itch.io

Dear No Time To Play,

Could you clarify what factors the itch.io team actually takes into consideration during their review process?

What exactly do we need to do for a major update to be considered eligible for appearing in the "Most Recent" section? I understand that the 30-day waiting period is only one of the factors taken into account. Publishing devlogs, releasing a genuinely substantial update, and maintaining a well-presented game page also seem to be part of the criteria.

However, beyond these points, I'm still unsure what itch.io expects from developers. We are already actively promoting and advertising our game ourselves. Assuming we have done all of the above, is there a specific level of traffic or engagement that itch.io looks for? For example, do we need to bring a certain number of visitors to our game page?

Or, even after meeting all of these criteria, does the final decision ultimately come down to the discretion of the itch.io team? To what extent do the opinions and judgments of the staff members reviewing the game influence the outcome?

I would greatly appreciate any clarification you can provide on how this process works.

When you publish your game for the first time, it usually has a chance to appear in the "Recent" section. However, if you wait 33 days and release a major update, even after meeting all the requirements to be featured again, your game may still not appear there. What's even more frustrating is that there is often no clear explanation as to why it didn't qualify.

Because of this, it seems that releasing your game in episodes may be a reasonable strategy, especially if you're a developer trying to grow your audience. Instead of updating the existing page, creating a new page for each major release could help your project regain visibility.

Of course, this approach comes with trade-offs. By creating a new page, you may lose your existing collections, comments, and some of the social proof that has accumulated around your project.

At the moment, this is the conclusion I've come to regarding the issue. That said, to avoid abusing the system, I believe this approach should only be used for genuinely substantial updates that can justify being treated as a new release.

Two weeks? I'm a little confused.

I just released a new version of my game and it's already live. Does that mean I need to wait up to two weeks before it can appear in the "Recent Updates" section?

I've followed all the recommendations, updated the game properly, and even driven traffic to the page myself.

Honestly, two weeks feels like a very long time for a newly released update to be recognized. Could you clarify if this is expected behavior or if there's anything else I should do?

Will this always be the case?

If I release a new update in the future, wait this long, follow all the guidelines, and still end up in the same situation, that's very discouraging.

As an indie developer, this is honestly quite demoralizing. It makes the whole process feel very unpredictable, and it's difficult to know what to expect or plan for when releasing updates.

This is traffic I brought to the page myself.

Yes, the game has been published for a while now and there has still been no response.

I looked through other threads from developers who experienced the same issue. In those discussions, people mentioned that I simply needed to wait and that an admin would eventually review it in some way.

I'm still waiting, so I was wondering if anyone knows roughly how long this waiting period usually is.

I recently released a major update for my game. I waited exactly 33 days after the previous update before releasing it. I specifically waited longer than 30 days to ensure I wasn't abusing the update system and that I was following itch.io's guidelines.

For this release, I marked the update as a "major update," published a detailed devlog, and added a significant amount of new content to the game. The update is clearly visible on the game's page and includes a substantial amount of new material.

However, despite meeting all these requirements and waiting 33 days between updates, my game is not appearing in the Recent Updates section. What makes this particularly confusing is that I can see other projects appearing under similar conditions, but my game isn't being listed.

As a developer, this is quite demoralizing because I've made every effort to follow the rules properly.

I would appreciate any clarification on why my game isn't showing up in the Recent Updates section, or whether there's something specific about my page or update that might be preventing it from appearing.

Note: The game I am referring to here is Crown of the Devil (Public Version).

First of all, thank you for the clarification.

I used the titles exactly according to their intended purpose. For previous update announcements, I chose General Update, just as it’s described.

This time, however, we’ve added a mechanical and story-related update to the game. This update changes the way players experience the game, offering them a different experience from the previous version, which is why I used Major Update. From what I understand, it’s either waiting for manual approval or just taking a bit longer for some reason.

I’m experiencing the same issue you did and was wondering if you found any solution. What’s your current status, did your game appear in “Most Recent” after the major update?

Thank you very much for your patience!

Thank you very much!

Haha, that would probably be the name of our game in an alternate universe.

Thanks! We’re glad you enjoyed it.

We’re so happy to hear that, Thank you!

Thank you! 😊 We’re excited to keep improving and can’t wait to show you what’s next and we’re always open to your suggestions and feedback!

We’re definitely planning an Android version, but we don’t have a specific release date yet. It might come with a major update or a little later. We really appreciate your patience and excitement—it means a lot to us!

Finally, my page got indexed! 🎉

I wanted to leave a few notes here in case they help anyone else who runs into the same issue.

I’m sharing information I learned from a developer I’m grateful to:

Itch.io has been experiencing some issues with payment methods over the past few months. Steam has had similar problems. I won’t go into too much detail, but a little research should make it clear why.

Here’s the main point:
Itch.io does index games with the “Name your price” option enabled, but this process can take much longer than expected — sometimes a day, sometimes weeks.
If you remove this option and make your game completely free, your page usually gets indexed much faster.

