itch.io

Adding that now.

This is something that could've been put into the Forum Suggestions thread as it would affect other parts of the site as well (comment boxes, dedicated forums on here) as well the general prevalence of the issue I felt giving this suggestion its own thread would be more appropriate.

Itch.io is an extremely open distribution platform and community, the most open one around - and that's good. However this openness has sadly been exploited very heavily by spambots due to the lack of anti-spam system. Most of these are simply advertising their service or site which is benign but still somewhat annoying. Some of these posts however are venturing further out and are even offering illegal services - the latest spam post I noticed on here for example is selling fake documents and counterfeit money. (Link to said post)

What I'm suggesting is an anti-spam system that stops spambots in their tracks during sign-up. Something like a CAPTCHA would be good, or Google's reCAPTCHA system which is even better (reCAPTCHA just involves clicking a checkbox rather than typing in blurry/distorted words.)

This has been successful on many other sites and it should be successful here as well.

Thoughts?

Is it in your My Purchases page?

Added

Adult content (such as porn) is allowed on itch.io as long as its legal. You should probably mark it as NSFW though. (This is done via the edit game page under "Metadata.")

If you're planning on charging money for it, things get a bit more complicated as some payment providers are less-than-welcoming of earning money from such content. While itch.io allows you to put this kind of stuff up no questions asked (assuming it's legal) you should probably check the terms and conditions of whatever payment provider you intend to use if you intend on profiting from this.

More info can be found on the Creater FAQ here.

1. Go to your developer dashboard.
2. Go down to the game that you want to edit (in your case this would be Spaceful.)
3. Under the game's title, you should see see several links saying Edit, Analytics, Widget, and more. Click on Edit.
4. Scroll down to the very bottom.
5. You should see a section that simply says "Published." Change this to "Public."

Well, it's not a horror game but if you're willing to give anything a look then I guess I'll give this a go. 😐

So the game I've got here is called Project Plasma. It's a space-themed vertical scrolling shooter game (almost like Touhou-lite in space.)

It's a paid game but I'm willing to you a special download link if you want to make a vid of it. Hit me up with a DM on Twitter if you're interested. (Link on my creator page) 🙂

If the game supports multiplayer via a LAN connection then it should be possible.

Sadly this isn't happening, Valve rejected the itch.io app and released a mealy-mouthed statement explaining why they took it down from Greenlight.

Here's the full statement released by a Valve representative. (Taken from this tweet by Leaf.)

Nah I'll put your original suggestion down. Personally I prefer the conventional quote block style as well.

I'll add it to the first post now.

I personally think we should see how reverse sales affect sales first before we do something like this.

Leaf himself said in another thread (link to post) that he might write up an analysis once the feature has been out for a while and see the effect it's had. I would personally suggest everyone waits til then.

I personally see this feature as being... interesting to say the least and a creative way of getting people to talk about your games but if it gets used too often it could potentially have a negative impact.

But hey don't let me spoil your fun, if you wanna do it then go right ahead. 🙂

The posts are already in chronological order except for replies to other posts within a thread.

So I'm assuming what you want is for the current reply system to be scrapped and replaced with the more conventional quote block system to keep all posts in chronological order. Am I right?

I think I can see what you're getting at.

You brought up that dev culture has encouraged devs to drive down their prices and that's true, but it's done to bring in new customers who would otherwise click away from the page if they saw a game that was at a high price (or a price that they thought was too high for that game.) However one thing I've noticed when it comes to changing the price to boost sales is that in some cases, simply reducing the price isn't enough - you have to make it free.

I have had one sale ever on itch.io (on Project Plasma, or PP as I like it call it in converation) due to me doing a bad job at marketing my games, however Project Plasma Mobile (PPM) has attracted many downloads in comparison. 26 downloads is definitely not much, but it got more than the PC version (PP) of the game (which is far superior but also costs money.) The PC version has weathered many sales but has never surpassed one purchase. However, during Yorkshire Day last year (yes the part of England I live in has its own day lol) I made PP free a single day and it received two downloads. For most people this is nothing but for someone who's game has only been purchased once (I did give out two download keys for the game to friends as well though) I considered this a moderate achievement.

