itch.io

If you look at how man followers accounts have and how many comments and ratings there are and take into consideration that the people that do comment, comment a lot, my estimation of comment usage is about 1% of Itch users.

I mean, same thing if You check a subreddit for any game and compare subscribers to active users and both of these to game's sales figures/peak players. It's just a nature of media that a small portion of a community actually engages in discussing what they love, but there's also a lot of people that read it, without replying.

I mostly scroll through idle/incrementals on here, since I'm studying the design and how everything being fueled by AI and eastern influences affects the genre, but every now and again I stumble upon a game, .exe only, with a comment or two saying it's basically a virus. Regardless of validity of such claims, it's one of those cases where an open (or at least more active) comment section also helps.

I'm not gonna flip, because I can't post comments properly, but if this is how it has to be, I believe I, as a user of a public forum, who has to register and accept a bunch of terms, deserve a better treatment in regards to the issue. Be it Support that actually responds and resolves issues, be it a separate function to call in a mod or someone for approval, some sort of account-wide verification to make sure I don't land in the comment limbo anymore and can skip months-long approval process that never finishes, or, at the very least, give the user a view into their posted comments, so I know they're actually there and don't just get deleted the moment I click "post", while I'm being gaslit into thinking there's some sort of moderation going on behind the scenes. It just sucks to have to put in effort into something, trying to be helpful or whatever, only to see it disappear into a void. And now you have to put even more effort on pointless arguments and pleas, just to maybe get someone to look at it. If we go by the logic of putting in effort and how only a small percentage of community engages in commenting, then how many of these stuck in a comment limbo actually bother to work extra hard just to bring attention to the problem?

"My advice what to do was earnest, even if it sounds dumb. Just read all the other complaint threads. Itch's way of handling support requests is "indie". And if developers have to wait for a month to get their game visible at all, I see no reason, why comments should be treated with higher priority. It's what you get, if you go to a site that does not sell you and does not have 1000+ cookies and advertisements on every corner."

Okay, on one hand that's fine. Trade-offs and stuff. On the other hand, as a legitimate company, with income, employees and actual structure, this unfortunately makes Itch look more like a garage-based weekend project than indie anything. Even waiting a year for comments aside, if waiting a month for a game to be visible (or other serious issues) is factual, this is so bad PR-wise, I'm genuinely amazed this site still operates.

Really nice, thank you. 17

It's nice. Bit of "let it play itself" though.
Can't see barrier's health, which is slightly odd, until it becomes irrelevant. Could also use some "current level" and "next level" tooltip on upgrades, just for clarity purposes, since clicking on a "Increases Main Turret Fire Rate by 40%" doesn't actually increase it by another 40%, but an increment of 10%.

Slightly annoying hit detection, where all 3 of your turret shots can hit the same enemy, who couldn't even survive one of them, essentially wasting 66% of your damage. And it just feels odd to have the game end with time still on the clock, would love to at least have an endless enemy wave till the timer runs out instead of a pop-up that blocks auto loop.

Yes. Imdb has a lot of money and a lot of advertisement that would scale with usage of comment features. But even they decided to drop comments, a feature so popular, that it was rescued by moviechat.org

I was thinking more along the route of IMDB being a site collecting info on all media and there's a lot of places to discuss particular media pieces, genres or other categories. Meanwhile most of the Itch games are, for the lack of a better word, slightly obscure and exist only here, meaning if you can't discuss them here, you basically can't discuss them at all.

"Meanwhile Itch gets negative money from your comments."

If we're going by that logic, our discussion here (and by extension most, if not all, posts on the forums) are also just costs and as such why not scrap it altogether?

"Is this an annoying situation that you are unable to comment? Of course. But that does not make it a sob story."

I wasn't going for a sob story though. More like... Uh... Fairness, I guess? Any changes to the system that actually gives an unfairly treated person with restricted access a way of doing something about it? An efficient and effective way.

"The rational would be to deactivate comments for all games. Just as many developers actually did! Itch chose the lesser evil of using a hyper aggressive spam detection system."

