itch.io

It seems to only "search" the "suggested" list. Or whatever we wanna call it. The top list that get's autocompletion on the website search while you type.

Since the regular site search is disabled on the Itch app, I have to assume, this is intentional, and I can guess reasons, if that really is intentional.

Search is literal title search (and literal user name search, but the results are the games of those users). It might just be, that practically no one uses search to search for games that are not also on the suggested list. One just does not search an unknown and obscure game by it's title. One does "search" unknown games by tags. And the search bar does not search games by tags.

Or it is just broken for the app, and they removed it, because it only ever gets used by developers searching their own games.

Why would people upload viruses on this site?

Is that a serious question? Those people are criminals. That's what they do all day long.

I suspect, it is a side gig of people like this https://www.trtworld.com/article/23e1fe1c3220

You should not download new & shiny stuff here. Itch is infested with malware. On any given day there are dozens of new uploaded malware projects. There is always a time frame for the malware to be visible and unquarantined. Longest I saw was two years. Several over half a year. And a lot with several weeks.

Stick to browser games and pages with a lot of followers (1000+) plus comments.

If you want to see "good" and "bad" games, select a metric and look at the top and bottom end. Though the bottom end might just be obscure and not bad.

Itch has a lot of tags. You can write in any tag you like. You are not restricted to the suggestion list. So if you are interested in games about a certain topic, just try, if some people use it as a tag.

Some jams have interesting games, as those are as indie as it gets. https://itch.io/jams/past

While there is no buyers remorse refunds or try before buy, they usually do refunds that have a reason. No "fraud" complaints needed. That you noticed too late, that this is ai made and you actually cannot use it for the intended purpose is a good enough reason, imho. They decide each case individually, but do not expect this to happen within a few days right before a weekend.

It is this feature https://itch.io/docs/creators/interact

And that feature works for people that do not even have an Itch account. For those it would be the only method of updating them about new content, I guess.

But apparantly, some developers actually join big bundles to send such mails.

Anyway, you do not need to interact with a game to be put on the mailing list. You need to own it. If it is in your library under the purchased items, you are automatically on such a list. I am not sure if I misremember, but it could be that big bundles are supposed to be configured in a way, that you would need to manually add the items from the bundle to your library, for that mailing list thing to trigger. Maybe that changed or maybe the bundle was not configured properly.

Or maybe you did add the games to your library, either manually or by a script. Some older discussions about that issue mention people adding games from big bundles via script. But that's beside the point actually. The mailing list feature is active for single purchases as well, with no way of opting out before you get the first mail.

and I'm logged in to Itch through the app

When I just tried, my app is logged in, but the browser page it displays was not, as it shows a log in button. Very strange.

You need to open the More Information box that is located after the description and before the comment section of a page. The tags are in the "genre" and "tags" section.

I skimmed that trailer and categorized it "action adventure", because you operate the game in real time. The opposite would be a turn based system.

The tag explanation on Itch says this:

Action RPG

Combing element of Role Playing like character development, equipment, stats, and open-ended stories with real time action.

Action-Adventure

Blending elements of action and exploration, these games often feature combat, puzzle-solving, and narrative-driven quests. Players navigate immersive worlds, overcome obstacles, and engage in dynamic battles while uncovering the story and developing their characters' abilities.

In your introductory description you liken the game to Legend of Zelda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda 

Genre Action-adventure

A key element is, that those game require physical skill of the player. If you can fail puzzles, if you do not move the character at the correct time or activate the right skill at the right time. That sort of thing. If you just walk around and explore things, that's an exploration game or even a walking simulator. 

What can also help is to look at popular games on Steam. If you think, your game is similar to a particular game, look at the tag list for that game. It should give you a very good estimate how players call certain things. The tags on Steam are user chosen and you will see the 20 tags in a sorted order. Unfortunately, the Zelda games are not on Steam ;-)

What could be the reason?

Quarantined games are not indexed while in quarantine. Your page is in quarantine.

There are no notifications about index status nor quarantine status. Or reasons given, when asked.

