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DEINDEXING Issue Ignored for Over 2 Months – No Notice, No Reply

A topic by BakeKo created 1 day ago Views: 85 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 3

@itchio-support , fellow creators and my fans:

Solo student dev here. My two projects were silently removed from search results without any notification or explanation; despite 4 detailed support emails (Ticket ID: 308203) and repeated moderator involvement, nothing has been addressed in over 2 months (62 days as of writing this post). I am sharing the complete, factual timeline for full transparency to draw attention to the issue and so that my fellow creators know what to expect, also for my fans to know that this issue is one of major reasons I have been not releasing updates.

Affected Projects:

  • Furrmatch (free NSFW puzzle game): Fully compliant with adult tags; indexed without issues for months; major summer update published early September; than multiple small bug fixes and at last an android compatibility update (61 days ago); after that update the project got deindexed within 24 hours.
  • Sweepurr DEMO (separate, clearly labeled free demo page): Created to restore visibility (released 3 days before the last update on Furrmatch project) after paid NSFW deindexing wave; indexed briefly for 18 hours; deindexed immediately after with no warning; now invisible for 64 days. Structure identical to dozens of currently indexed demos.

Damage To Projects:

  • 99% traffic loss overnight; sustained zero growth
  • Hundreds of hours of full-time summer development rendered invisible
  • Dozens of thousands of potential visits lost (likely far more); critical post-update exposure window destroyed

Support Timeline (Ticket 308203)

  1. 10 Sep: Opened ticket with the first email explaining both deindexings
  2. 10 Sep (1h later): Second email asking for clarification after I found out that even my now main project is deindexed
  3. 19 Sep: Third email following up after 9 days of silence
  4. 8 Nov: Fourth email asking why I am being ignored for over 2 months; still no reply

Moderator Interactions

  • 1 Oct: Asked publicly why no support response; moderator replied, “I’ll let our admins know.”
  • 10 Oct: Followed up 10 days later asking for approximate timeline; moderator: “I have no way of knowing.”
  • 22 Oct: Responded with "still no response"; no moderator response

Every tag, metadata field, and guideline has been verified dozens of times over months; no policy violation found.

I am Still awaiting on:

  1. Exact reason for deindexing (a specific rule broken if any or confirmation of a major error)
  2. Requirements on what to change to restore indexing (if anything needs changing)
  3. Approximate reindexing date

Will update this thread if/when resolved.

BakeKo, love you all!!!

Moderator

...I didn't respond the third time because there's nothing more to add. It was out of my hands once I notified our admins about your ticket. They certainly aren't going to tell me about their interactions with you. They'll reply via e-mail if at all. And as the rules of this category point out, itch.io staff is unlikely to see your post here in the first place.

I have not received any response even when you said you notified them; I reached out to them recently with another follow up but still no response. I am aware that support team is small, but 2 months with no response is very very long. If you can notify them again about the issue since this is severely impacting my growth as a fairly new developer. Thank you in advance.

Moderator

Okay. It might help if you post the new ticket ID here as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Exchange malice with intentional and stupidity with being overworked and swamped.

You assume this is intentional on Itch's side. It's not. They might intentionally delist something, but that is rather rare. And I will explain why your games are not listed at the bottom. But Itch will take their time, when something is flagged for staff review. And they will never talk about reasons. Even two months waiting time for regular indexing is not uncommon.

Does this suck? Of course. But your games are not inaccessible. You need to do your own promotion. Itch does not see itself as a platform like Steam that picks games and serves them to the users to maximize profit. It sees itself as a file hoster with attached shop and some features. Internal and passive promotion by being visible on the catalogue is seen as secondary. (I got that impression by various topics where leafo posted. My impression might be wrong.)

The moderator is a community moderator. Not staff. No time moderates these very threads you are posting. Itch has no tech support message board. Staff does not read here in general. For whatever reason they still made some communication channel, where the mod can tell staff a ticket number. But it is still staff doing the work, and that means, they are still swamped and overworked with things and even with that ticket number known, they might not work on that ticket any faster in some situations.

What did happen to your games and why? I can't tell for the past, but currently it is this:

The two projects are in quarantine. All quarantined games are delisted as a side effect.

Why are your games in quarantine? No one will tell you the actual reasons. Itch fights against malware. There is hundreds uploaded each week. They will not give a blueprint for how to more easily avoid the mechanisms they do have. Waiting time to get out of quarantine is about the same as for indexing. Maybe longer, depending on the reasons for the quarantine.

The games are still accessible, even in quarantine. There is just that warning message.

WARNING: This Page Has Been Quarantined

Our system has flagged this page for additional review due to potential suspicious behavior from the page owner.

If someone has asked you to download from this page and you don't fully trust them, or their behavior isn't what you recognize, then we don't recommend downloading this file until our team has reviewed the page.

Password-protecting files or pages is a technique often used by scammers in an attempt to block virus and other security scans from detecting malware. Do not trust password-protected files unless you fully trust the uploader.

Learn more about the "Try my game" Discord scam

-"You assume this is intentional on Itch's side" No I do not; ironic that you assume so for me. I have been clear on the fact that I know they are a small team and are overloaded in my emails and in my last community post. Having said that I also have to take into account that 2 months with multiple emails and a moderator notification should have drawn their attention by now. I would not make a fuss about this if it was not a big deal for me, it is severely impacting my growth.

-I do have regular traffic outside itch.io. The problem lies in the fact that most of the traffic comes from itch.io; and deindexing has caused most of it to vanish. I am a new developer, I am not someone with an established audience, and itch was my plan to gain that audience. I now have a small audience, but newer audience is accumulating extremely slowly as opposed to when the projects were indexed. Also I have been working on updates my whole summer, and when I released biggest updates I have so far, the projects got deindexed and that has severely damaged my future growth.

-As for the malware thing; I do not have malware in my projects, I do not know why it got tripped if it did; and I do not get the given message you provided when tying to download the game using an anonymous browser; so I do not know where that quarantine thing comes from.
If itch.io does quarantine random projects for malware, than I understand why they would not tell the reason.

Thank you for trying to help tough, I appreciate it.

Then I misread, sorry about that. The way you wrote made me think you thought they intentionally delisted your games or that you did something wrong. 

I assure you, the quarantine message is still active, as I type this reply. It is the message I posted plus how old the project is, and from which countries/regions you connected. It's the standard message.

Projects are not quarantined randomly. They do have scanners and automated checks and whatnot. I dare say I do have a bit of experience on that topic. https://itch.io/t/3512426/itch-is-not-a-safe-place-do-not-download-things . And if you want to see an actual current malware, the one talked about here, is malware. https://itch.io/t/5525704/possible-plagiarism-issue-on-itchio-my-game-is-stolen . But the OP did not realize it at the time of complaint.

(1 edit)

I do not know how you get that message, I can not replicate it. If what you are saying is true (that my page is quarantined) then the only reason I can think of is because I posted a few bug fixes updates in a short time period which could have triggered something; but I do not know how to prove that, it is just a guess. I guarantee my projects are safe, but the system might have seen the few bug fixing updates in a short period as suspicious and deindexed them for that reason. I have thought of this as a possibility, but Ijust have no way of verifying that.

edit: spelling