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Quinn K.2 years ago(+3)

Hi. I'm Quinn K, I made access to Griphotikon, a zine I made and had put into the Racial Justice Bundle, restricted, because I don't think it represents my work well enough anymore. I apologise for the inconvenience, but! The good news is that restricted projects you own, purchased in a bundle or otherwise, can still be downloaded!

Here is how you can still access things that were made restricted:

1. Go to your Library.
2. Go to "Things you own"
3. Go to "Bundles" and select the respective bundle you want to get something from.
4. In the search bar associated with that bundle, look for the game that got you a 404 error when you checked out its page directly.
5. From your library menu, you can just download games that were restricted directly, since you own them!

At every point, Itch makes it clear to creators that work that has been purchased isn't entirely removable. You can only make it impossible for new people to purchase, but everyone who's got it keeps it. The only way that a game can be entirely deleted from the site is I think if legality issues are involved.

Hope this helped, and... well, I guess feel free to check out Griphotikon, old though it is!

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Karl Drinkwater2 years ago(+1)

Hi Quinn K,

Thanks for that - it worked! What's interesting is that I hadn't seen the download button because every bundle has two pages on Itch, but only one of them lets you sort the games A-Z, so that is the one I always used (partly because I wanted to add all the games to a collection "Not Yet Played", and because there is no automated way to do it, I had to do each one manually - requiring multiple days, and therefore noting what letter of the alphabet I was up to). So it turns out you only see a download option if you use the other bundle page, that doesn't have sorting options. Here's a screenshot of each:



A good example of how the Itch interface is often very confusing! Having two different pages for each bundle instead of one, for example.

I did ask Itch Support about this twice. Presumably they could have given the same answer as you, but they never replied to those emails (or any others I sent in the last few years) which is a shame, as I feel more of an affiliation to Itch than to GOG or Steam.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this, I'll have a look at your pdf and the other things I couldn't access in bundles. :-) Hopefully this post will be useful to anyone else with this issue.

Best wishes, Karl

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Karl Drinkwater2 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Ah, I spoke too soon!

I just tried the first one on my list, and it appears in one bundle page (but with no download button, and only a link to a 404 page), but it doesn't appear in the other page for the same bundle when I search for it.


So I guess that creator found a way to properly delete the items.

It will be interesting to see what proportion of missing items can be downloaded using the method below. :-)

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Quinn K.2 years ago(+2)

Yeah, as the title of the game implies, the creator must have contacted itch support and gotten them to completely pull it. It's a very rare occurrence, though - I'm honestly surprised it was even allowed considering the game was part of a bundle.

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Karl Drinkwater2 years ago(+2)

I've almost finished now. I'd say about half of those in my list are irretrievable - not showing up at all, or leading to 404 pages. But the other half worked via this method. Thanks!

Reply
Quinn K.2 years ago (2 edits) (+2)

No problem! You know, link rot and removal of games from a creator's side are tied to issues that are pretty complex.

From the perspective of somebody who makes things, there's definitely stuff I wish I could just remove from the timeline of my work; but at the same time, when you make something public, it's a public good, and no longer entirely yours. There's an interplay there between privacy and personal control over how one is perceived, and the human drive and cultural importance of archival.

I guess the conclusion I came to is: "What I published isn't mine anymore, so I won't destroy it, but I can certainly stop selling it."

Reply
Karl Drinkwater2 years ago(+1)

"What I published isn't mine anymore, so I won't destroy it, but I can certainly stop selling it."

Yep, that's how I expect things to be! As an author I can cease selling my books, but anyone who has already bought a copy can keep it forever (print or ebook).

It should be the same with games and any software ideally. At least with GOG I can download and keep a file (not that it should be necessary), whereas with Steam the game can be degraded (e.g. music removed from a game you own - I think Rockstar have done that) etc.
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