itch.io

Don't forget to check your console log. There is 403 for the ogg files, among other errors.

my remaster

You can't remaster something you did not create in the first place. Or have the rights to and the source codes.

If you created a game that looks suspicously like an old game from 20 years ago and did in fact not violate any copyrights or trademarks, you might be good. There are plenty of games that are knock offs of inspired by other games. Some even better than the original.

If you repurposed the old game files, use the old title and act in a way that someone could mistake you for the original creator (by using the term remaster for example), it looks less good. Ask yourself, if you could claim copyright and more importantly trademarks for your content or not.

Not a comment about the puzzle, but that typeface really is hard to read. A handwriting style does not go well with pixelated style.

I think you overestimate the compexity of language translations. A creative process can help, but is not necessary. And if you use a translation website you actually do not know the tech used. Unless of course you use a site like chatgpt - and I am not even sure, if they use the actual llm capacity for translation. It is very likely, but it might also be, that they use the llm to understand what you want from it and use a different engine underneath for the actual task of mere translation to save computing power.

In it's core, a translation is not new content. The computer system does not know how freely it is allowed to translate. What you describe would be more accurately be called localisation and not translation.

If I upscale an image using an ai, or use a filter, that is not new content either. But all the new pixels were created using "ai". Maybe even the kind of ai that was trained on data. But I would not consider it "content produced" by the ai. And neither would I consider a grammar check or a translation as such.

Now, if you were to tell the ai prompt to generate a translation of your text and use the writing style of a certain author in that new language - or rewrite it in your own language in a different writing style - that would be new content.

In the context of the topic, it is about generated content. So I try to apply both words. It should not only be generated but it should also be content. A gen ai translation might be ai generated, but I do not consider it (new) content.

to not lie about the technology that I used to create my game

Fair point, but it is actually not about the technology used to create the game, but about the content and who initially created it.

Waiting time for requests and all things related to things staff has to handle, of over a month are not unheard of. Also there were some holidays in that time and the above mentioned problems.

Itch has no automatic refunds, so they have to manually check on those and approve them.

This also would be one of the reasons, why payouts would be delayed. You will find that many devs are waiting for their payouts for over a month and complain about it.

To my understanding that time is not even long in the business for these kind of things, if it is not a recurring payout plan.

I am curious. Why would machine translation count as ai generated content? For one, you do not even know if it is "ai" or not. Machine translations are older than the current things that are misleadingly/confusingly called "ai".

There is no artificial creativity for lack of a better expression. A translation is usually 1:1, if you use a translation site. You always get the same result for the same input. If you use an "ai" to generate an image or text from a prompt, this is not so. And even if a llm is used under the hood to translate something, there still is little to no content created. The content is translated, not created.

I am especially curious about your reasoning, since you would count grammer correction not as ai gen. As you wrote, the content is still created by the human. This is also true for a translation. One can define grammar correction as translation from "broken English" to "formal correct English".

Regarding tts, why would it matter, if the text was ai gen or not? If the text is ai gen, it stays ai gen, no matter how you deliver the information. Be it by written word or by spoken word - even if a human would read it out loud.

Also why would the intent matter? If I generate an image but do not "intend" to replace human generated images, it also does not change the nature of the content creation process. tts is tricky, because the content would be a speech pattern. The llm ai gen stuff works different for that, if at all. And there are professional solutions where they just pay a voice actor to record samples to generate a computer voice. This is also possible without modern llm tech, but I assume it is an easier task with state of the art tech.

For me, the defining attribute to recognise the modern ai stuff, or large language model generative systems is the prompt. You tell the system what to create. Like, "smoky voice of an elderly woman with a southerner dialect". Or "80's robot voice". Then the llm digs in it's training data to create something that would fit to that prompt according to it's understanding of the language. That the systems kinda understand the language in the prompt and can match it to the data is the big breakthrough in my opinion.

Itch has many idiosyncracies.

You are correct, there are two "search" boxes and they display a lot of those oddities.

One searches by literal title (and username) and is capped at about 60 results. The other looks like a dropdown box, but actually is also a box to write in tags - but it does not search them, it just adds it to the url, regardless if there are any items in a tag. The search on the other hand will search tags, but will only display tags, that are in the suggested list, that appears in the drop down box. For instance, https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=programming will not show that there are games using the https://itch.io/games/tag-programming tag. But when search for "adu" (and having the adult content setting active), it will show up the adult tag as existing and a related tag to that word.

And important for this case here, the browse search box ignores the adult setting if you use an adult tag. Or rather the browse system. And those tags are an arbitrary list of tags that are considered adult. They "fixed" the box a while ago to at least hide those tags from the suggestion list in that box according to the setting.

To quote the opinion of leafo about this in general

Are you making a game? It’s just a tag, use your best judgment. If the output of Gen AI is something you put into your project, then tag it. If you are bundling a dependency that you chose because of its use of Gen AI, then I think it’s fair to tag it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t really worry about it.

It is about content, and important for assets. You use them in other projects, so information should be acurate and given.

