Is the claim button intended to be public or are these intended for backers only?

I don't want to link to specific examples, but it isn't regional pricing. Prices are roughly the same across steam and itch for me. Steam is slightly more expensive but includes taxes within the final price which cancels out.
It's also pretty common for devs to discount their games on steam (sometimes pretty steeply) but not discount them on itch at all.
I want to buy visual novels, and I want to buy them on itch. This is hard when a sale happens and vns are on sale for double the amount of steam - think 60% on steam and 30% on itch. I end up gravitating toward vns that have roughly the same discount between websites, but that tends to mean always buying the vns of the same dev or two.
Why do devs do this? If they choose to discount a game by some amount on steam, why are they unwilling to do the same on itch?
Out of curiosity, I filtered the Visual Novel genre by AI-generated. Many of the games that popped up have art that does not seem AI-generated at all. Nor does the creator or the comments mention anything about AI.
If these games have art made with AI, then AI is much better at emulating digital art then I thought. How did itch.io determine that these games were made with AI? Does the AI-generated tag remain even if AI assets were removed?
Hello! I've been making my way through your works, starting with Ochitsubaki. I'm currently a bit confused about the order. I was going through the games on the Feyxuan page in the order listed, which puts these demos in the yuzu/haru series, after oeprator, operator. Is that the right order? Are all the demos part of that series? The Swanchime page lists the works in a different order, and I'm sure there was a zine that grouped the games in order but I can't find it