Itch does a poor job of being intuitive.

"Search" does not search the way one might supsect. The search box is literal title search. And results for this are indeed capped at around 60.

What you want is tag search. The box that says "Select a tag..." - which is not accurate. You can freely write in a tag there, even if it is not selectable. (Astronomy is selectable)

https://itch.io/games/tag-astronomy

Coincidentally, there are currently only 57 games that feature this tag. But you will notice how those games often do not have the literal word "astronomy" in their title or subtitle. And how results of title search for astronomy often do not have that tag.

And the search box is even inconsistent how it reacts to search terms that are also tags. It does display astronomy in the suggestions that pop up while typing, but not in the results. Compare to what happens if you search for horror.

The devs that do that usually do that on one account.

It depends on many factors, if using two accounts would be wise. Or if it might even be unwise to not do so.

In my opinion the main issue is, if your sfw version will be marketed towards children or not. Or if it is just sfw for technical reasons, but the audience is still adults. Also, Itch might disagree, since nsfw is only vaguely defined. And if you split your accounts, you split the followers and ratings.

A "streamer" mode might do the trick. Big games that feature nudity often have such. A configure option to make the game safe for streaming.

If you make several games, it would be wise to split your audiences into "family friendly games" and nsfw games. But you say you want to make a nsfw game that has a sfw version.

And if you use your account for other things than publishing, please note, that you cannot configure your account to not see nsfw games, after you have released a nsfw game. 

I should just not mention the educational stuff in the advertisement

What is your target audience? People wanting to learn. People wanting to play an action adventure.

If your audience is people wanting to play games, it might not help to highlight the educational aspects. Oh, there are games like that. For language learning. Or history learning. And all sorts of topics. And the developers might sugarcoat the learning material with a game, so it does not get boring.

Would you play a game, if you see the educational tag? Or would you assume it is one of those games that disguise lectures as a game? Add to that some rather boring screenshots where different places are shown, just like you would see in history class, and my first impression would be clear - and possibly wrong.

It depends what your game really is. Was some gameplay created around the topic, or was the topic used as fluff for some rpg game? Since you used the phrase "inspired" and not "based on" in your description, I would assume your game is historically as acurate as all those ninja games with black robed fighers are about Japan. And people do not play games with ninjas, because they want to learn about historical spys, but because ninjas are cool and a good excuse to have a fighting game.

Your game seems to have a witch from folklore as an excuse to have a magic rpg game.

Yes, you can use animated screenshots. Just look at the games in  https://itch.io/games/tag-action-rpg/tag-rpgmaker . As a random example, just hover your mouse over the game Echo-Our Voice. Even in the hover screenshots there are animations. And those animations make abundantly clear, that this is not a rpg maker turn based combat style type rpg game.

Look at other examples and think about, if the advertisements those games do, would apply to your game. I am talking about the features those games do highlight with their screenshots and description.

And if your game is such an action adventure, you should also look at the tags those games use. People looking for that kind of game will look there.

I thought that Itch being much bigger would get it more attention

Itch has 1.3 million games and not really a big audience. The most popular developers have maybe 30k followers. And even a "known" developer like Hempuli has only 12k followers. But the game Baba Is You has 20k reviews on Steam. I knew Baba years before I even knew Itch existed.

There is little promotion done by Itch. Compared to Steam, they do zero. On Itch you might visit the recommendation page, but mostly you will browse tags for your interests or visit the popular pages, or both.

But even for the recommendation pages, you will need accurate tags. You have 1 main genre and 10 freely choseable tags/genres. You should chose tags that people will use to find games like your game. And tags that describe the game and make it appealing to the target audience.

https://itch.io/games/tag-educational is actually in the genre list on the left side. Look at games in there and decide, if it fits there or not. Same for the other tags.

The first step is having people see your game in their browsing lists. For which tags are good.

The second step would be to make it appealing to them by showing in the screenshots and desription, that it is indeed a game they would like to play.

And the third step would be to make good on the advertisement promise to get good ratings, instead of disappointment ratings.

