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My game has never updated in Most Recent

A topic by Skinny Rat Studio created 3 days ago Views: 86 Replies: 6
Viewing posts 1 to 2

Since my game was indexed, it has never appeared in the Most Recent tab. Logically, it should have, since I did everything correctly and followed the site's recommendations. I designed the game page well, and each major update is posted no more than once every 30 days. Just in case, I'll mention that this is an adult game, but that doesn't matter, as other similar games are updated without any problems and appear in Most Recent. For months now, I haven't been able to figure out what the problem is.

https://skinny-rat-studio.itch.io/my-a-rank-witch

Moderator(+1)

Your game is indexed, but major updates have to be approved by staff before they can put your game back at the top of Most recent, and not all of them are.

(1 edit)

What criteria do employees use to decide whether or not to release a major update? Do they play the game? Because if they do, then I don't understand what the problem is, and if they don't, then what criteria are used to evaluate it? The thing is, my game has never been at the top of the Most Recent list, not even once. It's always languishing somewhere at the bottom, as if it has never been reviewed by the employees responsible for this.

Moderator(+2)

I don't know. I don't think it involves playing the game though.

What should I do if my game is never verified? I actively update it every month, with every major update, but the site doesn't respond. There's probably little point in writing to the site's support team by email, as they have never responded to any of my questions by email, and this is far from my first game project on this site.

Moderator(+1)

I don't know what the rules are or what else you can do, but the next time you open a ticket and it's not answered, you can post the ID here and I'll let our admins know.

(+1)
What should I do if my game is never verified? I actively update it every month, with every major updat

You act like your game will only ever have an audience if it gets bumped on the recent sorting. If that is the case, then bumping it there will not help.

And why does everybody talk about major updates "every month". In my vocabulary, if you do a regular monthly update, that's a regular monthly update, not a major update. Itch approves far too many of those in my opinion. And linking the bump to a devlog punishes the devs that update without a devlog.

You need to do actual promoting. Not hoping for passive circumstantial advertisement. People looking for the nieche you offer will find the game regardless of any recentness. It's currently literally only 100 games if you select the adult tag and the three letter tag you used. 30 if you add the AI tag.

Anyway, my theory is, that having a popular game and many followers improves the odds of an approved major update devlog a lot. Think 5000 followers, not 200. 200 is nothing to sneer at, but more popular adult nieches gather thousands of followers in a few months. This might be an Itch thing, since your Patreon has over 1000 followers. AI is not popular here. And I dislike the layout of some Patreon pages, your's included. Where is the about page, where a developer would list social links? There could be a link to Itch, directing some of the thousands of Patreon visitors to Itch once in a while, boosting popularity.