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Not impressed with Itch

A topic by pixelrats created Feb 24, 2024 Views: 319 Replies: 7

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Hello everybody.

Last friday (16/02) I published my team's first game on Itch, in the form of a playtest build: https://pixelrats.itch.io/kiyo

The direct link works, but after 8 days it's still not indexed nor findable with a direct name search.

I think I did all is needed to make sure nothing blocks it and I'm aware that it might need to go through a vetting queue, but 8 days? Really?

So I'm a bit at a loss here.

Moreover I contacted support last Monday and I haven't heard anything at all.

Yeah, I'm disappointed :/

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redonihunter294 days ago(+1)

You have payments active and this is your first release.

Give them time. And double check if your tax interview and all those things cleared out. They do take longer for first time payment projects to index. The waiting queue can be a month at times, if your project needs staff interaction.

There are many threads about this issue.

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pixelrats294 days ago

Thanks for the answer. A month wait? That sounds abysmal.

But I'm happy to disable the pay what you want option if it could speedup the process. It's only meant to be a free playtest for now anyway.

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redonihunter294 days ago

I do not know if that will re-queue you or bypass checks that made you qualify for manual inspection. Too many changes might even bump you back for suspicous activity or screw up your ... place in the queue. They are very closemouthed about this, because of all the bad actors uploading fake stuff and developers trying to be clever and gaming the system.

I am rather certain that adding payment to an existing project usually triggers manual inspection. Search for you creator name, some time after you made changes, if you make some. Your creator name can be found. If it shows 0 projects, the project is currently not indexed. But there might be nighly builds of index files, so I would not bet on any time accuracy. As I said, they do not tell how it works intentionally.

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pixelrats294 days ago

Ah well, I took the risk and removed the payment options altogether. Will let you know if it does any good.
Anyway at this point I don't care anymore how long it takes, it's already too late.

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pixelrats292 days ago

Removing the payment options didn't help, the game is still not findable.
I kind of gave up on this store :/

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redonihunter291 days ago

Changing your page after it was already flagged for human inspection might put you at back of queue again.

Itch will not tell if changing payment options to none would make a game suddenly indexed. They can't. Giving feedback to what will and what will not influence the inspections would give bad actors instructions.

Oh, and your game is indexed. That being said, the official stance of itch is, that you should not rely on internal promotion of itch sites to promote your game. That is an issue for search ranking and appearing on popular page and such. But also for being indexed or not, or when being indexed. Your game had first time payments, those take longer. It still was available for any promotion you did. Or do you promote with: go to itch and type our game's name?? You provide a link for people to click on, it does not matter, if you are indexed or not for this.

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pixelrats291 days ago

Yes, it became indexed soon after I posted.

I was aware of the risk of being put at the back of the queue again - but I tried anyway to see what would happen.
I just thought it could have been useful to share the outcome here, and in the end it's unclear... not sure whether it would have taken even longer if I had kept the "pay what you want option".

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