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Add granularity to admin privileges for non admin team members

A topic by Snowdrama created May 04, 2024 Views: 1,502 Replies: 5

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I found recently to add a contributor right now I have to give them full admin privileges to the project. I’d like to be able to give credit to someone who provided help or assets to the project without letting them have full access to everything about the project.

Along with this, it would make sense to be able to add people to the project that only get some privileges.

Having granular controls to features in the admin/edit panel would be nice, for example, being able to make blog posts, look at statistics, and generate keys for the game, but not be able to change the description, delete the game, or modify admins.

This granularity in permissions would be very useful, especially for things like medium sized teams where, team members may be allowed to post blog posts, change the game’s description, or see game statistics but not do things like generate game keys, remove other contributors/admins, and delete the game.

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Pydes155 days ago (2 edits) (+2)

I found two archived posts about this from 5 years ago that never went anywhere:

https://itch.io/t/261383/more-advanced-permissions

https://itch.io/t/270049/individual-permissions

as well as this github issue

https://github.com/itchio/itch.io/issues/1271

The official way seems to be to create a collection and display the collection on your page then according to the github issue, though i have not tried that yet.

Its dissapointing that this is not possible directly, i have a project that my team continued for another team, they of course want to display it on their page as well but i dont know them, and i would prefer if they dont have permissions to upload builds anymore and such as they are not part of the team anymore. This is not just about the possibility of them defacing the page, but also a feels like a security risk, if every collaborator who wants to display a game on their page can also upload new builds as an admin?

Is there really no a way to add someone as a contributor without giving them admin rights? Or giving someone only the priviledge of working on the page but not uploading new builds?

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Snowdrama155 days ago (1 edit)

Exactly the main issue for me is that often teams have roles, and as people join and leave projects their roles will change, I don’t want to have to remove someone as a collaborator when they leave the team, because then they don’t get credit for their work, but I also am not comfortable giving them full unfettered access to do whatever they want. Not to say it’s likely unless I have some kind of viral hit, but I’m not comfortable with the idea that if my collaborators account were, to as an example, get hacked by a malicious actor, Someone could then upload malware disguised as my game.

The whole collection issue isn’t really sustainable either because if you have 10 games with different collaborators they’d each need to create their own collection which seems kind of silly plus collections are always presented BELOW the main uploads, so someone can’t highlight a game at the top of their page

Not considering even any kind of granularity At the VERY least there should be an option to let someone be added as a collaborator and it on their page, but not give them any project permissions to modify the project.

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redonihunter155 days ago

Isn't the obvious way to give credit to contributors to ... uhm ... credit them in the game and in the description?

While Itch is a place where indie games can grow, it is not a code repository where there are multiple developers work together to create something. Itch is a store front. Buying a thing that has multiple "publishers" is kinda strange. So yeah, if there is an "official" way to list other accounts in your project as "contributors", it should be possible to add them in a way that does not give them all access.

But thinking about it, how is this handled now? If you have contributors and a game that can get revenue? Do they get any? Is it configureable?

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Snowdrama151 days ago(+1)

Yeah, I do give credit on the game page and in game, but a lot of people like me use itch.io as a kind of portfolio. I bet most accounts aren’t “publisher” or “company” accounts but instead individual creatives, and those people want to use their personal pages as a portfolio.

This came up as this last Ludum Dare I collaborated with another dev who also has an itch.io account, and we were trying to figure out how to get the game to show up on their page.

We’re both individuals looking to show off something we worked on, it worked out that we are good friends and so I had no issues giving him full admin rights, but it made me realize that if this weren’t the case and I wasn’t okay with giving full admin rights, there’s no way to do this besides, publishing the game twice once for each person individually, or doing the suggested solution of using a collection which has the issues I detailed in another post, specifically not being able to put the game at the top of their page, only in a collection at the bottom, as well as something I thought about recently which is emailing followers when the game is released.

I know it emails people who follow you saying “Snowdrama just released a new game” and I would guess that If you add someone as a admin and then after make the page go live by making it public, it also emails their followers, something definitely desirable.

Overall just adding these would cover 99% of use cases:

Credit Permissions - it just shows up on their page and they can view stuff like analytics.
Post Permissions - lets them make devlog posts, and moderate the game forum.
Full Collaborator - lets them edit anything of the page, except delete the project and change collaborators.

But yeah hopefully this is something we can get added eventually.

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redonihunter151 days ago

That email feature is somethin Itch should scratch or overhaul.

Also, using it to notify followers is moot. They get your stuff in their feed already. There are some complain threads about people getting lots of emails after buying those huge bundles.

As for portfolio, a profile page is mostly just a website. You can include a link and picture and text.

I agree that adding contributors only as full admins is not what many people want. But it might be required legally. There is a thing like joined copyright. But if some people do engage in this, they really do have all the rights and are both responsible, as far as I know.

So maybe a better feature would be to simply add a contributor line, instead of allowing multiple authors. But as I said, maybe, if they are added as authors, they must have same rights.

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