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More problems with quarantine

A topic by Capky Games created Mar 09, 2025 Views: 512 Replies: 15
Viewing posts 1 to 5
(+1)

Hello.

About almost two months ago, half of the games in my account were put in quarantine, including both the ones I had recently updated and others I hadn’t touched in a while. The issue took about a month to be resolved (which means last month). But since then, every modification I make to the description page of my game and every new update I publish causes my games to be put in quarantine again, both those that have already gone through quarantine and those that have never been in it.

Until a moment ago, I had these two games in my account under quarantine:

Separated by the Demon Queen

United Forever

Now, to test this system, I went to a game in my account:

Hentai no Sekai

And I modified the description page. The only modification I made was deleting an empty line, that's all I did. I didn’t even delete a word, just an empty line. And that game has just been put in quarantine again.

The two games I mentioned earlier have already been in quarantine for 27 (one more update 13 days ago) and 22 days, respectively. And let’s be honest, they were going to stay that way, just like "Hentai no Sekai", which, who knows how many weeks it will remain in quarantine.

Please, this wasn’t happening before, I started having this issue two months ago. Practically all the important games in my account have been put in quarantine, and there is nothing wrong with them. It can’t be that every time I make a new update or want to fix a simple typo on my page, that game gets another month in quarantine. All I ask is that my games stop being put in quarantine unless there are real reasons to suspect they might be fake, contain a virus, or something similar.

On February 14, I opened a ticket asking for help regarding the first two games I mentioned that were placed in quarantine, and as of March 9, I still haven’t received a response: (257720)

And now, that list of two games has to include a third one, "Hentai no Sekai". All three in quarantine just for publishing a new update or modifying the page description.

Please, help, I beg you.

Have a great day.

Moderator

I've let our admins know.

Thank you very much.

(+1)

Hello.

It's been 10 days and my games are still in quarantine. Before, there were 3, now there are 4. The support team still hasn't responded. This problem has been going on for about two months. Is there anything you can do to help me, please? All I want is for my games to stop quarantining every time I publish a new update or edit the page. I know this is possible because I know other accounts aren't experiencing this problem. This isn't a general platform rule that affects everyone; it's something that's specifically affecting me.

Can you tell me what's going on with support? Maybe they're busy and need more time to help me? Maybe my request got lost?

Please, I don't know how else to ask for help.

Moderator

I don't know, sorry. It's out of my hands now.

I see. Many thanks anyway.

I do not think support answers such requests. How would that work? From Itch's perspective at worst case your devloper machine including your account and mail was hacked and taken over. So any request from you could be a scammer talking. And yes, at one time, such a scammer made such a thread here in community asking to be indexed. But I think it was a fake account at that time and not a hacked one.

That they take so long is frustrating. But that they quarantine games with a trigger sensitive automatic is actually good. Not for you and other false positives. But there are indexed malware projects every day. In fact that automatic is not sensitive enough. Or it is, and the actual number of daily malware is a lot higher than estimated - I only see the indexed ones, and those are far too many.

Maybe a scammer is sharing your IP range. Maybe your rpg maker version has false positives when scanned. Maybe there are many reports against your projects from people uncertain if you are an impostor, because of the other account with almost the same name. Maybe your behaviour when updating matches that of a known scammer.

The thing is, this is not possible:

All I ask is that my games stop being put in quarantine unless there are real reasons to suspect they might be fake, contain a virus, or something similar

The reasons are real. You just do not know them. They are not verified. Hence the quarantine and not a suspension. For them to recognise fakes/viruses and so on better, they would need to be able to recognise them better, as silly as its sounds. But the feedback loop of the criminals is very short. They immediatly know, if their method does no longer work and switch to new methods.

This is speculation: since you were not told by Itch that your games are in quarantine and they were probably put there by an automatic, you should ignore the quarantine and update your games as you would do normally and have done so in the past. It does claim to be "due to potential suspicious behavior from the page owner". Tiptoeing and waiting to get indexed and then updating again would sound suspicious to me. So if you do as you normally do, that automatic might recognise this. Or not. I do not know how good or bad the automatic is, I only see a lot of indexed actual malware projects and a lot of devs complaining about not being indexed or having games in quarantine. It is symptoms of a fight against malware uploaders.

(+1)

I've been on itch.io for a few years now, I've never broken the rules, and my games have been coming out of quarantine for the past two months, and the support team hasn't asked me for proof that it's me at any point. I don't think itch.io suspects that it's not me or that I've broken any rules.

If my games had been quarantined just once and then, after a month, they'd been reviewed and released from quarantine, it would have been fine. The problem is that, two months later, my entire account is still affected by this. Any change I make quarantines my games and removes them from search. I can't continue updating my games normally because, if I do, none of my most popular games would ever appear in the lists (I update them, they go back into quarantine, it takes a month for them to reappear, I update them, and then I start over). I simply can't continue like this; I'll lose all my visibility, and no one will find my games. The itch.io platform has had two months to review my account and, as I said, all my previously quarantined games have already been reviewed and made available again, but they're quarantined again if I make even the slightest modification. That doesn't seem normal or fair to me. And this isn't something that happens to all developers; it's happening specifically to me. And to more developers, probably, but definitely not to everyone. That's why I'm asking that my games please stop being quarantined immediately unless there are real reasons to suspect something is wrong with my account.

