Post by redonihunter in Downloading your own game & analytics

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For browser games it is even more confusing. A browser also downloads a web game to it's cache. But this does not get counted as a download in the dashboard metrics. But doing this with the Itch App does show up as download. A question about this pops up every few months. Like this:

https://itch.io/t/3972731/game-without-downloadable-files-gets-downloaded

Also the download counter only counts started downloads, not completed ones. Like described here

https://itch.io/t/4141152/why-are-some-users-downloading-my-game-multiple-times

That can sometimes even result in hundreds of started downloads, if someone has a very faulty connection.

https://itch.io/t/4061710/someone-buy-my-game-today-and-download-it-339-times

So counting your own downloads as downloads is not surprising. It is probably just a context free number they pull from somewhere.

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Anton27 days ago

I feel like having more info on where/how thoses numbers are computed would be helpfull, because I want to use theme to gauge interest in my games, but I feel they are unreliable as you pointed out.

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redonihunter25 days ago

I find the Referrers part of the analytics helpful in that regard. It should give hints about recurring users vs. new users. But then again, maybe those metrics have their own quirks. The download metric is talked about from time to time, so it's quirks are somewhat known.

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