How does itch.io justify charging ANY money for a game that has been set to "Abandoned" status on ALL sites that offered it since Oct 2021? This game is no where near completion and will never see any further updates. It is dead. Doesn't that mean they have turned it into a money grab? I mean.. The developer has abandoned the game so they are not paying the developer any of the money they sell this abandoned game for... Uncool..
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Well.. Yes.. IF the developer is still active. The fact that the game is flagged as "Abandoned" on most any site you can find it on, and the lack of updates since, what, 2021? It is clear that this game is no longer supported. Also. Recent changes in itch.io related to game prices has removed the developer's control in many regards. Denial of sale among them so this should have been, and should be, itch's action for any/all games that do not receive demonstration of support and activity by the developer. By all means. Leave the game/developer listed but remove the ability to charge money for any game that is no longer supported or updated by the developer. Think about it. As long as itch is charging for the sale of any game, not updated or supported by the developer, means itch is keeping that money. Even though they have a contract with the developer for how funds disperse, what guaranty do any of US have that our money went to the developer when the developer clearly HAS NOT visited their itch site account in YEARS? This game is yet another example of a game forgotten by the developer, or abandoned because the developer "Moved On", or was removed from the equasion. The last post the developer put on their Patreon page was back in 2021. That constitutes 3 years of no updates or actions with the game even there. Clearly abandoning this game. So.. ANYONE who pays for it has not at all been paying attention to the status. And by continuing to accept payments, since they process through itch control, lets itch disperse the funds how THEY see fit. Even it that means all of them go into itch wallet.
the dev failed to update the game status on itch to “cancelled” I doubt itch will be monitoring every game on other platforms to check if its still developed and puts the onus on the dev to do it. The contract that you mention is a general contract that I don’t think Itch manually makes with each and every developer on the site. Similar to how other platforms sell products have a rate for hosting and selling like Steam, Itunes, Epic etc.
Now as a buyer you should be able to do your due diligence before buying any game.
Should you be able to report an abandoned game that can be bought on itch so that itch does someething about it? Of course.
Itch shouldn’t allow devs to sell games that are still “in development” imo