itch.io

Well said.

I would not exactly call it a developer's site, but the ones that do post in community are more often than not. The ones posting on games, it is the other way round. The vast majority does not post comments anywhere.

But not many people read community, at all. It is a tiny fraction of the users. Just look at the view numbers of threads. And those seem not unique views. It seldeom reaches 3 or 4 digits. There are accounts that have 20k followers and more.

Gaining viewers and followers is extra hard, if you try to do that by existing on itch. It is a trickle. Have a game people would want to play, and chances are, the traffic from google will be higher than from internal links of browse pages. And of course, from all those streamers and youtubers that might play your game and send traffic over.

The recommendation feature on itch is quite underdeveloped. Like, really. Let me phrase it like this: Some people are not even aware of that feature, just as some people are not aware that you can search for tags on Steam. There, the situation is the opposite. The recommendation features are overwhelming. You do not even feel the need to tag search for new stuff.

The consequence, as I see it, is this general lack of internal promotion. Oh, there is a little bit, some boost here and there, but I see people here complain in comments about missing features in tag search all the time, and not about missing features in game recommendations. This tells me, that people use itch fundamentally different than steam. And there might be a feedback loop on both sites for this behaviour. The algorithm on steam rewards itself for recommending games that the player does play. The algorithm on itch is so hidden that people use the browse features by tags.