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itch.io Community » itch.io » Questions & Support

Ads on free Itch games when not logged into Itch?

A topic by jco created Jul 10, 2019 Views: 1,630 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 6
jco4 years ago(+1)

So I downloaded a free Itch game without logging into Itch when I noticed an Adchoices banner ad was on the normal "Thank you for Downloading" pop-up.  I don't think I ever remember seeing this before, and I don't know how long these ads have been on Itch, this seems kind of recent since I don't see any other topics about this.  When logged into Itch downloading the same game, however, the ad does not appear for some reason.  I even tried to download my own game, Universal Wars, and an ad even appears on my game when you're not logged in, even though I'm not making any money on the game whatsoever.  Is there any way to turn off these ads, at least on our own game pages?

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nullModerator4 years ago (1 edit)

Itch.io will never place advertisements on any of your game pages. I'm fairly certain that your machine is just affected with adware - give it a good scan with a reliable antivirus and it should go away.  I was wrong, see below.

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jco4 years ago (1 edit)

Well, I tried using Windows Security Scanner and MalwareBytes along with MalwareBytes AdwCleaner, and while AdwCleaner did get something, it didn't solve my problem.  I later thought of some other cause to my problem and decided to use the Playstation 4 browser to visit a free game page to see if the ad appeared on my PS4 too, and it did.  My Playstation 4 can't have a virus because I've recently formatted it completely and this was pretty much the first time I've used the browser since, and I don't think many viruses can infect a PS4 anyway.

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nullModerator moved this topic to Questions & Support 4 years ago
jco4 years ago

I also took a look at the source code and found some stuff with Google Analytics in the download pop-up.  I've highlighted the code in question.

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firecat4 years ago

thats itch.io google anlytics it matchs with the main page. 

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firecat4 years ago(+1)

Ok i have now confirm that yes you are getting ads when you log-off and when you download any game.


This problem is on Google Doubleclick or what is now commonly known as Google marketing platform. Someone needs to change display to not showing ads or remove it all together because google will try to make everyone have ads.

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No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago

Wait, what? So the Google Analytics embed code now shows ads?!

That's malware. We need an alternative. I'll let an admin know.

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jco4 years ago

Any updates on this?  It's been over a week and the ads still remain.

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No Time To PlayModerator4 years ago

Apparently it's not from Google Analytics, but some other experiment our dev team has tried. They're aware of the problem as of a few days ago and will get to it when they can.

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