I don't think that would be rational at all. Lesser evil, huh? Can You post comments? Have You tried? When was the last time You've seen the "Awaiting moderation" message? How long did You have to wait? Did You make it? Were Your comments actually moderator-reviewed and posted? Because if so, then the problem is not a hyper aggressive filter that flags the comments, it's how only specific users are deemed important enough to even have their comments reviewed. That's what we call a "verified user".

"Your oldest visible comment is 43 days old and on a game. Has that comment been approved by the developer without you noticing or how does that fit together with your claim that you could not post comments for 10 months?"

I can't guarantee when it was approved or by whom, as I didn't get a notification on that, but what I know is that I've made 23 comments and 6 forum posts before that one. None of them exist. This one popped up for me as new with a tag of "30 days ago", if that helps anything. Why? Don't know, but it might have something to do with a passive-aggressive third Support ticket I've sent, while being fed up with this issue. The dates coincide a little.
Just for funsies, I posted a test comment on Your project. Let me know if You can even see it or if the filter hides it that well.

"And I do not understand what you mean with voided tickets and tickets still being up. Typically you do not get any answer to such a ticket. You get an automatic confirmation with the ticket number."

I meant I sent two tickets, around first and third month on the site, which is like 9/7 months of no action being taken, no reply given, which for me means the ticket basically ended up in a void. Either it was ignored, skipped or nobody got to it for almost a year. I clean my mail quarterly, so at most I could provide the confirmation message for the latest one (beginning of April). And yes, I got confirmations on all of them.

"Hmm. It seems it leads to here, the place you are currently quite active posting and talking to other users."

I'm not sure if You're being slightly condescending on purpose. You said that Itch is not a blogging nor commenting site, yet it has both comments and a blog. And a whole Community tab. I'm just saying that having a functionality built in, doesn't mean the focus of the site has to change. Under every game a space is provided to discuss said game. And yet some are not allowed to do so. But hey, you can use the Community forums! So... You're telling me You want me to make separate threads for everything I comment? That's kinda spammy. I do wonder though what would happen if I started reposting the malicious links the filter was designed for here. Would that work? Are only comments automatically flagged, while posts need to be reported manually? Cause that would be yet another odd solution to a problem.

And just for the record - all of my posts from before this thread (less than a dozen, but still) don't seem to exist or have since been deleted, as I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one or two up as I posted them.

"Comments on games are not the core function of Itch. Evident by how developers can deactivate it on a whim. And they can delete comments on a whim."

I wouldn't go as far as calling a choice evidence, but sure, I track the idea. Doesn't change the fact that comments do help in a lot of ways. They open a discussion, counterpoints, provide feedback, give a sense of "belonging" in a community and offer other users to take part (even if just by reading) in what's happening. A lot of good games actually came out, because people went through comment chains, soaked in opinions, improvements, ideas and then went on and made it a game. And no, I'm not talking about a dev taking feedback, just random people/other devs stumbling upon comments with feedback for different games and rolling with it.

"The reason for the situation is, that it costs a lot of money and brings zero money."

That's how a lot of things are, unfortunately.

"The recommended course of action is"

The recommended course of action is to jump through the hoops and see who gives in first. Send a ticket - done. Wait for response? Done. Post a thread on forums? Done. Anything happened? Nope. Do it again two months later - done. Anything happening yet? Nope. Third time the charm? We'll see, it's only been 32 days since last ticket. Do You really not see how stupidly inefficient and overcomplicated this is? How much text we've typed for this pointless discussion, because my comments are blocked? None of this makes sense.

"And no, those five weeks are not overly long. Developers often wait longer for more important things. Comments are lowest priority."

How so? The ridiculousness of wait time for devs in important matters aside, what does that mean for a regular commenter? Would I have to jump through these hoops every time I make a comment? Do You? Does everyone? I know they don't, cause some comments go up hours after the game launches. Sure, might be the dev actually paying attention, as You've pointed out, or it might be that some people don't get hit with the spam filter (or not nearly as often as 100% of the time).

If "lowest priority" means it's okay to wait for a press of a button for 8 months or so (furthest date on a posted comment I can confirm), then... Well, let's just say the site being targetted by malware doesn't sound surprising.

"Also, consider renaming the section to questions and community support. "

Well, if I'd have to go through here and wait for a Moderator to forward my Support ticket that the Admins received to the Admins in some odd comedy skit, then I'd argue it might as well be official Support. But that's probably just semantics at this point.

