Thanks for checking the game out! That's interesting about posting the link on itch, I had never heard this, would have guessed any exposure would be a good thing. How does it act negatively?
Basically the youtube algorithm doesn't like it very much when views come from external sources. Most of the time it causes the algorithm to not recommend the video to new people because of either A: a lot of people click the link to see a few seconds of the video then click off to play the game without spoilers and don't return to the video or B: it could be someone who might be interested in the game realize they wont like it / don't like the genre and have completely different things recommended to them on youtube and youtube sends videos to different people based off interests of the people who watch the video (tries to send to someone else who watches the same content but if that person doesn't like that content lets say someone who watches a lot of music or commentary videos it will suggest it to the wrong people and youtube will think the video just isn't good not recommending it to more people) so ill get a view spike when i post videos here but not good retention or recommendations on youtube because of the way the algorithm is set up which sucks because it used to be better but when they changed it in 2019 that's when those problems started showing up- also sorry that was long-