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My game has been de-listed with no reason given

A topic by QuentinWH created 38 days ago Views: 294 Replies: 15
Viewing posts 1 to 3

Hello.

My game, https://quentinwh.itch.io/sinathir has been de-listed on 12.8.2025. I received no warning, e-mail or notification. I contacted the support by e-mail the next day, but so far received no answer. Ticket number: 302350

I know itch has been de-listing NSFW games and I know why it’s happening. However, my game has no NSFW tags and no NSFW content.

This happened the same day I made a blog post about new version I released, so I can only assume someone from the mod team saw it, thought my game was NSFW and decided to de-list it. As I said above, the game has no NSFW content and is completely free. Not even patreon links.

On top of that, if this post is to be believed: https://itch.io/t/5149036/reindexing-adult-nsfw-content , Free NSFW games are being re-indexed again, so even someone might think that the game is NSFW at the first glance, it is still completely free, which makes me think it shouldn’t be de-listed in the first place.

So I’d like to know why my game has been de-listed. Was it an accident, or is there something in my game that could be considered NSFW? And if so, what exactly is it, so I can fix it?

Thank you in advance.

Moderator

I've let our admins know, but please read this unofficial FAQ that explains why it can happen.

Thanks. I read the FAQ, but my game has been on this site for several years now and this has never happened before. Since there was no notification telling me what exactly happened, I just assumed the game was de-listed manualy, or there is some new system at work that is supposed to detect NSFW games autaticaly and it made a mistake.

Again, thanks for the help.

Hi. A couple of comments, Itch never sends notifications when a game is deindexed or reindexed. It's not something they haven't notified you about, it's just that they never do it.

Except for the admin, no one knows how the algorithm that deindexes games works, so we're just speculating, but every time you update your page, there's a chance the algorithm will deindex your game and put it on hold for manual review.

From what you're saying, this seems to be your case. One of your updates was flagged by the automatic algorithm, and no one on staff has been able to review it yet.

I doubt the staff manually reviewed your game and deemed it NSFW. When that happens, the first thing they do is mark the game as NSFW, I'm check your game and appears as SFW. So it doesn't look like any human has reviewed it.

That’s what I thought at first, but then I started looking into it and I read the FAQ, which says:

“I’ve been told my game is ‘quarantined’ – what’s that mean?!”

It simply means your game was automatically flagged for itch.io staff to take a closer look. See the previous question.

That’s when I decided to write an e-mail ten days ago, since this point is worded in a way that makes me think you do receive a notification when your game was automatically flagged, which didn’t happen.

All in all, none of this is really that big of a deal, even if it is quite annoying. The game is free, so I’m not losing any money and nothing is stopping me from working on it.

What bothers me though is the lack of communication. Itch has a system that automatically flags games for review. I would apreciate if they could also send automatically generated message to my notifications telling that that’s what happened. Everyone must agree that checking on your game, only to see it vanish mysteriously without any stated reason and then having to look at forums or contacting the support is not pleasant, or ideal.

Moderator

Please help me clarify that point. What part of my wording suggests there's supposed to be a notification?

(+1)

maybe this:

“I’ve been told "

Without context, it can be interpreted as if it was the staff who said it.

Moderator

Fixed that. Thanks!

Sure.

It’s the “I’ve been told” part, which makes me think I received that information from someone else, most likely an admin, automated message system or moderator. It can also mean that an ordinary member of the community told me, but that’s where the “previous question” comes in.

“Why did my game disappear from the site? It was visible before.”

This to me seems like “I’ve been told my game is ‘quarantined’ – what’s that mean?!”, but worded slightly differently. The thing is, I don’t know what ‘quarantined’ means exactly. Does it mean the game has been fully removed, or is it just impossible to find with the search bar, like what being de-listed does? I just assumed that both are pretty much the same thing, since nobody can find your game through the search function anyway.

Both of those points pretty much say the same thing. “Your game has been automaticaly flagged and it is not visible to others. Please wait untill we resolve this.” The first point doesn’t say anything that could be interpreted as “we will notify you”. The second point does, atleast to me. That’s what confused me.

Personaly, I think removing the second point and altering the first point. so it says “Why did my game disappear from the site / got quarantined? It was visible before.” would make it pretty much impossible to interpret them in a wrong way and answer to both those questions is pretty much the same anyway. Adding a clarification what de-listed and Quarantined actualy means would help and adding a line that says you will not be notified when that happened couldn’t hurt either.

And I just want to apologise if my wording sounds rude, angry or impolite. It’s just the way I type and I don’t really want anyone to think that I’m trying to be mean.

Thanks.

Moderator

"Quarantined" means your game can't be found in searches, and someone from the staff has to look at it. The latter is how I usually explain it to people. I don't know how this term was picked.

The message is different when trying to download the game.

When the game is unindexed, it simply doesn't appear in the Itch search engine, but if you access the page, it works normally.

When a game is marked as "quarantined," in addition to being unindexed, if someone tries to download that game, Itch displays a warning, indicating that the game may be potentially dangerous.

(1 edit)

So the game being “quarantined” is pretty much the same as it being de-listed? If that’s the case, why have two points in the FAQ focusing on the exact same thing? Or is de-listed / de-indexed the same thing as quarantined, except nobody will come and have a look at it?

To make it less confusing. Is this right?

Quarantined - Your game is not visible, staff will have a look if everything is OK and make it visible again

De-indexed - Your game is not visible. It broke some rule and it will not come back unless you fix what’s wrong.

Moderator

...Because there's in fact more to it, as Hechelion pointed out, and often people ask specifically about their games being quarantined.

Sorry, didn’t notice the post above. Everything makes sence now. Thanks.

Still, adding some kind of glossary of frequently used terms and their explanation to the FAQ page, or somewhere else would make things easier in the future. As I said, I would have never known what the difference between de-listed and quarantined is if I didn’t ask.

(+1)

Lack of communication is Itch's main problem.

On the one hand, there isn't enough staff to respond and/or communicate with every person who requests support, much less to report issues like indexing.

Regarding an automated system, as far as I can recall, the admin has never given any reasons, but many of us believe it's to prevent bad actors from taking advantage. For example, if the system notified you automatically, you could program a bot to look for patterns of what is indexed and what isn't.

I also want to clarify that this is an assumption as to why it isn't done; it doesn't mean I justify or criticize the process.

Regarding an automated system, as far as I can recall, the admin has never given any reasons, but many of us believe it’s to prevent bad actors from taking advantage. For example, if the system notified you automatically, you could program a bot to look for patterns of what is indexed and what isn’t.

That doesn’t make much sence to me, since you know your game was de-indexed pretty much the moment you check your analytics page or try searching for it. The only difference I can tell (unless I’m missing something), is the fact that you don’t know at first why you can’t find your game anymore. Then you check the forum and the FAQ and now you know. Getting the message would tell you what happened without having to search the forum.

I made one blog post several months ago. I made another a week ago and few hours later my game got de-indexed. I’m like 99% certain the system flagged it because of the blog post or the new version upload. And if that’s the case, making a bot would (probably) only be very slightly easier with the automated messages, because it takes action maybe hours after it finds a reason for flagging, instead of months like for example VAC does.

On another note. Do you know why moving uploads up or down doesn’t scroll the whole screen anymore? It did that a year or so ago. Then the interface for moving uploads changed and now I have to scroll the screen if I want to move something up or down by multiple positions.