Anyway the point I'm getting at is that lowering the price isn't always good enough - especially considering, as you pointed out, the fact it's what everyone is doing right now and I can understand why, but the tactic I guess is getting old and devs need to resort to other methods of promotion, this often involves the need to get creative in order to attract attention, something for potential buyers to come and say "hey that's new, I'll take a look."

However, I'm still not sure as to whether an anti-sale is the way to go.

While the whole point of an anti-sale would I guess be the fact that it would be a talking point for that game (or product, as itch.io does have other things on here that aren't necessarily games) it could be a tactic that can easily go wrong - both in the long run and the short run.

In the short run, an end user may see the game but see that it's at an increased price and they would wait for it to drop. This would be a hassle for the end user as they'd be forced to wait for the game's price to return to normal before buying it rather than just buying there-and-then. This can get pretty frustrating if this happens regularly to the point where they would either wait for a while and eventually forget that they were going buy that game, or just move onto another game instead. Either way, this would have a negative effect on the developer, particularly if a lot of potential buyer share that mindset.

If it becomes a talking point because of that, that could potentially have a negative effect as well as a potential buyer might think "They hold "sales" that raise the price of a game? Well I guess I'll be avoiding that game then." This would obviously be bad for the dev also as it would've become a talking point for the wrong reasons. That being said, that may not be a bad thing. Just look at Grezzo 2 for example, that game is known for being massively offensive, with some reviewers even going as far as calling it the most offensive game ever made (it's also been universally banned on Twitch,) but it still got a moderate amount of publicity and a sizeable fanbase because of the controversy it attracted. Hatred would be another example that benefitted out of sheer controversy (Hatred would be a better example here as that is a paid game.)

In the long run, everyone might jump onto the anti-sale craze after seeing that it creates a talking point for the games that host such a "sale," however this will cause the anti-sale craze to eventually become diluted just as regular sales have become over the years, and this would probably happen quicker due to the nature of the anti-sale.

Don't get me wrong, it's great that people are getting creative in regards to selling their game, creativity is good and it's needed in a competitive industry such as this in possible areas, but I'm not sure if an anti-sale really is the right way to go. I'd like to see it be a success as that will benefit both the developer and the site itself (more so even than a regular sale as users would be forced to spend more money to buy a certain product.)

I guess that concludes this massive wall of text, I know I went on a tangent there - I was trying to cover as many points as possible, unfortunately it looks like the post got a bit out of control lmao.

So today itch.io added the ability to make reverse sales (or anti-sales) which increases the price of a game rather than decreasing it. With it I have a serious question.

Why?

I mean, I get why people would put on a regular sale - it's a fun thing to do and it helps people get your product at a reduced price, thus opening up new doors so to speak and potentially increasing your userbase. A reverse sale on the other hand provides no real benefits as I can see, in fact if anything I can only see downsides with it so forgive me if I treat this new feature with scepticism.

Basically all I'm asking is "what's the point?" I don't mean that in a negative way, but I'm curious as to why people are willing to do this and interested in the reasons behind it.

What game are you on about?

Steam really isn't as good as what many people would lead you to believe - I personally have a few choice words to say about the Steam "service" (although my reasons for disliking Steam are probably different to yours.)

I do have a Steam acc, but I've not logged into it since mid-2012 after I saw how much of a wreck it really is.

No I meant send a message to the developer of the game you're wanting to play, not to the itch.io admin team. If they've uploaded their game to itch.io you'll probably find their contact details (Twitter, email, Facebook.etc) on their itch.io profile page or the game page.

Itch.io simply acts as a marketplace and doesn't have any involvement in the development of the game.

I would say either email or social media. If they have a Twitter account send them a message, if they don't respond after that (they should do) then send them an email.

You should probably bring this up on the Steam community forum or contact the developer directly about it. This board is for the itch.io app and isn't affiliated with Steam.