That's my opinion about how all this works. 

Your game is not indexed, because all nsfw games that accept payments are not indexed.

And the copy is a malware fake.

What you are really asking is, how to do this with no budget, aren't you ;-) 

Because if you have budget, the answer is easy: Hire experts and have a budget for this. That's effective.

There are many threads about this question. But as far as I know, no one has come up with a one fits all solution that works. Promoting a game is not easy.

I see multiple things that might be done for passive promotion for your game. But the cheapest active promotion, apart from being super lucky, would be to find a streamer playing your game, and the game being appealing to the target audience to begin with. So you need something that holds the promises you make in advertisement. Unfortunately, the streamer that did play your game is not really famous.

Thoughts that came to mind, when glancing at your game. (There is only rethorical questions in there)

Why is this for free, if you worked 10 years on it. There is a certain expectancy for free vs paid games. It's different on Itch than on Steam, because of the publishing hurdle Steam has, but in general, the price of something does set a base level of what you will expect and how you will interpret the circumstances. Of course it helps, if the game will deliver what is promised by the price. You will see a lot of cheap rpg maker games on Steam. There is an audience for this. And there is an audience for things that are African, even fake stuff like Black Panther.

So if you consider the game to be as professional as those $ 2-5 rpg maker games on Steam, maybe consider a separate premium release with some extra goodies.

The description and tags are missing how this is an action adventure game and not a typical rpg maker game (unless I am mistaken). This is a huge problem, if this is not clear. People looking for rpg maker games will be disappointed and people that do not like the rpg maker combat style will not give a second look, since they think it is one of those.

That boils down to the general advice to be appealing to your target audience. But for that your target audience has to recognise the game for what it is and find it under appropriate search terms via google and appropriate tags on Itch browsing. And if they glance at the cover and even hover over the cover and see the screenshots, that should be very clear and be highlighted. If all you highlight is the fact that this game features African culture in an educational way .... does that sound like a fun game or like some school lesson in disguise? Do you want to appeal to parents or to people looking to play a game that is not the usual fantasy tropes? Perhaps the first adventure game themed around African art and cultures.

Look here for inspiration https://itch.io/games/tag-action-rpg/tag-rpgmaker . Be it tags used, or how pages might look. Including screenshots. How do people highlight the cool features of their games.

My impression of your screenshots was not good. I have no clue what all this is supposed to be, and how the game is supposed to be fun based on these pictures. Yes I know, that's super hard to capture. There's a reason why there are people that get paid to do such things.

You could include animations how the character does some moves. Or dialogue with interesting npcs you will meet. An example puzzle. Show a skill tree or how you improve the protagonist. Images that look more interesting than holiday pictures of your relatives that they forced on you.

 The title of the game. I do not know what it means, what it could mean, what it is supposed to mean. Not even after reading the game page. For some, that might make the game mysterious and they get get curios. For me, that just means the developer could not bother to make an actual title that would be helpful. If I google Nsala, I mostly get a fish soup recipe, so there is that. Maybe consider adding a subtitle or at least changing the one liner that appears below the title. The one where you currently hightlight that african cultures appear as a theme.

graduating with a degree in computer science

And the AI disclosure of your game reads: Code, Graphics, Sounds, Text

You also mentioned ai data moderation. Since you have a lot to do with ai, you might want to clarify if you plan to create assets with ai or with strictly no ai. There is no middle ground. Any ai usage will disqualify your assets for a lot of game developers, due to various reasons. Not the least that the game they would create would be considered a game with ai. If they want to spend money on assets, buying ai assets is only a valid option, if the game already contains ai. Otherwise it is very unwise.

Since they keep that kind of information private, I'm conducting a survey based on community responses.

You will not gain any statistical data from a survey in the public message board. Too few responses.

But the top sellers (with ai or with no ai) will give you an overview what people are willing to buy and for how much. You can apply more filters. Like the last 30 days. Or additional tags like fantasy or pixel art. You can even cross check with the filter of paid assets and how popular they are.