And that filter is per account and not per individual comment, once it does hit. You seem to think the spam filter would only filter individual comments.

That's not a filter then, it's an account restriction based on arbitrary conditions. And yes, I would imagine a spam filter would be used to actually filter spam, instead of screwing off random users. If it can detect spam comments (which it should as a spam filter), then there's no reason to keep diving into this false positive account-wide mute. Cause I assume if You, with Your clearly "verified" account posted spam in a comment, the filter would catch it, right? And then maybe put You on a similar list, where You couldn't just post what You want, when You want? Because if it wouldn't, that makes even less sense.

"But if you really waited 10 months, you should make a new short thread with a ticket number included, as the rules of questions and support suggest."

I did. It was locked/removed/whatever. I cannot see that thread, nor the other one I made later. I also sent 3 Support tickets, two of which got voided, one is still up and not even responded to. I said this like 4 times already.

"If you do not care that other people can comment, why should anyone care that you cannot."

Because it's a site, with a comment section and I'm being punished for nothing, while my right to comment is taken away? What are You even saying? Me not caring about others' ability to comment stems from them not being wronged or restricted in any way. While I am. It's like the cops telling you you shouldn't complain about a stolen car, cause your neighbour's car wasnt' stolen. Like actually what sort of rhetoric is this?
And I'm not calling for anyone to simply "care". I'm calling for being allowed to post.

"Comments are not that important. "

That's a subjective statement.

"Itch is not a blogging and commenting site."

Yet it has a "Community" tab at the top, curious, isn't it?
YouTube is a video platform, Meta is a data-harvester and yet both work perfectly fine as a community hub and a place to exchange opinions through comments.

"You might have noticed that there is no notification about comments for followers, nor is there a way of doing a private messages. The "social media" features of Itch are crude and underdeveloped. That's what you get, if you do not bombard users with advertisements. Such features have to run on slow burn with as little cost as possible."

Okay, sob story about costs of running a site aside, the comments section exists. People are allowed to comment. Just not ALL people. This isn't about Itch being a store, it's about the unfair way some users are treated due to the spam filter and hitting a brick wall when trying to do anything about it. You couldn't get a bigger middle finger if it was the landing page.

"and staff is overwhelmed with clearing those up."

If three Support tickets and eight months of time is not enough to clear stuff up by the "staff", you don't have "staff". You have a problem.

"You cannot use the Rate this game button too? "

This one does work. Or it appears to work. Can I however know for sure it's working, if comments don't? I figure it works, but hey, can be wrong.

"But that pending posts section is rather hidden, and there seems to be no prominent notification about pending posts."

At that point I would at least like an access to my posts, so I can copypaste the feedback or just know they exist. But that's just a wish.

"The edit box is not that good. You might need to select normal text again, after a quotation. Or press enter and del and enter after a quotation."

Yeah, no matter what I do, trying to cram in a second quote just changes everything besides the first quote into a quote. Doesn't matter if it's enter, dels, text highlighted, not highlighted, slightly wonky, which I am sorry about.

"Please do not use that word in that way. A shadowban would be, if you can see your comments, but no one else can."

If we go by definitions, shadowban is like banning someone without them noticing. Being cut out of a community, but still gaslit into the idea that you're not. Which I'd say eternal "awaiting approval" queue does fit. Can I post? Yes. Can anyone see it? No. Can I see it? No. Can I do anything about it? Doesn't seem like it. Just because I can't see what I posted, doesn't entirely make it less shadow-y.

"imdb comes to mind. They ditched their comment feature completely."

I imagine they still have reviews though? Fair example, though the scale is somewhat different. I can hardly find people knowing Itch games outside of Itch, making this the best (if not only) community hub for me.

Maybe You just don't understand the term "shadowban" then? Because that's exactly what this is - being allowed to post, but essentially not being allowed to post, tricked into "yeah, this definitely works", while it doesn't and nobody can see your comments. Just because I don't see my messages either, I'm just even more dissapointed, because the site keeps gaslighting me into some illusion that my comments just need to be approved (and if they can't be approved after 8 months, then how is it different from a shadowban?).

"Anyway, is the rate button disabled too, if your comments are held in moderation?"

