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How would you feel about an unofficial Android itch.io client?

A topic by gardenapple created Jun 30, 2019 Views: 2,943 Replies: 4

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So, I got into Android development and I've been wanting to make a (somewhat) small and straightforward app: an itch client for Android.

The idea is to just wrap around the itch.io website (like the desktop app does) and then keep track of user downloaded .apk files. Then, every once in a while, it would check the website for available updates and download the new .apk in the background. Thus, it would act as a Google Play alternative for games which aren't available there (and for users that just hate Google for some reason). The app would be distributed through itch.io itself, as well as through F-Droid and perhaps other means.

The website provides the UI, the Android OS handles app installation, so all that's left to do is glue everything together and make a simple update checker. I feel like I could do this alone, now that it's summer and I have a lot of free time on my hands (as a university software engineering student).

I've already started the project and I do have some basic functionality up and running at this point, but I'm starting to have doubts. Before I invest too much time into this, I'd like to ask the community (and perhaps, the itch.io staff?) some questions.

Firstly, are there any plans to make an official Android app any time soon? If not, would the itch.io team be OK with an unofficial one?

Secondly, what does the community think about this?

Lastly, if I do proceed with the app development, then I'd like to get in touch with one of itch.io devs and discuss a few technical details.

I am excited about the project, both because I love itch and because I want to improve my skills as a future software engineer. But, if there's a good reason to not make the app, then I'd rather not waste 2 months of my life.

So if anyone has any feedback, or if you're willing to help, I'd appreciate it.

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No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago(+1)

I can only answer one of your questions: pretty sure there are no plans for an official Android app. Our dev team would rather focus on improving the API, and mobile compatibility for the website. So your effort wouldn't be redundant.

Otherwise, I made sure the right people see this. Good luck!

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Evolutionary Games4 years ago

We definitely need something like this because some people don't know how to install apps directly themselves or how to unlock their phones to install 3rd party apps - but you'd have to find a way to get your app around that too. Also the new Google Play Security feature blocks apps where they don't recognise the keystore file - so that again is something that people will have to turn off or know how to skip - or you'd have to make the app available on Google Play as well and I don't know how many hoops you have to jump through to release such an app in their store - or if they will still allow it.

Problems I foresee:

My views for Android games here, at itch.io are pretty much non-existent, so I don't know what the market is like.

The one or two games I did download from here for Android were very disappointing - they were the type of games where the developer is trying to maximise their earnings at the cost of having a playable game - i.e. you only can play for about 5 minutes before you must watch a full video ad or buy something, one of them also had major bugs in it. It's put me off from trying the Android games here. Itch.io doesn't force people to tell you if there is advertising or in-app purchase and then after you download it you get a nasty surprise when that's pretty much all the "game" is about. With the results that, as a developer, I'd love such an app, as someone who plays games, I wouldn't use it - I'd go to Google or Amazon where I know upfront if there's advertising or in-app purchase in the game.

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gardenapple4 years ago (1 edit)

Google Play says in their developer agreement that they don't allow third-party app stores:

You may not use Google Play to distribute or make available any Product that has a purpose that facilitates the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of Google Play.

As for installing third-party APKs, that's pretty easy to skip, and I could provide an explanation inside the app itself.

When it comes to the actual games, if you look at the top rated Android games today, not a single one of them is filled with ads. I've been using an early version of my app for a while now, and the stuff that's available here is pretty fun, even if there isn't much of it.

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leafoAdmin4 years ago

We've talked internally about making an Android app a few times, essentially doing something similar to what you're describing to create an installer. The short answer is it's very low priority and we're not sure if/when we'll do it. Our thought process about it:

Since it would be an installer, it would have to live outside of Google Play. So a side-loaded third-party installer is already going to have a very limited user base.
The amount of developers who upload APKs currently is relatively small compared to our other types of developers, so the amount of people who would want to use it could be pretty small.
We've never built an android app before so there would be a lot of upfront cost getting everything built.

It's not off the table 100%, but it's also not something we have concrete plans to build in the near future.

Regarding an unofficial one, feel free to go for it. I would strongly prefer if it was opensource. Our API support is very limited/undocumented so you might have a hard time creating it. To do any sort of downloads you would have to refer to the itch app sourcecode to see how that API is used.

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