You should clarify, that you are talking about ai assets. At least I assume such, since you used ai a lot in your game and you mention a background in computer sciencs and not art.

If you want to know what sells on Itch, just have a look.

https://itch.io/game-assets/top-sellers/tag-ai-generated

And in case you do not use ai:

https://itch.io/game-assets/top-sellers/tag-no-ai

Just to be sure.

You did try to activate the collected by Itch method and connected Paypal/Payoneer account and accepted terms of service and all that and it does not let you activate that method?

That you cannot check the box on the bundle is obvious. And you will only have that payout issue button, if you actually do have a payout which could have an issue.

It does not update the date displayed there? Since you asked for the interview as a possible cause, I thought it worth mentioning that those do not last forever. I have bad memories about angry people that did not realize that. Also Itch does or did a bad job of showing this error.

The Itch app cannot search at all. I do not know why. Even the regular search box is not displayed on page.

and even there you have to be lucky to find the game

That's probably why. Because it is not reliable to begin with. Search results are capped and it is literal title search. Generic titles are very hard to find by literal search. There's at least 10 different games by the exact title Do Not Disturb.

The "search" box in the app only searches the top games. It might lower user experience, if all the copy cats would be displayed along with the thing they imitated.

Those tax interviews typically hold 3 years, if I read correctly in other threads. And it might be that this is never really validated, if you never request a payout.

Dislike needs no justification. It is preference in games. We can discuss your views in another topic. But be warned, that flame war topics are against the rules. It might be a rather short discussion though, since I dislike ai graphics pixel art about gay characters. I would still play such games, but it would not be bonus points to peak my interest, and I would not vote games down because of such elements.

You came here, triggered by an example list of ratings that have nothing to do with the games itself and misrepresented this listing of examples as a comparison between the dislike reasons. Right there you started acting like one reason for dislike would be better than any other. This was not the point of the examples, this is not the point of this thread. But you try to make this about ai. Please go talk about ai somewhere else.

We are talking about rating games here, and not about how justified someone is in their dislike. Ai is legal. In some countries lgbt is not legal. People from those countries can justify that they are more justfied to dislike lgbt, than you can justifiy disliking ai. But why you dislike something or if you are in any way justified to dislike something, is not relevant in this discussion.

Try to justify it here anyway, and you are offtopic. Go to other threads where you can discuss your views on pixel art and other things.

If you systematically downrate games, because you dislike an aspect of those games, you are abusing the rating system and it borders harassment. And of course, it would be "bad faith" to just list up a tag you dislike and downrate all those games.

If you merely downrate games you played, based on your preferences - including dislike towards lgbt topics, ai usage, usage of low resolution graphics, or because the developer uses the "wrong" social platforms - that would be ok.

But regular people would just remove points from the 5 score for their dislike triggers and not go out of their way to evaluate games that feature their personal no-deal triggers.

From my view, you propose a solution to a non-issue. And to make it worse, I do not think your solution would work.

The solution to rating abuse is to remove the abusive ratings.

So, would your solution make it any better? The harrasment ratings would still be given. The developer would still be harrassed. The score would still go down, no matter how you calculate the average. And if the issue is already "fixed", why bother with removing fake ratings. We have implemented a solution after all.

So, would your solution make the rating system better for everyone? Like developers with very few ratings? Or users expecting the rating score to say what exactly? An important point. What do users expect the rating score to say? Do they expect a simple average or do they expect some convoluted math that flattens the rating and makes it nice?

On Itch, giving a rating is already a rating in itself. 1.0 million of the 1.3 million game here do not have a rating score. My advise to people trying to downrate the thing they do not like, is meant serious, even if it might read tongue in cheek. The smirk between the lines stems from the irony that people downrating things are actually promoting the thing they do not like. But again, if they used fake accounts to manipulate ratings, that should be reported. Each rating has a report button, in case you did not know. But that should only be used for fake and abuse and harrasment and not to try cull 1 star ratings.

I'm definitely not a bot

Oh come on. That's what a bot would say.

