doing anything to prevent these comments with malicious links on legitimate sites. What we know is that some of these links were designed to trick people into downloading malware onto their computers so that their credentials could be stolen, so it was crucial to prevent it.

The staff should have implemented a filter, which unfortunately catches many legitimate posts. (False positives) And now, if you check this forum, you won't see posts from people complaining about malicious links, but you will see many posts from people complaining that they can't post.

Basically, we went from a system that failed to detect fraudulent posts to one that is capturing too many false positives.

Please note that I am explaining the events; I am not discussing how effective it is or whether it is the best or worst system.

So providing it on itch.io as a sideloadable game seems moot. Would a downloadable demo be still considered as only promoting the full online game?

I've seen several projects that are precisely "demos" that have a link to Steam to buy the full game.

Personally, I don't like them, but from what I understand, they don't violate any rules and have been indexed by Itch, so I don't think there would be a problem on that front.

I don't quite understand your question either, since Redoinhunter has already answered it, but I'll try to clarify what the documentation says:

Please try not to upload just Steam keys, or put a link to your Steam store page without uploading any files. Someone buying a game on itch.io wants to be able to access it on itch.io through our website and app. If possible, your uploads should be DRM-free, but it isn't a requirement.

You can create a page on Itch that only has a link to the playdate page. Yes, the rules do NOT prohibit it (personally, I think it should be prohibited, but the rules don't explicitly prohibit it, only advise against it), but it's very likely that your page will NOT be indexed, since it doesn't offer any games within Itch.

Links to other platforms are intended to be a complement and NOT the main (and only) way to get the game.
For example, you can offer a game with achievements on Steam and a version without achievements on Itch. You create the page on Itch, upload the version without achievements to Itch, and include the Steam link in case someone wants to buy the version with achievements. The important thing is that you offer an option for people who want to buy and play directly from Itch without relying on another store.

Conversely, if your game doesn't offer this option and forces users to use another store, then you're not offering anything of value to Itch users. You'd only be using Itch to promote your game, and although the rules not prohibit it, it's likely that your page won't be indexed.

I recommend asking for help in the subforum dedicated to that, since more people involved in music creation will read it.

You can also find people offering their services there.

https://itch.io/board/10020/help-wanted-or-offered

What you should do is contact Itch support via email, detailing all the problems and providing any evidence you deem necessary. You should receive an automated reply with a ticket number.

If a significant amount of time passes without a response (as I understand is your case), you can post the ticket number here in the forum and politely ask the moderator to inform the staff about your case.

The admin made a change to the search system several months ago (I think it was over a year ago). It no longer shows users when you search, only games.

If the user you're looking for has indexed games, it will show you those; if they don't have any indexed games, it won't show you anything.

If you know the nickname, you can always use the profile URL, which has the following format:

itch.io/profile/<profile_name>

It's sometimes occurred to me—and I want to make it clear that this is just my personal speculation (and also clarify that I don't work at Itch)—that these scam companies might be reporting the original games so they get taken down, allowing them to appear as the legitimate game owners.

If they use bots, they could file multiple reports against a legitimate game, which would likely be reviewed faster because there are so many "users" reporting it.

When Itch removes the original game from its index, they upload a fraudulent copy. That way, if someone searches for the game, they'll only find the fake copy.

I want to emphasize again that this is just my speculation; I don't work at Itch and I don't know how they operate internally. But seeing how long it takes Itch's staff to process these reports, I think what I'm suggesting could be feasible.

Please note that this forum is not answered by staff, so my recommendation is that you contact support and politely ask the moderator, using your ticket number, to inform the administrator of your problem.

So it's difficult for us to understand what triggered this or how to resolve it on our end to avoid on future projects.

The algorithm that determines whether a project should be manually reviewed by staff (and therefore deindexed) is secret.

What little is known is that there's nothing you can do on your own; you simply have to wait for the staff to review it.

I highly doubt your IP is banned. I've never heard of Itch banning an IP, and secondly, your IP has almost certainly changed more than once since December (ISPs use dynamic IPs, which is the main reason why banning IPs is pointless).

What I have read is that there seem to be problems between the servers Itch uses and some countries. In some cases, it appears to be a blocking issue by the ISPs themselves, and in other cases, it could be that the company managing the servers has blocked certain geographical areas. In either case, it's something beyond Itch's control, so I doubt they can help you.

Whether or not it's "okay" depends on you and where you're targeting your product. For example, many game jams don't allow content created with generative AI. If you're going to participate in a jam, you should check its rules to determine if it's acceptable.

On Itch, you must disclose whether your product uses this type of content, as some people don't want to buy or play content created with generative AI. I should also clarify that some people aren't interested in how the content is created; they're only interested in whether they like the final product.

To help you understand, it's similar to deciding whether to make a 2D or 3D game. Some people prefer one or the other, but it's not a right or wrong decision.

On the one hand, if you use it, some people won't touch your product for that reason. But on the other hand, if your game doesn't have good music, some people won't want to play it. So, whether or not to use AI-generated music is a decision you have to make.

