Hey, thanks for taking a minute to post here! Sorry for the confusing barrage of tweets. :P

I think (with my limited understanding of how itch.io works under the hood) that it would be fairly easy to add more options to game jam creation that would use already existing and validated information from game submissions. For example, game submissions already allow the user a choice to make their game paid or not, so itch already has that information in their database and could (easily?) tap into that to verify if a game fits that particular parameter in a jam (the jam creator would simply have to check a box that says "Allow paid submissions?" to enable this feature).

Regarding Jupiter's original issue (someone submitting the same game to dozens of jams), maybe this could also be something that is moderated? Perhaps, by default, jams would only allow a submission to be attached to one jam at a time (so once they submit to their first, they're no longer eligible to be submitted to any future jams). I feel like this is reasonable 99% of the time, as jams by nature are typically hosted over a limited time period (and participants are expected to create something original in that time). Even if a future jam allows preexisting assets/code to be used in their parameters, it's likely that they would ALSO expect the creator to do some extra work to the submission (not just submit the exact same build again), in which case they could just create a new game submission entirely.

As I mentioned, I think this solution is reasonable for the vast majority of cases, but if it's an issue for folks, the one jam per game ratio could be disabled on a per jam basis with an additional checkbox.

Eric Neuhaus (@donkeyspaceman)
donkeyspaceman.itch.io