I did not want to imply that the problem is with you. The problem is with Itch and the currently very long time they take to clear such situations. It is a general problem, also seen by all the complaints about non indexed games and waiting times for payout.

(+1)

Yes, don't worry.

I see all those posts from people having problems too. I assume the itch.io support team is doing their best to help everyone affected, even if it's taking time. The problem is that it's taking too long.

Hence my suggestion to just ignore it. This is not like a situation where police screamed at you: freeze! Officially you do not know that your game is on quarantine. Itch did not inform you about this and suggested things like logging out and in again with 2fa or whatever could be done to prove being not a hacked account.

If they want to be fair, they should not punish you for ignoring a thing you would only know by accident. (The punishment would be pushing the game at last place of queue)

Now that I mentioned it, logging out and doing a fresh 2fa log in might actually be a good thing, should that behaviour metric look at such things. 

(+1)

Update: My games are no longer quarantined, thank you. But I'm still having the issue: any update or change to the description page, no matter how small, puts it back into quarantine. This isn't a general rule on itch.io, nor would it happen to all accounts, and it's not something that only affects NSFW games, because I just tested this game:

Love's Heart - Memory Time

Which isn't NSFW and has disappeared from the lists once. It's something that's specifically affecting some accounts, like mine. Could someone please check this and stop my games from being quarantined at the slightest change?

Have a great day.

Hello.

I have exactly the same situation - my games disappear from search every time the game page changes. The account was created about 2 years ago, there were no complaints about it (at least itch never informed me about them), there is a link back to my itch page on Patreon, I have been using 2FA for a long time... But none of this matters - today I uploaded an update to one of my games (fixed a bug in the APK) and it immediately disappeared from search.

I understand everything about moderation and malware. But I would like to hear an explanation on the question: why does quarantine NOT affect ALL accounts/games that are updated? I see many games that are updated even several times a day, and they still remain in search. It turns out that these accounts have a privileged/trusted status, right? I would like the site administration to explain how I can get this status too.

(+1)

It does not affect all pages, because Itch uses obviously some kind of scoring or whatever automatic means there are to evaluate the situation. It is not all humans that do the delisting. What affects this is secret. They will not tell. And it probably changes regularly.

There are some verified accounts. You see them with a checkmark. But I suspect this is something Itch will ask of you, and not something that you can apply for. Also, I doubt it would protect against all the quarantines and delistings. Neither does having a big account. I saw someone with 15k+ followers get quarantined.

So, if you are not informed about being quarantined or delisted, just ignore it. Act like a human. Act like a developer. Not someone trying to game the system or trying to circumvent delisting. Maybe their automatic sees you being a regular non hacked account user and speed up quarantine/indexing. Itch views the index as a bonus anyway and you should do your own promtion. That is what you will be told, if you get an official statement.

What affects this is secret. They will not tell.

So it turns out that itch punishes us, but does not say why. This is very strange. Imagine how a similar situation would look in court: you broke the law, but we will not say which one, and you will still be punished.

If the itch administration gave clear rules, the violation of which leads to blocking, people would not have to create topics like "why did my game disappear from the index" over and over again and guess what exactly they did wrong.

>  if you are not informed about being quarantined or delisted, just ignore it. 

I can't because not appearing in search results reduces sales, and this money is my only income at the moment. An additional problem is the type of content I create - most traffic and promotion sources do not allow advertising 18+ games. Therefore, site search is the main source of buyers for me.

You assume that you and other devs are delisted/quarantined because you did something wrong that you can help. But this is not court, and it is not punishment. If you want an analogy, try airport security.

They will also not tell you how they select people for "random" inspections.

This is done to protect users. And it is very much needed. I saw malware indexed in the hundreds. Not hidden away in password protected files advertised via discord. Malware out in the open on the index. And this is just the stuff I saw. There is bound to be a lot more that I did not see or recognise. And since Itch does not scale with users actions due to a lack of advertisements, they need to do this protection for cheap. So shotgun quarantine it is. Bad for you, my sympathies. But I believe it to be more important to protect users. And your games will get out of quarantine eventually.

My advise for ignoring was meant for your account actions. Maybe the algorithm can recognise this and speed up the quarantine. Actually, outside advertisement is said to speed up all this indexing things. It makes sense. If a lot of people access the page and it turns out to be malware, it would be better to remove it earlier. That you have a hard time advertising your content on sfw sites like youtube is tough for you, but there are more than enough places where you can advertise. And, uhm, people looking for your content do not go looking for it on youtube...

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