Look at the game's date; many games don't have that information because they predate the use of generative AI and predate Itch's policy change.

https://itch.io/t/4120453/unofficial-search-and-indexing-faq

You're missing that the moderator is a volunteer community moderator who doesn't work for Itch, doesn't receive money from Itch, and doesn't have access to Itch's systems.

In many ways, they don't have more power or information than you or I, so this is NOT their place.

We almost all agree that Itch has a serious communication problem. The few times I've been able to read messages from the staff on Discord, they've always seemed willing to help. My personal feeling is that there are too few of them, and I know that many people aren't interested in that. They're partly right, since when a service is offered and the documentation says something that isn't actually delivered, it's normal for people to get frustrated. But on the other hand, the staff are people, and I always like to treat people well, especially when they do their best to keep the system running.

Reasons for delays are rarely given. When I've read about them, they're usually due to excessive workload. Often, I've read that the problem is a suspected fraudulent transaction, which holds up the entire transfer until it's resolved. A few times, I've seen that the error is due to the user selecting incorrect information, such as requesting "another payment method" instead of PayPal or Payoneer.

As far as I know, Itch doesn't have any system that allows you to do what you're asking.

It's designed so that any game that needs to be purchased is a downloadable game, so browser-based projects can't be restricted in that way.

You could try to implement a login system yourself or some other workaround, but you'd have to find a way to do it yourself, since Itch doesn't offer it as one of its built-in options.

The admin said in a post that when a game is reviewed and manually re-indexed, they "refresh" the page so that it appears in the most recent entries. However, I don't know the exact details of how it works in these cases.

https://itch.io/t/6187844/appearing-in-most-recent-should-be-based-on-when-your-...

For example, if I go to the "Card Games" section and sort by "Most Recent," and I scroll back to the exact day my game was published, my game does not appear at all. This isn't about competition or relevance; it's about the fact that the project never entered the chronological feed for its category.

Strange, I found it without any problem.

At the time of writing, it's on page 23, along with the other games that were published 62 days ago.

The exact rules for why one game is indexed and another isn't are kept secret by the staff, but what we know is roughly the following:

When you create a game, it should appear indexed by default. However, when you publish the page or make a change, an algorithm runs that, based on several (secret) criteria, can determine that a project is suspicious and needs to be manually reviewed by a staff member. At that point, your game will be removed from the index and placed in a queue for a staff member to review. If they determine there's nothing wrong, they'll reindex it.

Therefore, not every game needs to be reviewed by the staff. We don't really know how many games are indexed directly versus how many require manual review, but if you look at the "Most Recent" page, you'll see that many games are indexed as soon as they're created, even by new accounts.

From what little we know, paid games, especially downloadable ones, are more likely to require manual review by the staff, but there isn't much more information.

When you upload a game, it can happen that it's indexed immediately, but if you're unlucky enough that the automated algorithm determines that your project needs manual review, you're forced to wait patiently until the staff has the time to review it. This is why bizarre things like what you mentioned can happen: the original project of a real person who put in the effort gets deindexed while an illegal copy gets indexed.

https://itch.io/t/4120453/unofficial-search-and-indexing-faq

I appreciate the check, but there is a big difference between being searchable by full title and being indexed in the discovery system. My game is still missing from the newest card games list and it doesn't appear when browsing by tags like card game or dungeon crawler. Typing the exact name in the search bar works, but that doesn't help with organic discovery, which is the main problem here.

Hello, I think you haven't quite understood how Itch works.

Your game is indexed, and that's all Itch can do. The other problems you're mentioning are because your title and tag aren't the best for the searches you're referring to and because you have a lot of competition.

As redonihunter already told you, if you're not appearing under the "dungeon crawler" tag, it's because you, as the developer, didn't add that tag to your page.

When you use a title name, the admin has explained that the algorithm is optimized to search for complete names, not partial ones. Therefore, if you only use "dungeon," Itch's algorithm will prioritize other pages over yours, and the staff isn't going to change the algorithm just because you ask them to.

For example, if you search for "dungeon" on Google, your game won't appear on the first page either.

Why? Because Google's algorithm returns other pages and content that it deems more relevant to the user, and contacting Google support won't change that. I mention this because you'd probably never think to contact Google because your page isn't at the top of the "dungeon" ranking. But since Itch works similarly, you do contact Itch support and expect them to resolve something that isn't their responsibility.

Remember that Itch has over a million indexed games, and when you search by title, the results are limited to the 30 titles that the algorithm considers most relevant to that search. The further the full title is from that word, the lower you'll rank in the results, which is why you don't appear.

What you need to focus on is improving your ranking. There are several posts that discuss this, but I recommend not relying on organic search results within Itch, because your game belongs to a very crowded genre. For example, if you look at the "most recent" section for card games, the first page is full of games uploaded today and yesterday. Your game is only 15 days old, but that's very old compared to all the card games being published on Itch, and you're competing against all those games and developers. Itch isn't going to help you in that competition.

https://itch.io/t/4120453/unofficial-search-and-indexing-faq

Updating your game counts as a change, and it's almost certain that this update is what triggered the system to remove you from the index.

