Please report any pirated game you find, using the little link in the footer of each page. Thank you.
Viewing post in Piracy inside of Itch.io itself! How to handle?
That's what I did with the first user a month ago.
2023-07-24 19:17:12 | Confirmation ID: R-67647
Original message:
This game is pirated, this is the original author of the game:
https://www.dlsite.com/maniax/work/=/product_id/RJ01041897.html
He didn't even mentioned the original author of the game on his post, actually claims that he's the dev of the game.
Not only that, I checked his profile and he posted several pirated games.
But I see that no action was taken and the user just keep posting pirated games with no problem. On the second report I also linked to his twitter since on his twitter that user mentions that he's pirating those games with no filter.
So I wanted to ask if I'm doing something wrong or those cases should be treated on a different way than the report link on the bottom 😥
For widespread piracy that's not limited to one project, you can also contact support the usual way.
It takes a while and you might be mislead to thinking nothing was done, depending on how you monitor the reported games. You will never get an answer to your reports. And they might stay quite a while in your watchlist if you put them into a collection.
But itch does not enough in regard to piracy.
All tickets below reported over a month ago. All still downloadable. All provided with source of original paid work. Oh, they are quarantined, but you can still download them - which is what I meant with not enough. If the game can still be downloaded, you can still advertise them on message boards, discord and so on. And judging from the file sizes of the downloads, some might even be tampered and contain malware.
This thread adresses this very problem with the direct links advertising. Thanks for pointing that out. Maybe itch does not think about that possibility, because they only quarantine some of the games. And you only notice that, when you click the download button.
R-59558 . A paid game from DL-Site
R-59580, also DL-Site.
R-59602, the account has 3 pirated games on their profile. For one the original is on itch, no less.
R-59560, on steam.
Tbf, most games I reported are gone. And I think I reported one game that might or might not have been put here by the author, so not being too hasty is prudent. There are lots of creators putting a free version on itch, after all. But I doubt one can find creators selling on dl-site doing that very often.
Seems someone had a closer look at the tickets ;-)
That is, closer than the person originally reviewing them. All gone now.
Maybe I reported them wrong? Unauthorizded uploads did not came to mind first, so I always assumed that it was a vehicel for malware. There is just so much really free stuff on itch and so many other sites that do host inofficial stuff, why bother putting it on itch in the first place , as it will be removed.
Only one in my collection of 30 reported titles now is R-59565, I did not provide a link to the original work in the ticket. But it was the same uploader as one of the others, but with a different account.
And of course my newest addition from today, R-69710. A certain style is common among many of those uploads, almost like a fingerprint. Let's hope they keep at it, as it makes it easier to spot.
But the newest addition is already two weeks up and has 7 ratings, good ones even. Seems like not everyone notices something fishy going on. And why should they. So many free or pay what you want games here.
But seriously, why bother with uploading on itch? In the way it is done. There are better ways that I do not want to discuss, but the way it is done as described in this thread, I cannot wrap my head around it, why they try to do it on itch. That is why I always assume, that it actually is malware, that fell through the detection. Not all malware can be detected, especially spyware.