But it makes me wonder if any of the spam comments used youtube. The patreon wave was very concerning.

There was talk in another thread like this, that the filter is being worked on to generate less false positives.

Your comments should also appear to the developer. The message might talk about a "moderator", but from what I understand, the moderator of the comments is the developer first. And only secondary Itch staff.

 a bunch of accounts

I believe you meant: fake accounts, not bunch of accounts ;-)

Itch does remove those, but it can take very long. And for some ratings, they might disagree. Or just forgot in all the swamp of other issues they get requests about.

I agree that people should only rate games they are interested in. They need not necessarily have played them, but it's just lame to rate things for which you are not the target audience.

For those situations with few votes you should also not underestimate counter votes. People that might not have rated at all normally, but see the game having a bad average and deciding to give it a bump, because they think the game is (literally) underrated. It's also a reason why this downvoting business will might achive the opposite what people think it would. A situation with a bunch of most likely fake accounts is completly different though.

To anyone reading here, I strongly advise against up- or downrating games to promote or discourage content. You should only rate games you want to play. Ratings on Itch are mostly for the person rating them, as the reviews are not attached to the game for everyone to see.

If you start rating down lgbt ai pixel art games, the algorithm would think you are interested in lgbt ai pixel art games, but have just not found the right game and will recommend such games to you. After all, you constanly browse the ai-generated tags and the lgbt tags and the pixel art tag. It's obvious those are topics you are interested in.

And if you really dislike certain content so much, giving them ratings is the wrong way to discourage it. It increases popularity of the games in the eyes of the system. You browsed the game and were engaged enough to bother with a rating. Also, everyone knows that pixel art games get downvotes, so you will not let anyone know that the game is bad for using sub par resolution. Instead you improve the exposure of the game. And ruin your recommendations.

Sorry for all the text. I got carried away and I can type fast. If you want to see how Itch handles ratings adjustments, there are some discussions about how ratings in jams are handled. There are systems in place to deal with the number of ratings. A 4.5 with 10 ratings is not the same as 4.5 with 20 ratings. There they do have solutions for small amount of ratings. But only to compare them to other games in a similar situation, like being in the same jam.

But there are not really any "good faith 1s"

What does 5 or 1 (or 2, 3, 4) even mean?

On Steam you have a clear question: would you recommend the game? Yes/No? There is no middle ground. Does it mean that a "No" translates to a "1-Star out of 5 - would not play again" rating? Unfortunately, in some way, yes, it does.

Do you rate 1 on games you do not like (for whatever reasons, which includes disliking the company for including a root kit drm system or other meta things, like their dlc policy), do you rate them 2, or 3, or not at all? Everyone will have a different answer here.

Or do you rate 4 on the games you like and only 5 on your favorite games? Wait, there are favorites and there are all time favorites. So better rate 3 on good games, 4 on your favorites and 5 on the things you play again and again. That leaves 2 for the average games and 1 for games you did not like.

I hope you get my point here. Because I very strongly disagree with your notion that there are no good faith 1 star ratings. Players are not game critics that are paid to give consistent ratings of games according to some defined criteria. Everyone has their own valid views on what the 5 different numbers mean and when to use them. And some people will only give 1 or 5 stars. While others will only give 5. People giving the full spectrum are rare in my estimate. Giving a rating at all is already a big deal on Itch.

and when there are, then the average rating would we very close to 2 anyway.

So your assumption seems to be, that a game has an objective rating and players rating that game will only deviate from that rating by very little. Like the objective rating of a game is 2.5, so with the standard deviation of 1.5, people can rate it from 1-4. Whereas this other game has an objective rating of 4.5 and obviously players rating it less than 3 deviated too much and therefore gave a rating in bad faith.

Your solution to just weed out the bad faith ratings and try to preserve the apparant average when doing so, is very similar.

But it is the other way round. The "objective" rating emerges after many (>100 at least) people give their subjective ratings. And this includes people that will downvote a game for lame reasons. Or upvote it for reasons that are not any better.