I've tested the game on two devices and have added feedback to the post. I tested it on a high-range device and mid-range device however if you want me to see how it runs on a low-range device (dual-core CPU) let me know and I'll bring that out as well.

I'm currently testing it out as we speak and I'm currently typing out all feedback (so far) in a Word document which I'll then copy and paste over when I'm done.

EDIT: Testing on both a smartphone and a tablet.

I'll do it. I've already signed up to be a tester and am currently downloading the game to my phone now. I'll put my feedback in this post once I've playtested it.

Do you need it testing on multiple devices? I have several Android tablets lying around to test on if so.

FEEDBACK:

I tested the game on a high-end Android smartphone and a mid-range Android tablet and I gotta say I'm like what you've made here. There are a few things that could be improved though. Made it to level 4 before giving in.

• It would be nice if as each ability was introduced, there was a short tutorial before the level as to what it does as the icons don't really show the player enough as to what each ability does.
• The back button should be able to close the help screen.
• Difficulty goes from zero to 100 real quick. This would put a lot of new players off. A gradual difficulty increase would be better.
• No sound. (Not sure whether this is a bug or if sound hasn't been added yet.)

I also found a bug where on level 2 the text was hidden (both on the HUD and on the menu) between the scenery towards the far right of the level. Here's a screenshot. (This bug happened on both devices I tested it on.)

The game ran well on both devices however the game took a while to initially load on the tablet although this probably more of a hardware issue above anything else. The tablet also got fairly hot during gameplay, again this is a hardware issue as this happens with many other games on the tablet. (The smartphone did not experience those issues.)

Overall it's a good game. I was a fan of Lemmings as a kid (used to play it all the time in Year 4 at primary school) and it's refreshing to see an Android game that actually has something unique to it rather than being the same old shovelware or cloneware you tend to see on Google Play (e.g. Candy Crush clones, Flappy Bird clones.etc.) I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Chinese social media sites such as Weibo would be your best bet.

If you're on about an official itch.io wiki then as far I'm aware no such thing exists.

If you're on about wikis all about game development then there are plenty of those available. GPWiki would be an example (although they did announce they'd be shutting down at the end of the month,) as well various sites/wikis dedicated to certain areas of game dev (e.g. for specific platforms.)

Wrong place. Game releases should be announced on this board.

Added to first post.

Sorry for the late reply on this one. I actually added this suggestion a while back but I was caught up in other stuff at the time and I ended up forgetting to let you know that I put it up there.

Added to first post

I just had a look and tried everything I could. I'm assuming that if you were to put on an anti-sale you'd have to set the discount figure to a minus number (so if you wanted to double the price, set the discount to -100%) however because this works on a slider system which starts at zero and not a type in system, such a "discount" isn't possible and even if it was it'd likely be coded so that you couldn't input a negative value. (An anti-sale is something I've never encountered and is completely new to me.)

I'd say the best way to achieve this would be to do what SolarLune suggested and raise the minimum price temporarily then lower it again when the anti-sale is over.

I have to ask though just out of curiosity, why would you want to do this?

Added

Well, I've pretty much burnt myself out on my current game project (I felt disillusioned by it I guess?) and I'm currently experimenting with ways to get around that. The method I'm trying to right now is to have two projects running at once which I'll be starting as of February and when I get bored of my other project, I'll return to my original game. I know it's not exactly staying on one game, but sometimes having a break from whatever you're developing and returning to it with a fresh mindset can do wonders.

I've only been in game dev for just under a year and a half and this isn't a situation I've encountered much but I understand it's important to be preprared when something this does happen and to have an "escape plan" so to speak.

All fully implemented suggestions have been removed from the first post to clean things up.

Added to first post.

Is this compatible with the ARM architecture or is it for x86 machines? There's no issue in any case but I was thinking if it was ARM compatible it would be compatible with single-board computers like the Raspberry Pi which would really open the door for Raspberry Pi games. Whether the market for that is big enough... ehh that's debatable, but it'd give itch.io a somwhat unqiue selling point.

Done