Hey itch.io,

Why are you not providing pay-to-play services?

I've put a lot of time and research into monetization strategies.    itch.io, you're the best for game devs, no doubt.  Your terms are reasonable and fair.  Your business model seems to suggest that you have actual, non-sociopathic  humans making business policy and decisions.  So much goodness for devs and players (I've been locked away for 6 years working on a game, just found you).

Why, in the name of sustainability, are you not providing P2P services?  I just joined so maybe I just haven't found such offered services.  I've already done a lot of searching around though, so if you truly aren't providing P2P services, here's my idea (itch, are you there, are you seeing this?).

Provide P2P cloud-based services so the devs are compensated based on actual playtime, and players only pay if and when they play.  Use the same or similar pricing model, just add P2P backend services for games so that extremely hard-earned intellectual property (game dev work) isn't given away in the HOPES of maybe getting compensated.  Player-driven market forces will ultimately set the price/cost for play time.  Such a service/model provides devs with an option to maintain and secure their IP while also providing F2P and try before you buy.  Such as service/model also provides players with much more granular, and rewarding, control over every dollar they spend on play time.   And, last, but not to be minimized in any way, is the cost to maintain such cloud-based services.  I'm very confident that itch.io will be able to work out the margins and model for both making it sustainable and profitable, without the egregious @pple/g00gle arm+leg required cuts/fees. 

What say you itch.io?  Are you already working on this?  Is the threat of 2 trillion dollar corporations too much to contend with?  I  have a proof of concept if you're interested, and it's on GCP right now so that should help to keep 1 trill happy(er)?  I haven't even mentioned the possibilities with WebGL and itch.io together for P2P.  Huge potential, huge savings and ROI for all (except the trillionaires, but I think they'll be fine).

If you made it this far.  Thanks for your time.  Very much appreciated.

Patrick

By pay to play, do you mean something like classic arcades? Where players pay and they can play for a specific amount of time?

I’m not sure if that would make things better. I wouldn’t like to invest in a site that I have to keep paying to play games, I’m sure a lot users out there think the same.

My understanding of Itch, is that it gives freedom to the developers to distribute their games on their own terms. That means a developer can make a game, and sell each level individually, or sell extra levels (Like DLC). They can also offer a level or two for free. This would allow users to try a game before they buy it, and possibly buy chunks of the game at a time.

However this is the developer’s choice. If a developer doesn’t want to invest time into that, they can just provide the full game on a specific price and that’s the end of it. Indie devs don’t have resources to invest into many features.

Thanks for your comments.

Yeah, kinda like arcades.  And yeah, would be annoying for players to have to pay each time they just wanted to play for an hour or so.  One (of several) possible solutions to that could be to allow players to open an "itch account" and deposit $5, $10, $50, whatever which they could use towards any game, P2P or other wise.  A subscription services was also mentioned above.  The trick with the subscription service would be finding a way for the more popular/played games to get their larger/fairer cut.  However, after watching a few youtube videos about itch, I'm guessing that this is precisely the thing the itch does not want to do, as it may influence the devs to be more commercially focused rather than creatively focused.

In re having to keep paying to play games, I agree that players/user don't want this, just as I don't like having to keep paying the mortgage to live in my house.  I think this is probably the core for itch's success, it has a very player centric monetization model and a very dev centric distribution platform.  Of course players like that, but it's very hard to believe that indies can sustain themselves with model and platform.  Don't know though.

In re just providing the full game on a specific price and that's the end of it, I agree.  One player could buy the game, copy and redistribute the game for free (violating the license), and that could be the end of any monetization for the indie dev that made that game.  That's extremely player centric, but it seems to be working, I guess.  Again, I don't know the analytics for mean and median sales of games on itch so maybe indie devs are actually able to sustain themselves.

In re indie devs not have the resources to invest [in things like P2P] - yeah, I agree that this is the case for the vast majority of indies on itch - this is why I suggested itch provide such supporting services, keeping in mind that I originally though itch had a couple dozen full time system engineers to include UI/UX people.  Also, to reiterate, P2P would just be another *option* - if indies don't want anything to do with P2P, or have the resources, no worries, business as usual.

Thus far, here's what I've gleaned to be challenges for itch providing P2P monetization and support services:

1. Players won't like it, annoying to have to pay to play each time

2. The current monetization model is very player centric, and shouldn't be messed with because itch is already successful 

3. The current distribution platform is very creative centric, and introducing P2P may change to environment to be more commercially centric

4. Indie devs that don't want to use, or face major obstacles to use, P2P may feel threatened and/or pushed out by P2P.  That is, P2P may change the itch echo system and such changes would not be wanted by the founder, creator(s), devs and players

5. Providing support services and infrastructure for P2P is not a quick or easy thing to do.  It requires a significant time, talent and resource investment.  

Given 1, 2, 3 & 4, if there is any significant amount of truth to these points, point 5 introduces an unnecessary and high risk for itch.

If the indie devs are able to make a living on itch then, OK, scrap the P2P idea.  I understand that very few indie devs can sustain themselves (with their games), regardless of distribution platform, but within that tiny group of self-sustaining indies I really don't know if they would be interested in leveraging P2P.  Perhaps not.  I seem to be the only indie dev interested in such services.   And with that, I hereby, officially, withdraw my suggestion for a P2P platform with supporting services.

Thanks everyone, for your time and responses.