2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5, adding a one here is not deserved and can be seen as in bad faith

You do not know why the ratings are that way. So you cannot claim any knowledge at all about how deserved a new rating would be. Even if you disagree with the newest rating of 1, it would just be your subjective opinion. People have different opinions. One person's trash is another person's favorite game and vice versa. For all you know the ratings of 5 might have been undeserved.

Giving a rating of 1 is not the defining attribute of a bad actor.

2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5, making it 5 4 3 2 2 2 2 2. In this case a 1 could be justified.

Ohhh, you assumed the ordering of the ratings were of significance. I just counted up to have every different rating, except 1 and added some 5s. Then I added a 1 and then removed a 1 and a 5 to show that the average still goes down if you remove a 1 and a 5 and thus showing that this system does not preserve the average. 

But no, you cannot claim any knowledge about justification here either and it also goes again into this assumption of a correct objective rating. Where any nonconforming rating is somehow unjustified.

The average is calculated by looking at the data. You do not look at the average to say some data is in bad faith.

that gets together to downvote games

That's an abuse of the system. A review bombing. It should be reported to the platform, so they can take action. Itch does take action, but they remove fake ratings in bulk and that can take a good while.

Also, if the accounts are not fake, but genuine persons, they might rule, that this is no different from a book club reading a book and collectively voicing their opinion about that book. Though if they do that systematically to just downvote certain things, Itch might still take action. They also do take action against fake upvoting.

But you were talking singular "bad faith" ratings and how to remove them from cacluation of an average. I shall repeat my opinion about this. A solution for games with only 10 ratings ain't gonna happen. And games with 100 ratings don't need it. And actual abuse of the rating system should be reported to Itch. Giving a 1 star to a game is not abuse of the system. Giving it to hundreds of games, just because they share a tag you do not like, would be abuse of the system though, imho.

To use your example of the 1 star with the gay comment. Maybe the rater would have wanted 2 persons to be gay. Can't be gay by yourself, so the 1 person was seen as a token character and received very negative. Or the person did not read description and was surprised to encounter the topic and was disgruntled by that and left a 1 star. I assume you paraphrased examples. For an actual bad faith example, it is not very bad faith. Bad actors usually would hurl insults and worse in harassment ratings. Or use fake accounts. For both the solution is to report them, and not change the rating system itself.

A few words.

Read the sticky threads. Read the community rules.

Why games get into quarantine is secret, so do not expect information about this. It will be several factors coming together. The solution to get out of quarantine is ... waiting.

If that takes too long, read the sticky and the rules again.

Delisting is a side effect of quarantine.

A quick glance at your game says to me that you use 2d graphics. If your game is 3GB, you might be doing some things wrong. https://itch.io/t/2885012/tips-for-reducing-the-size-of-your-build The short of it: use lossy compressed webp. And not something like png or lossless webp. I have seen games use 3MB per image, where it should have been 150kB.

The real issue is, that most games do not have many ratings. Solving an issue for games with less than 10 ratings is not gonna happen, imho. And games with 100 ratings do not have this issue.

Downvoting a game for personal taste or opinions is actually a good faith rating. Players are not quality testers giving a paid review in alpha test. They tell why they would not like the game, or in most cases, just rate negative without saying why. Same with many positive ratings: they do not reflect the quality of the game.

Your way of pruning ratings is not improving the rating system. Worse, it would destroy the little trust it has. Taking the average already evens out good and bad ratings. You need a lot of ratings to start considering removing statistical outliers. But if you do have enough ratings to have a statistic, taking the average is sufficient and what's expected for a 5 star rating system.

Simply canceling out a good rating, because a bad rating is coming in, is unfair (even with a threshold). You math does not work out. The average is going down, if you remove a good rating. Your example only works, because you chose a bad example of a game with a perfect 5.0. Of course 5.0 is staying at 5.0, if you simply change the number of 5s there are.

Try it with 2 3 4 5 5 5 5 5 . That's 4.25. Add a "bad faith" 1 and it would be 3.89. Remove the "bad faith" 1 and a "good faith" 5 and you have 4.14. The rating went down from 4.25 to 4.14.

