Post by Capky Games in My games disappeared from search lists

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Hello, I hope you're having a good day.

Sorry to bother you. My pages are still in quarantine as of today and I haven't received a reply to the tickets I've sent, this is the most recent one, although there are more:

254363

The games on my account that are still in quarantine after several weeks and that I definitely know there's nothing wrong with them are the following:

Lesbian Island
Hentai no Sekai
Yuri Demon

Please, could you take a look at them when you can and remove them from quarantine? I need to post new updates on my games and I can't do that because more games might get quarantined when there's nothing wrong with them.

Regards.

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redonihunter2 days ago (1 edit)

Those games are ~~not~~ still quarantined.

Just ignore the delisting and update as you would normally do.

The thing is, any update (including the first upload) can get a game on a waiting list for manual review. And that includes a temporary delisting. Unfortunately, the waiting time on that waiting list can be long. Over a month sometimes. So you would typically wait a minute, a few days or several weeks. It is said, that this list is not first in first out.

And some random things can also get a game quarantined and for obvious reasons, Itch will keep those random things secret. There are real hacked accounts and malware out there. Based on my observations, there is about one hacked account with malware on the index every day. And if they take several weeks to remove reported malware, I have doubts that removing games from quarantine is any faster. R-107312 is now 8 weeks reported and still indexed. :-(

If a game is quarantined it is also delisted, but there will be a quarantine message if you try to download it. (On the download page where to select the file)

For publishers the frustrating bit is, that Itch usually does not tell you anything about the status of a game. Is it intentionally delisted or is it still in the waiting queue? Was it "overlooked"? In combination of a waiting time of several weeks, much misunderstandings happen there. And Itch's stance about indexing is, you should not rely on it to begin with. There are reasons for doing it this way, but it still is frustrating for the publishers and at the places they would look for information (the faq), it states a waiting time of a few days, so people get nervous when nothing happens after two weeks.

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Capky Games2 days ago(+1)

One of my followers sent me this screenshot when I asked them today if my games were still quarantined, which is why I said in my message that they were quarantined.

The way that message is written, it makes it seem like I might be a scammer, which obviously reflects badly on me. I understand that there are indeed people who create a fake page and post a file with a virus, which is why a review of the games is important. But a whole month of giving a warning on my innocent games that makes me look like a possible scammer is very damaging to me.

And one of my games was fine until I posted a new update for it, then it was quarantined as well, which is why I am afraid to update more games.

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redonihunter2 days ago

Sorry, my mistake. I thought the quarantine message appears earlier. It appears at the latest possible moment - after you decided how much money to give and when pressing the red download button on the actual file.

But if you were not formally notified about a quarantine, I would still just ignore it and operate the page normally. I have seen that happen to another established account some time ago. Half the games were suddenly quarantined. I believe in that case accessing the games with a vpn might have been the cause: Itch might have thought the account was hacked.

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Capky Games2 days ago

I've certainly never used a VPN and it's not my fault if someone tries to do so and I don't think I'm the only developer whose games someone tries to hack into with a VPN, wouldn't itch.io really have better measures in place for this?

Do you happen to know what that person did to fix their problem?

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redonihunter2 days ago

I do not know if something was done on publisher side. It cleared after a few days. Maybe a week. People were making jokes about it in the comments. I do not know how long it took. It was one of the bigger accounts. 10k+ followers. It is rumored that the indexing waiting lists might be prioritised by traffic.

I added something to my reply above. There are cases where there is a waiting time that is unholy. I do not know what is going wrong. But I reported actual malware two months ago and it is still indexed. So if that has either a waiting time of that length or the staff clicked the wrong button. I would assume that it does not look any better for false positives that got put on quarantine.

wouldn't itch.io really have better measures in place for this?

Disclaimer: I only see the cases that are not caught. So the caught cases might be 10x 100x 1000x times higher. I do not know.

But the cases I do see, the measures are not performing well. When I regularly was checking out games, I collected malware games. My collection grew over 500 in a few months. Most of them on hacked accounts. So the measures are unsufficient to detect a hack. And the scanners were unsufficient to detect the malware. Itch is under attack every day by evil people abusing the system. Long waiting times for indexing or false positives are a symptom of that fight, in my opinion.

Maybe it got better the last few months. I sure hope so.

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Capky Games2 days ago

Yes, as I said, I fully understand that itch.io faces many problems and bad people every day. But I've been like this for a month or almost a month now, I really need help. I hope the situation changes soon.

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redonihunter2 days ago

As a user, my advice:

Ignore the quarantine in regards to updates. Just do whatever you would normally do.

Put up a link from your patreon to your Itch. ( I mean, Itch even quarantines the link from Itch to Patreon. It is laughable)

Temporary put up some disclaimer, (or something in the comment section), how your games are currently quarantined and this should clear up shortly, and if people are suspicous they should google your games and follow the official links (which are patreon and itch).

As you might have noticed I saw a lot of bad things. So, how to recognise if something is bad? Do what I just wrote. Follow the official links. Your Patreon does not link to your Itch. This is very suspicous. I could not say, if it is an impostor account or not by that alone. I also saw no link to your public/demo versions on your patreon on the quick. If they are there, I did miss them. So I could also not check, if your archives look the same as on Itch. If I could verify that it is not a fake account, but the real deal, there is a only a small remaining risk that either your account was hacked or your development machine was infected by a virus, thus infecting the files you upload. And for your information, I saw malware that did not even trigger any scanners on virustotal. And lots of legit games that do trigger false positives there.

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Capky Games2 days ago

I've added a link to my itch.io from my patreon. As for the other steps, I'll see what I can do. Thanks for your advice.

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redonihunter2 days ago

It basically only was that step. From what I see there are already some discussions in your comments.

The reason for that specific advice is the report button. People do report suspicious games now and then. And from my experience, a missing reference where there could be one raises suspicion. Though I often see that link missing. Maybe Patreon had or has some policies against linking to other sites at some time? I do not know.

And one can assume that games can be put into quarantine after a report, after all, that's what that button is for.

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