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Since you mentioned Steam, their most recent ranking does not exist. They have a general sortable and filterable list, where you can sort by "Release Date".

You try to equate "most recent" on Itch with "sort by release date" on Steam. But there is no such thing as an official release date on Itch you could sort by. Oh, you can enter such information, I have seen release dates in the future and from before Itch existed.

The default list has every release status in it. Even on hold / cancelled items. So it stands to reason that changing that status should not directly change order. Neither should indexing, as it is not an action by the developer.

Discussing about the expectation from a list called "Most Recent" is interesting, but the term is ambigous. Whom is it most recent to? From developer's perspective, or Itch's, or the user's? I have seen most recent lists, that are more like this "list" here:

 https://itch.io/feed?filter=new_games

... only for downloads. Or views. Or search terms. Or like the list of recently made postings.

So what makes a game "recent"?

Itch chose to order it by publishing date, mixed with staff aproved major updates.

You would have it by release status change and indexing change on top.

I would prefer it by updates without need for a devlog. Maybe with a cooldown of up to 3 months, to prevent update spamming to get on top of recent. So it would be a glimpse of the projects currently being worked upon in a most recent ordering.

Oh, and the standard response about anythign related to not being on the index at all or at the wrong place, is, that a developer should never rely on the circumstancial bonus traffic that existing on such lists might give, but to do external promotion.

You try to equate "most recent" on Itch with "sort by release date" on Steam. But there is no such thing as an official release date on Itch you could sort by.

You keep saying that, and I keep saying that it would make perfect sense to sort by time of indexing. This time is when a game is "released" for the public for the purposes of discoverability on Itch, since it's not discoverable before this time, and is discoverable after this time. If it's sorted by time of indexing, each game would start its time on the Most Recent page at the top (for however short a time), just as one would expect.

The default list has every release status in it.

But I'm not talking about release status. I'm talking about indexed vs not indexed, and the Most Recent list only has indexed games in it, while it does not have non-indexed games in it.

Discussing about the expectation from a list called "Most Recent" is interesting, but the term is ambigous. Whom is it most recent to? From developer's perspective, or Itch's, or the user's?

From the perspective of the Most Recent list itself, with Most Recent meaning the most recent game to be included on the list. There is nothing ambiguous about that.