There's probably nothing wrong on your end that you need to fix. An automated algorithm must have detected something and flagged your game for manual review by a human, and your game won't be indexed until a staff member can review it. If you check other posts, you'll see that this is relatively common, and while wait times vary, one to two weeks isn't unusual.

Personally, when the documentation refers to "Established sellers," I don't think it applies to an account that's barely a year old and is limited to donating. On Itch, to "sell" a game, the client must be able to "download" it, so projects that are only HTML are not considered sales.

The problem is that the video game market is horribly saturated. It doesn't matter if your game is good or not; what matters is whether the public even knows about it.

For example, if you check the "Recent" page on Itch, you'll see that the first page only shows games released in the last few hours.

Besides a good game, you need a good marketing campaign, and even that is uncertain these days. Every day I read about more people who have invested in marketing campaigns and aren't recouping their investment, simply because there's too much competition.

On Itch, there are a few niches that are much more successful than the rest, but in general, it's more of a developer's space than a player's, so the average game doesn't usually get more than a few hundred views, and very few of those will translate into sales or Kickstarter support.

I'm not going to say it's impossible to make a living this way, but I will say that the statistics are against you. The few people I know who manage to pay their bills with indie games are people who have been developing games for years and have created several titles, building a large and supportive fanbase over time. But achieving that with your first game in a short amount of time is very difficult (well, unless you do thorough market research and try to capitalize on what sells, but usually indie developers try to make the game they envision).

The only official way is through email. You can try sharing your ticket number on the Itch Discord server or asking the moderator if they can notify the staff about your ticket.

If your game file is less than 2 GB, the alternative is to upload it using Butler instead of the website. When you use Butler, your upload limit is automatically set to 2 GB instead of the website's 1 GB limit.

And most likely you'll never hear anything.

Look. The itch staff is very small compared to the number of people who need support, so they have a policy of not responding unless they need additional information.

A suggestion doesn't need to be answered, just processed. Based on my experience, a single person won't get a new option added to the tools, but if many requests accumulate over time, at some point the admin will make an update and you'll suddenly have it, but they'll never reply to inform you about these kinds of decisions. At least, I've never seen or heard of them doing so.

Creating a game as a product is a task that requires a team of people with diverse skills, where a game designer plays a central and crucial role.

In a game jam and especially at an amateur level, the truth is that most people tend to work as one-man army. And it's almost impossible for a group to search for a game designer.

What you should do is design your game and then look for a programmer, graphic artist, musician, etc., who are willing to help you bring your idea to life, whether for a game jam or not. But I think it's highly unlikely that it will happen the other way around.

Regarding the GDD (Game Design Document): It's not necessary to have a prototype beforehand, but having one helps, as it allows you to know if a certain idea or mechanic works or not. Creating a good design document helps with game development, but actually creating it takes time, and in a game jam, time is often scarce. Therefore, it's almost impossible for a team to afford to wait for someone to create a GDD before starting to develop the game itself. They're usually created on the fly and in a very simple way, and frankly, they're not usually created at all.

Just to clarify, the algorithm never indexes your game. As far as we understand, by default your game should be indexed, but the algorithm determines (for some reason) that your project needs to be reviewed manually, so it deindexes the project until a staff member reviews it and reindexes it manually.

But Is it really doesn't matter if I wait or not? Especially for a first time seller?

I couldn't tell you.

What you're saying makes sense. If you wait for your game to be indexed and then update it, the algorithm might determine that your update doesn't require a review.

The problem is, there's no guarantee the algorithm won't flag you again when you update.

On the other hand, if you update before the manual review, the game might fall back in the review queue, but we also can't be sure how much additional time that might cost.

That's the dilemma.

You need to contact support.

However, keep in mind that other people are in the same situation, and the staff has a list of games to review, so contacting them won't necessarily get your game reviewed before the others.

As has been discussed several times in the forum, any change (not just a major one) can move you back in the queue.

Even so, you should consider that we don't have official information on how the list works. Therefore, I can't guarantee that making that update will actually get you to the bottom of the list. The administrator has mentioned that the order isn't solely based on date; other factors influence it, such as the traffic you generate. However, exactly what those factors are and how they influence the ranking is a staff secret.

What I can tell you is that it doesn't matter whether you wait to be indexed or not. The moment you make a change to your project, you run the risk of being deindexed and having to wait for a new review. So, waiting to be indexed before making the update doesn't guarantee anything. For this reason, I always recommend not relying on being indexed and focusing on your users and promoting yourself.

Sure, it's possible, but the issue isn't whether it's possible or not, but whether a Windows antivirus can detect that, and the answer is categorical: it can't, because it would have to analyze the code of a script against a specific emulator vulnerability (and we're talking about a very small niche of 8-bit games), and that's not how antivirus programs work in Windows.

if it’s typical for most games.

https://itch.io/t/3954779/share-your-analytics