(This method worked instantly for me. However, I can’t say for certain that it was solely because of this — it’s possible the support team noticed and intervened.)

I experienced the same problem myself. Luckily, I learned the solution thanks to a developer in the community.
I hope this information helps someone!

I followed your advice, and it worked perfectly — my page got indexed right away! I’d been waiting for over a week, and now I’m honestly so happy. Thank you so, so much for sharing this tip!

I don’t think you’ll get a very satisfying answer, to be honest. They’ll probably just direct you to a page with the general guidelines — but those are often outdated and not that helpful in cases like this.

I’ve faced a similar issue with indexing myself. Some games that were released long after mine got indexed quickly, even though many of them didn’t fully meet the quality guidelines. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to be indexed.

I’m not sure if Itch.io was always like this, but lately, as developers, we’ve been left in a bit of uncertainty. They’re probably just too busy and struggling to keep up with everything.
I’ll be following this thread — I really hope your issue gets resolved soon.

First of all, thank you for your comment.
It would’ve been much better to hear these thoughts directly from an itch.io moderator, or to see them shared on an official information page. Knowing that itch.io is doing all this to make the platform a safer and better place truly feels reassuring.
However, being directed to outdated guidelines and receiving brief, surface-level replies to legitimate questions ends up leaving dedicated developers—those who genuinely care and follow the rules—in uncertainty.

An outdated FAQ makes people question whether other parts of the system are still reliable, and unfortunately, this weakens the trust of new developers who are just joining the platform.

Of course, I understand the challenges and workload the itch.io team is facing—and I genuinely believe that understanding is important.
But at the same time, as a developer, I also feel that we developers need a bit of understanding and transparency too.

Lastly, thank you again for your thoughtful comment.
Maybe this was exactly what I needed to hear from itch.io.

-You should review those two documents, because they mention that a few days to a week isn't an unusual waiting time.

There is absolutely no complaint from me about this anywhere in my text — on the contrary, I explicitly stated, "After double-checking everything step by step, we patiently waited as instructed — since it said the process could take 1–2 days, or even up to a week. So, there was really nothing to do but wait."

-They also tell you what to do while waiting. And the rules of this category tell you what to do if it takes much longer than that.

Therefore, I have no complaint or criticism about this either. However, it’s worth mentioning that instead of passively waiting, I drove traffic entirely outside of itch.io by sharing my page’s link elsewhere.



But again, my issue is not "why hasn’t my game been indexed yet" — there is no complaint about that anywhere in my text. My problem is that there are pages being indexed without even following the most basic rules stated in your guidelines. This is not just my imagination — you can check the Most Recent page yourself right now and see many examples with your own eyes.

The abundance of such cases seriously undermines the legitimacy of your guidelines. What does it say when an empty page is approved on the day it’s published and immediately placed at the top? In that situation, how seriously should the points your guidelines tell us to pay attention to really be taken? The problem isn’t waiting; the problem is that the process proceeds in a meaningless and unfair way.

Unfortunately, it seems that nothing has really changed about these complaints. When we published our game, we faced the exact same issue. But instead of panicking, we carefully read through the forums and the official guidelines.

We noticed that in about 90% of such complaints, the moderation team redirects people to this exact page:
[reference link]
[reference link2]

We made the “mistake” of taking that guideline seriously. After double-checking everything step by step, we patiently waited as instructed — since it said the process could take 1–2 days, or even up to a week. So, there was really nothing to do but wait.

During that time, we kept checking the “Most Recent” section to see if our game had been indexed. However, while monitoring that page, we noticed a serious inconsistency: Most of the newly indexed games didn’t follow the rules described in the guideline. Some of them didn’t even have proper visuals — just a one-line description. The kind of pages that look like a nearly blank A4 sheet…

At first, we thought maybe those developers were exempt because they had published games before. But no — most of them were first-time developers. And this wasn’t just a couple of isolated cases.

In the end, we realized there’s absolutely no difference between following the guideline to the letter and completely ignoring it.Either the system works entirely at random, or there’s a completely different mechanism at play. But one thing is certain: it has nothing to do with the guideline.

So I’d like to address new developers here: You don’t really need to take that guideline seriously, because it’s pretty clear that even Itch.io doesn’t.Your page could be almost empty, your game could be your very first — and still, you might get indexed purely by luck.

After reading through many similar threads in the forum, I can see that these complaints are far from rare — and most of them are absolutely justified. This is a serious issue for any platform and frankly, it reflects a rather unprofessional level of management.

At the end of the day, do you really want to have a set of guidelines that have lost all legitimacy and that nobody takes seriously anymore?Meanwhile, the moderation team keeps copy-pasting the same link in response to every complaint. It honestly feels like a bad joke.

So, what are we supposed to do now? 
Should we try reaching out to the support team — or just sit and hope that one day it’ll magically happen?