And that's if you would be able to detect an incoming bad faith rating in the first place. But if you could do that ... the solution would be to remove the bad faith rating - be it a 1 or a 5. And apart from fake ratings by fake accounts, a bad faith negative rating cannot be distinguished from a good faith negative rating. Just as you cannot distinguish a genuine 5 star rating from your friends rating your game up for enouragement. 

Do not use the individual priced file feature in that way. You project costs 14.99 and has 0 files for that price.

what’s the current best practice for this

Unzip and run. Save games in the user specific location for such things, as per system variables. A backup of said save games in the unzipped "install" location for bonus points.

Any indie game that deviates from this, will get a glare and a sigh from me. Maybe some eye rolling too.

I think that method was called "portable" once. Installers faded out of fashion maybe a decade ago. Especially for indie games.

From a design point of view, a user should not come across the situation of stumbling upon a save game of your game. Your game is the only app that will load and save such files. Therefore you just put them into a location specific to your game and the user.

If you were to have a game in which for example the users could create scenarios and share those with other people, things might be different. But even then it probably would not be necessary to register a file ending on a system level for that.

when I have thousands of thousands of thousands of letters written to them

Pestering them this often will not make them work faster, but it will risk that your mails get onto a literal spam folder automatically. There are many ddos attacks on Itch.

no one can answer my question - why is my page quarantined

Such questions usually will not be answered intentionally. It's secret why games go into quarantine. Maybe it has to do with the IP adresses you connected from. Maybe with the time of day you updated projects. Maybe a file triggered on a scanner a false positive. Some game engines are notorios for that. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The list is long. It even includes that your account might have gotten hacked withour your knowledge. I have seen such things in the message board where this was told, after the hack finally was noticed by the account owner.

 I don't have a huge following

With about 2000 followers, you are among the top 2% of Itch developers in my crude estimate.

 I still hope my account gets indexed

There are accounts that are restricted from indexing. Your account is indexed.  https://itch.io/search?q=Niven+Hedinger

If you hope for a permanent quarantine protection, this is unlikely to happen. They just cannot do that for security reasons. What if your account does get hacked, after such a protection and your files get exchanged for malware and are spread to your 2k followers on your 40+ games.

And my guess would be, that whatever you do, it constantly looks suspicious to the system. Like having your payout adress in one country and updating your files from another country. Please do not post details here. It would not help, as this is community support and not support. And the message board rules want that you make your own topic about this, among other things. But again: this is community support and not support.

Because Itch has a spam filter and the moon phase aligned with the weather patterns.

(If you knew why, spammers would too, and avoid the filter.)

I can only repeat: you do not understand what people write to you. I am serious. Look at my post in English without translation. Maybe then you understand.

you missed the adulto tag when changing to English tags

You can of course disagree, but it does not seem to me that you understood my point.

You have a new game. You have changed your old game. You do have a new start for this whole process.

Any update can start a de-indexing and subsequent re-evaluation. 

So my advice was to do just that. A fresh start for the indexing process. Unfortunately, that begins with waiting for a month, because it can regularly take that long, instead of the few days mentioned in the https://itch.io/docs/general/faq

Oh, and you missed the adulto tag when changing to English tags.

I already told you my opinion what you could do, and how. Three times! Please use a better method of translation, if you do not understand what people write. 

You recently changed your games. My advice would be: wait like three weeks or so. If your games are not indexed by then, contact support by mail. If nothing happens for three more weeks (no, not an answer, but check if your games are indexed), read all the rules of https://itch.io/board/10023/questions-support

It's several weeks till one might consider contacting support. And the same for waiting for support to do anything, after you sent a mail. Several weeks is a realistic time frame.
So after you did wait twice for 3, better 4 weeks for Itch to do their indexing process, you can do exatly as the rules of the https://itch.io/board/10023/questions-support say how to, to try nudge support again.

