A few days ago, a creator named Kenney put up some asset bundles of his as free assets. I added them to my library for free, as advertised.
Today, I go into my library, and I'm not able to download these asset bundles. Instead, I get sent to a store page asking me to buy them, even though they're already in my library.
What do I have to do to get at the download link? Because wherever it is, I don't see it...
There are two kinds of 100% off promotions developers can run on itch.io:
We give these two options to developers so they have the most control over how they offer their work for free. It’s their choice on how to set up the promotion, site admins can no go back and change things or grant you access to a page that was previously on sale.
Hope that explains, sorry for the confusion.
I added them to my library for free, as advertised
Could you tell me more about “as advertised” means? Were you instructed to add it to a collection somewhere on the site?
> Could you tell me more about “as advertised” means? Were you instructed to add it to a collection somewhere on the site?
Yeah. Nowhere on the page did it say anything about that this was "download now or lose forever." The collections had links to add them to my library, and since I've never run across this policy on here before (or anything even remotely like it on any similar site, for that matter!), I did exactly what it said: clicked the link to add them to my library. They're in my library now, and I quite reasonably expected, having nothing whatsoever telling me otherwise, that they would remain as accessible to me as anything in my Steam library or my GOG library.
That's the default expectation, and when it gets pulled out from under me with no notice, I feel like I've been lied to.
Because there's a difference between downloading and claiming, The latter results in you owning the product as if you had bought it, which gives you access to all future versions. So the creator may not want that. Instead, they can let you download for free during the promotion, but no further. Guess the difference could be more clearly communicated when you go download. See also this recent topic.
Sorry, but that makes no sense at all.
Sure, the distinction makes sense, of not wanting to give someone access to future updates, but conflating versioning with downloading is insane. What if someone did download something, but then gets a new computer and is unable to access stuff they had added to their library in the past?
It's not particularly difficult to implement this correctly; just put a tag on the library item's data saying that it's locked to a specific version, and they can't download any newer version than that. Saying they can't download it at all is completely wrong on just about every level.
You can also very easily keep the game archive you downloaded, since there's usually no DRM to prevent it. And sure, that's not always possible, but for a game you downloaded for free during a promotion? If you lost the download and want it again, no offense, but maybe you should consider buying the game if you like it so much. That way you'll own it in perpetuity and you'll be able to download it again any time you want from any computer.