No, but rating by itself removes the "discussion" part of a comment section, which I believe to be the most engaging and helpful. Seeing what others say, people replying to criticism and providing different points of view.

And what you described did fit previously seen scammer activity. They repeatedly commented on the same games, with new accounts, hourly, daily, for weeks.

There is a huge difference between one/two lengthy comments with no hyperlinks per month and regular hourly spam. I'm merely pointing out the distinction and how the threads You linked mostly (if not only) refer to not spam per se, but malicious and misleading links embedded in comments. Which is a lot easier to block than a smart message filter and a lot less invasive than just shutting everyone out of commenting, for months, with no way of fixing it, getting verified or avoiding the spam filter.

"Likewise. And developers that shut down comment sections entirely thought so too. Screw comments, protecting users from spam is more important. "

I think You misunderstood my point. You said that other people can still comment and are doing so. Well, I can't. Nobody I know can. And that sort of privileged comment policy is whack. I am a user, I accepted the ToS and as such should be allowed to post comments. This sounds blown out of proportions, but I'm just trying to highlight the point. I can't see my comments, I can't seem to get them approved (aside from one), I can't even contact Support, because they just don't respond. No matter how I look at this, it's silly to have a community with the "community" part cut out (about 7 of my forum posts also ended up in limbo, for whatever reason).

"You claimed, it would affect games negatively. I disagreed and elaborated why I think so."
"Likewise. And developers that shut down comment sections entirely thought so too. Screw comments, protecting users from spam is more important. "

I still think that for games with limited playerbase, receiving feedback is important. Which is harder to do, when you can't post feedback. Not only does communication affect long-term attachment to a game/dev, it also allows for improvements based on feedback, since everyone has their own opinions. It's one thing if a dev chooses to disable comments, that's their call, but if they want feedback, but the website just shadowbans (cause that's what this essentially is at this point) people commenting, because they can't deal with spam in any reasonable way, then it will affect the game and its reception. Like imagine being a part of a project at work, joining group chat and being unable to post anything. Wouldn't that affect the project? And if You try doing anything about it, You just get ghosted.

"If there is no spam anymore they can try improving to get less false positives. They are working on it."

I don't know how many comments are made daily  on the site, but it's not about false positives. False positive is interpreting something that's not spam as spam. This thing is flagging EVERYTHING I POST. That's not the same thing. I can't access my comment history until the comments get approved (which they don't get), which means I'm essentially cut off from posting anything. And that sucks. And it's not "for a while", I made this account on August 12 2025, that's 10 months.

"The first moderator is the devloper."

What do You mean? Can a developer approve specific comments?

"Also, there were all sorts of spam. With obfuscated links, images. Links were just the most common one. It is trivial to circumvent a simple link ban and auto-filter."

Okay, but if that's the case and You Yourself said that other people can post, why can't some people join this exclusive group? What does one have to do to be allowed as a member of the community, when sending Support tickets does nothing, awaiting moderation does nothing, everything does nothing for months on end?

"Seems you are another person that thinks this is answered by staff. "

No, not really. I literally went for the "Questions" part of it, because Support, as I mentioned about four times already, DOES NOT RESPOND. I just wanted to understand what was going on and as soon as I got that information, I just left a note that in my opinion, since it's my question and my thread, it can be locked, as the question's been answered and I don't want to derail it by debating things neither I nor You have any control over. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a discussion, but a fruitless one on the topic of poorly handled spam filter just feels like spam itself.

"Tell them how great it would be, if they would implement it, so that developers would see pending comments for moderation more easy. "

So if I get it right, the devs can actually see and approve comments? That's interesting. Cause this means a few things - either my comments are specifically ignored (which is curious) or are never seen, because either they get filtered out by a filter to the point where not even devs/mods see it awaiting approval, or I'm by default on some shadowban/spam filter list due to when my account was created or something, while others don't have to deal with this crap.

And trust me, I'd send anything, if I didn't already send 3 separate tickets regarding the issue that got ignored. Somehow I doubt it would be any different with suggestions, and it's not like that idea is so revolutionary nobody else suggested it before.

Still can't make more than a single quote, it just marks down the whole post after the first quote -.-

A bunch of newly made accounts, possibly even with similar mail providers and connecting from the same region to post on the same game?

