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There are more games on the illegal file sharing sites from Steam than there are from itch.io - but they exist from both.  So going the Steam route won't protect you.  

Large sites like Reddit allow the illegal file sharing sites to promote their business and they refuse to take down the links.   Those web owners likely make more money from the games than the individual developers.  These sites would not get as much traffic if they weren't allowed to actively advertise their websites on Reddit.  And yet, Reddit bans self-promotion.  So the person who steals my game can freely advertise it and I can't.   I refuse to visit / support Reddit, that's all I can do - I'm pretty sure nobody at Reddit cares.

When I was making 3D graphics I was selling on average 6 to 10 copies - and approximately 60 people were downloading them from an illegal file share site.  I didn't make enough money to make it viable and quit making graphics.  Now I have the same situation with games - it's not viable for me to make games - and I don't have the time or power to fight all the sites that illegally have my games on them.  

So a lot of people have the impression - well at least someone is playing your game - or enough people buy it to make it viable - it doesn't matter if we steal if - but that isn't true -and it has a ripple effect - the developers don't make money, then the software developers stop making money,  places like Steam and Itch.io make less money...  Would you go to a  supermarket and steal a candy bar and eat it and tell the owner - well at least someone likes your candy?  Why is stealing my game any different?  I also have overheads, I also had to buy the ingredients, in my case the game development software, I also had to wrap it and package it ...

But my only advice is - shrug it off.  It's going to happen and there isn't anything we can do about it, right now, every industry struggles with it.

And yet, Reddit bans self-promotion.

Every subreddit has their own rules. There's a site-wide guideline that < 10% of your posts should be self promotion, but I've never seen it seriously enforced. I've actually gotten quite a few sales through posts on relevant subreddits. So I wouldn't completely dismiss Reddit as a marketing channel.

Is much harder on newer people or someone making a dev account on it. I experinace this with many subreddits, the most noticable is r/gaming which does not promote anyone game unless you pay the mods:

https://imgur.com/gallery/Wssf6GN

r/video doesn't allow new users (outside the subreddit) to upload videos, its closed until you either populor or have lots of comment karma.

r/gamedev censored people: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensorship/comments/a76zwt/rgamedev_remove_a_popu...

And reddit itself can and will hide your messages if they dont like you: https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/695190-reddit-can-silently-hide-all-of-your...

Reddit isn't a great place for marketing it is only good place for closed groups to share what they found.

(2 edits)

Yeah stay away from r/gaming haha. I've had the most success with r/Games, r/creepygaming, and r/ARG, although obviously it depends what kind of games you make. The way subreddits prevent users with low karma from posting is annoying, but i think if you drop some memes in r/funny or something you can build karma pretty quickly. Or, yknow, actually participate in subreddits like r/gamedev. Shadow banning is annoying but Reddit gets a lot of bot traffic so over the years they've had to implement lots of anti-spam measures; that's one of them.

I don't want to deny anyone else's experience, I'm just noting that, for me, posting on Reddit has been by far the most effective free marketing I've tried (actually it's been more effective than most of my paid stuff as well). I don't want people to be scared away from trying it altogether because it might be really helpful for them. Or it might not. You don't know until you try.