For all the game devs who have published games here on itch, do your games gain a passive amount of views over time? Or if paid, then a passive income?
Or is it more of a one time view increase only?
More likely, games that aren't updated frequently won't get passive updates so it would be much better to get answers from regularly supported games.
This is not youtube or steam. The platform does not really push any games. And the recommendation feature is ... underdeveloped.
So a definitive maybe would be the answer. Your game could be pushed a little by being in some of those featured list, but it mostly is a feedback loop with outside promotion that makes games popular, so they rise in popular ranking and appear higher up in tag ranking when people browse for games.
So it can happen, but most things just get drowned by all the other things.
Basically it is a chicken and egg sitution. You need to be known to be known. Itch's stance is, to not rely on internal promotion. So any answer you might get here, will heavily depend on the outside promotion that is done.
But it sure would be an interesting read, if someone can give data on this.
Views are going to spike on any platform when you have big updates or promotions.
I barely promote at all and still get views on my projects, sometimes very few like 1 or 2 in a week, sometimes more. You can see where people are visiting from so that definitely helps to determine what is working. It is also interesting because sometimes people come from pretty random places... I have had a few hits coming from russian and chinese search engines.
You might have noticed the recent complaints , when itch was unavailable there. There are not that many indie gaming platforms. Itch will get indexed very fast on the major search engines.
Something even bad actors exploit by hosting impostor games on itch or making blog posts with links to malware. They know that itch will show up in search results.
So, it is not random. If people search for indie games about the topic you make, you might get hits from search engines world wide.
Both. Games get a spike of attention on release, especially if you do your own advertising, but later there's a long tail, if you remain active on the site and elsewhere.
Either way, you have to be active, advertise your game and generally remind people you exist. If you just sit and wait, your game will sink.
A little bit, in my experience. I recently uploaded a game jam submission to my profile and it did get a few clicks from within the website despite not having posted it here, but that quickly died out. As the others have mentioned here, you will need to do your own promotion if you want to build a follower base. Regular updates to your game are a great way to generate sustained interest, as well as through your own social media following.
I have one game that is far and away the most popular thing I have ever posted to my profile. As a result, it seems that it just keeps getting downloaded at least once a week. So if you have a "hot" game, it is more long-tail than burst.
Most of my analytics say people are either looking specifically for a game I made using tags and searches, or were looking for something to play in the New category.
Like others have said, being active helps. I just keep getting into game jams. Itch.io's algorithm seems to love activity.
I can't answer for paid games - mine are all free at the moment (they're browser-based, so you can't charge for them). But if it helps, I do regularly get passive visits daily for a few older games, and these haven't been updated since their initial launch.
Looking at the referrers, folk seem to be visiting internally from Itch Io. Initially some views came from their respective game jam rating pages, but that seems to taper off after two to three weeks. I haven't joined game jams lately, but I haven't seen much of a difference in visits, honestly. I don't get a lot of traction posting links to my games on social media. The referrer that generates the highest hits is platform-web.
Interestingly I do have visits offsite. Some are from Google - about 64 altogether for this month. I have a handful from baidu.com, yandex.ru, Vietnamese Yahoo, bing.com and duckduckgo. I'm not sure what keywords they're using, though.
Subject-wise, my games and assets are generally based on Immortal Cultivation, which may be why they're getting searched up and accessed regularly enough. I did hear down the grapevine that Itch Io's one of the few spaces on the web that hasn't been blocked by the Chinese government yet, which may be why there are quite a number of players and developers from mainland China accessing it at the moment. I do get a number of downloads for my Xianxia assets, which may also be generating extra activity to my games and therefore pushing them to the upper end of the algorithm. Needless to say, my most popular game is indeed set in a world of Immortal Cultivation.
From experience, Itch Io does tend to push older games to the top of the search and tags once in a while to make sure they aren't forgotten. I wouldn't say it's too random either - my brain-dead single-click "boyfriend generator" got randomly featured by a Youtuber for two seconds or so, which got my game about 20+ odd visits from Youtube, but that was enough to mess with Itch's algorithm, which pushed it to the top of the landing pages for a few tags, resulting in thousands of views over the week (this made a lot of regular Itch Io devs and users angry, btw).
Basically games climb up the algorithm when there's a spike of visitations, so when you update your game, you'll get a spike of visits, which will in turn push your game up the algorithm to place on the landing pages of certain tags. If it's a steady stream of passive visits you want, you'll simply need to be "known" for one or two things that people will search and visit you specifically for. There's also the option of pushing out as many new games as you can each month, but... yeah, it will eat your life up...
Edit: goddamn typos
It is a matter of perspective, but you can have a paid downloadable for a web game - or a web playable version of a paid downloadable. On the same page.
From what was hinted in community, the alogrithm boosts new games for an unknown time frame in the popularity ranking. I do not know of any hints that they do this for old games or cycle through old games to boost them again. But the intention in those hints seemed to be, to push all the games a little bit. So, maybe. Also, old games can appear in recent again, after a "major update". And if that is really only after a devlog, they should change this. Games get a little boost by the devlog alone, since it is yet another location that has a recent system and links to the game.
No problem. To answer your first question, from the remarks in the one-star ratings, there were other better games that deserved to be on the Popular tab... namely theirs (or their favorites, idk). 😅 You're right when you say "weird and far-fetched", because I wasn't expecting to get those remarks either. But Itch is weird like that, and I've learned to roll with the punches since. You gotta grow a thick skin when pushing out games.
To answer your second question, I don't reply to posts often. I tend to comment on other games which I've played and rate them, but only when time permits. If there's something I do more often than other things, it's posting new visual novel game assets... but even then it's not that often overall. I'm offline a lot of the time.
In all honesty your game has to shine, and even then you have to push it with a bit of social marketing.
All of my games have started out with a boost of initial players that came as a result of social marketing.
The best game so far has had continual players since it was released,
and it too started with a burst of players, trickling down to 1 or 2 a day sometimes 10 or 20.
Releasing a major game is like releasing a movie, you make a trailer, build up an audience with that trailer,
then release the game being sure to clearly link to your game on social media.
On that initial release, if marketed well, you'll have a burst of players ready to play it because it is new.
If the game is fun and engaging you'll gain a lasting fan base from some of those initial players.
