Hello. May I ask why my game "Office Secrets" has disappeared from the catalog and search?
https://officesecrets.itch.io/office-secrets
Hello. May I ask why my game "Office Secrets" has disappeared from the catalog and search?
https://officesecrets.itch.io/office-secrets
Likely due to the change you just made, as explained in this pinned post.
Thank you for the information. However, I’m struggling to understand how a platform where a game can disappear from the catalog for a month or more can be taken seriously. This seems unprofessional, especially considering how many developers choose Itch as their primary platform. It’s concerning that there aren’t enough moderators to ensure that changes go through moderation in a reasonable amount of time.
This seems unprofessional
It is.
But then again, did you pay 100 $ up front to publish here? Were you asked to show your real life ID to proof you are who you claim you are?
You have a patreon. What did they ask from you, before approving your account? And why do you not link from your patreon to your Itch? Anyone crosschecking if you are who you claim you are, will not find such a link. Maybe you are some scammer impersonating the real spicy pixels ;-)
Unfortunately, Itch's services get abused every day, so they do have automatics to look out for anything that might need human staff attention. And unfortunately, that staff seems understaffed and that automatic gives false positives. We do not see the correct positives.
I agree that some sort of money making might help the situation. $ 5 would be enough to discourage a lot of spam, scam and joke projects that keep up the time of staff as a side effect. Nothing against a good joke project, but if it provokes mails to support or takes time away from staff to get indexed or removed from index, that can pile up.
For the crosslinking of socials/release platform, unless prohibited or there are reasons, it should always be done. For marketing and search engine optimisation alone. Someone might stumble upon one of the socials but does not like that platform too much, but would prefere one of the other places.
But, no, there should not be a direct linkage for getting indexed, just because you link to Itch from Patreon. But having natural traffic from Patreon to Itch from people curious about your Itch page might speed up indexing, as it is said that projects with more natural external traffic might be prioritised. It can also calm down anyone concerned about you being a possible impostor. They might get some warning about an unsigned exe or even a false positive from their scanners. What to do in such a case? Ask the suspected impostor? ;-)
Done https://www.patreon.com/officesecrets/about
Thanks for the advice. But believe me, it would be much better if they just charged $100 for developer account registration rather than causing these issues.
Please let me know if you have any other useful advice on this matter besides mentioning Itch on Patreon.