Long time has passed, and you have new project(s). So my advice still stands. Wait an apropriate time for Itch to do their indexing process, then write to support as their faq describes, wait again an apropriate time and then do what the rules of this message board category say.

Here is the fourth time:

1. Wait 3-4 weeks.

2. Send an email to support.

3. Wait 3-4 weeks.

4. Make thread in message board with ticket number from mail respons to 2. And read rules of message board category what else to write in the thread.

5. Do not repeatedly ask in that thread you made in 4 what is being done.

You started at 4. And the only valid contact to https://itch.io/support is via email.

(I am irritated that you do not seem to understand certain things, like how support is contacted. It is clearly written in the faq and even in my answers I specifically mentioned how to contact support. By email. That you disregarded all the advice about waiting, ok, you can do whatever you wish. But I am genuinly concerned, that you have a lot of troubles because of language barriers.)

The hyperactive filter was a good idea, in my opinion. Not being able to comment for a while sucks, but it was very, very bad on comments. You will still see at some places how developers needed to take matters into their own hands, because they got spam comments hourly, promising updates and whatnot. Whit constantly evolving tactics, like links to patreon, github, images with links and even fake Itch projects.

Only if they cannot get payday, the scammers might consider stopping. 

The problem with the false positives arise, because it takes too long to clear them. A few days should be tolerable for everyone to have spam free comment sections. But many people waited longer than a month.

I hope the fine tuning of the filters is better and faster than the spam.

Assistance implies active help. Something like old Clippy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant

AI assistance sounds like you used such a helper. The disclosure questions do not even ask that. You could have gotten the plot for a game from a chatbot and it would not be covered by the disclosure. You could have used an ai assistant to playtest the game. And so on. The disclosure questions only ask about the final product. They want to know about the assets and code and that's what is filterable with the ai filters and the no-ai tag.

Therefore I disagree that this ai assintance term is simple, or accurate and precise. It is quite the opposite. It is misleading and vague.

then I would absolutely say that the tool is partially made using automated tools, and the phrase "handmade" would require some very major asterisks.

You do not need to qualify it with any scenarios how the metal parts might be handmade or not, or bring a "handmade" label into it. That's not what my analogy was about.

I did not ask if you would call it handmade or 100% handmade with a disclaimer. I asked if the whole thing would be called machine produced (just because parts of it were machine produced).

You could have an item made out of 100% machine produced items, like a bunch of lego bricks, that were turned into a playhouse by a playing child. You would not call that house machine produced. You probably would even call it hand made. It. The assembled thing.

But that's what's currently happening. If you look at a game that used ai assets, let's say graphics, that game's more information box currently says: AI Disclosure: AI Assisted, Graphics

What does ai assisted mean? It means nothing, but reads as it would mean something. It is listed in the box as if it would be a seperate category.

The solution would be to rename ai assisted into something like contains ai, and have the more information box read like this:

AI Disclosure: Graphics

Enough time has passed that you might try again. I see no reason why your stuff should be delisted, so it might be worth a try in a few weeks.

And back to my first point, there is more detail in the dashboard disclosure than the yes / no question, and the detail is available to players who want to dig for it.

Where is this detail available for players? Where can I dig for it?

As far as I know, that "detail" is only a yes/no for graphics, sound, text and code. And if any of those is a yes, then the more information box shows "assisted" + all the selected categories.

It's not about soft wording, it's about accurate descriptions and the formalism used. Right now, the wording is misleading. What it means to be in the category  https://itch.io/games/ai-assisted  aka  https://itch.io/games/tag-ai-generated is this and only this: one or more of the 3 ai asset categories or the ai code category is true.

An accurate wording for games would be: has ai assets or code.

Imagine a wood toy with metal bars for structure. The wood is hand carved, but the bars are not. So it is hand carved, but contains machine produced metal parts. 

Would you call this wood toy machine produced?

That's what's currently happening if you call a game ai generated / ai assisted. It's not. Parts of the game are. Not the game itself.

And what OP is suggesting, is an actual detailed disclosure that is telling more than: has ai assets.