A bunch of new accounts on a platform is nothing really surprising in itself.  Similar mail providers sounds like a reach, doubt it's the case, since we're neither in the same country, timezone or even part of the globe. If a title gets a post on Reddit (or any other place) and it attracts attention, then it creates traffic. Nothing weird here.

the same game would get spam comments several times a day, each day. I saw it happening on some games. You could go there any time of the day and there were fresh spam comments.

Then feel free to block spam comments. Limit amount of comments. Penalize accounts. Upgrade account creation bot-prevention measures.

But for all the countermeasures to block legitimate accounts from posting comments for months, without any way to get in contact, get verified or remedy the situation, except for crying loud enough until somebody starts giving a damn - that's insane.

"I do not think so.

Comments are still being made. Lots of them. "

Citing this way, cause the quoting function is absolutely horrendous and doesn't allow me to do what it's supposed to.
Interestingly enough neither I, nor my friends aren't in the elite group of people, who can make comments. And considering Your argument is basically "well, other people can comment", I assume there are tons of people like us, that You don't even know about.

Besides, what do I honestly care if other people can make comments, when I know for a fact I can't and I'm not the only one? I understand the issues that come with spam, but I'm not buying the idea that prohibiting actual humans from having an interaction with a developer and a chance to give feedback affects the experience, popularity and thus potential income.

As people have pointed out in the threads You linked, the issue was mostly links. Blocking a hyperlink from a comment is possible without crippling real accounts. Like easily. Dozens or hundreds of spam links also doesn't equal a single feedback comment per week or month, but even that can't be posted here. 

Whatever sort of "solution" this was supposed to be, it's silly, unfair and borderline incompetent. Going into a game's page and seeing comments, but not being able to post anything yourself, losing whatever you post, because you don't even have access to it and then being tied up in a pointless Support ticket circle is not a way to live.

But I think that's enough, my question has been answered and even if I consider this whole ordeal asinine, there's nothing we can do with it and arguing reasons or consequences of these actions won't lead anywhere anyway.
Thank You all and peace out! Free to lock thread.

Okay, that might sound rude, cause people, effort and stuff, but this feels so spaghetti, I can't help but chuckle. I guess I'll live a few more months, though any sort of verification at any point would be nice. Gating comments behind some spam filter negatively affects games' popularity and thus potential profits.

Have a nice day :)

Thank You, that's a solid explanation and yes, that's what I was going after. At least now I understand what exactly I'm complaining about.

Flagging every post while searching for links seems odd though. Posts waiting for approval for months, as if there's no queue for this thing and Support tickets being similarly useless, to the point of having to complain on the forums, having a Moderator read it and forward a ticket that's literally already been sent, just feels like a waste of resources and manpower. Done with whining, thanks for historical info.

Every single comment I make gets stuck in moderator limbo. I can't see it, can't view it, can't even copy-paste it or know there are comments stuck in limbo. Every single one gets the same pointless message about awaiting approval that basically never comes, unless I send a passive-aggressive email to Support, and then a single one gets through, without even closing the ticket. Is that how it's supposed to work? Ask Daddy Support for approval for every single thing I post?

What even is the point of allowing feedback on games, if you're not gonna post it? It's not my job to jump through hoops to be allowed to share feedback. And no, it's not just me, not just a single user, not just a single account, a bunch of my friends made accounts around the same time for a specific game and thus far the only thing this platform managed to do is alienate 4 of them.

What is the problem?

And no, I'm not looking for a privileged user to forward my support ticked to admins, as if contacting Support wasn't enough and I needed a middleman, I want to understand what is going on with this site and why.

Really solid, straightforward and fun to play. It has some more annoying mechanics (like the arcing projectile and distance changing from level to level, making aim delay adjustment varied or the splintering shards getting slightly in the way of extra damage to unharmed enemies perk), but it's cool overall.

I'd consider putting up a gold counter somewhere on the screen, just so you don't have to enter upgrades screen just to check the total gold and maybe a visual representation of firing cooldown (maybe the aiming circle filling up or something). It's not a huge deal, especially for a game that splits into minute-long levels, but it's certainly some degree of QOL.