My opinion on the mattter, if you used a prompt to create it, it probably is generative ai.

machine translations (nowadays they are based on LLMs)

Why should you care how your free translation service black box does it? The actual content is your original text. Applying a computer generated filter to your images in your phone is probably also ai assisted these days.

text to speech (based on AI)

You should not promote tts in your game as a voice over anyway. Computer generated voices were called such long before the new gen ai thing. Also, this usually happens on the user's machine. You probably want to look at the licensing of your computer generated voice, what it actually is and how you can use it and how you should or must attribute it.

AI opponents based on neural networks

That's ... not content. That's how opponents were always called: ai. I think using actual gen ai like methods in your game as a way to create game play interaction is too meta to be covered by the current tagging situation. I know games like that, that even connect to one of the llm services. They usually do use some ai tags, as advertising, because the promise is that the opponent is smarter and not railroaded in conversation. But I just do not think the recent ai tags would fit.

spell/grammar checking by LLMs for in game texts

Same as translations. Even less so. Why would you even know how your word processor does it. Or care.

use of copilot coding assistents based on LLMs (Github copilot etc.)

Subject to debate. Personally, I would exclude code ai tagging from that tagging business as a whole. Normal users do not understand the difference and probably would not want to filter out such games, if they knew how software development works. In a way, if you can formulate a prompt so exactly that the outcome is a working code segment, you basically did what all programmes do when using a library function call and higher programming languages to generate assembler code under the hood. But a level or two higher up. When pseudo code in natural language becomes the code.

Of course, if you just prompted the ai to give you a match three game, that's a bit much. But those assisted things are often possible with procedural assitants as well and simple function generating is not really different from using a template, imho.

It gets complicated, if you want to use a function, or even the operating system, and you do not know, if those libraries or the operating system did have ai generated code in them or not. But as said above, for games it is just tags, do not worry too much. 

Who donated to your game is private information. Unless you have consent from those users, you can't just use their user-names and display them somewhere.

If you want to dish out rewards that are files, that is easy. Just put up a file that has an indivual price. Only people that paid the required amount will have access to those bonus files.

If this is about an unreleased game, https://itch.io/docs/creators/exclusive-content might be used for this. I do not know, if it works for previous customers or only new ones. Since the customers have to claim this, you do have consent. You can also ask for a information, like, how the buyer wants to be credited in your game. 

Your game was delisted (It once was in the index, I am rather sure about that). Possibly when it got an update 30 days ago. This seems to happen more often in the last few months. 30 days is long, but not unheard of for reindexing.

The rules mentioned are the rules of community, questions and support.

• Before you create a topic asking why you can't find your game in Search or Browse READ THIS: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed. If you still need to create a topic about it, then please write in your post that you read the docs and you still have a question, otherwise we'll close your topic. Then, tell us why you believe your pages should be indexed.

But if you are only temporarily delisted because an automatic put you on the queue again, this will not do much, in my opinion. The rules are about first time indexing. Also, holidays are coming. Waiting times might be longer in general.

Well, I have never seen any Itch Selects bundle nor heard about the concept. Sorry for being flabberhasted about this and asking about things I do not know.

Thank you for the link. I also never ever saw anyone from staff doing a posting in community, except leafo.

I hope your haters got bored and you can have ratings open in peace. Downrating is kinda lame. One should rate what one likes, to get better recommendations. If you downrate games about x, you might get recommendations about other games with topic x - but in truth you did dislike all x.

Sorry, but the longer I think about what you wrote, the less sense this makes.

You can create your own bundles. You can coop create bundles. Ratings have nothing to do with this. Only if you have no payments on those items is a reason for a game not to be on a bundle. 

And if you create a bundle, the invited devs need to aprove and according to faq they do not even get a message, to prevent spamming.

https://itch.io/docs/creators/bundles

To host a bundle, you would need to be a developer selling a game here. Itch does not sell Itch's games. https://itch.itch.io/ does not exist as a user to host bundles.

(You need to be part of the bundle to host a bundle. So either you misunderstood something or that was something special that I never ever heard of)

I am not aware that there are any bundles created by Itch. Was that a thing they did in the past? Can you link to a current bundle? There is winter sale. If such bundles still exist, there should be one right now.

Actually I am not aware of any promotions Itch does, at all, beside the featured and fresh lists on the homepage. And maybe "picks" of bundles. I misread. Those are just featured lists of sales, not lists of bundles. Anyway. Even with coop bundles, there is always "A bundle hosted by" and that by is not Itch, but a developer.

I do not see the problem.

Your Deathmatch mode is point based and not last man standing, is it not? So you already have a rule system for giving out points without telling people on the loading screen that it is not last man standing. Or telling them the point rules.

And why would you need to create more mechanics? Or specifically tell them in the loading screen? Rolling over a bonus point to get a bonus point is not hard to grasp.

Do whatever game modes you think are fun to play in your game. If a host player opens the game, this is all idle thinking anyway. The host makes the decision which modifiers to the rules/mechnics are in place.

And if it is not a host that opens the game and you have some kind of lobby or matchmaking, restricting to few game modes is better, so players do not spread out and each plays a game mode alone, not finding other players.

Without public reviews that would not work.

And I do not understand that with the participation in bundles. What's that got to with ratings? Itch does not create bundles. Users do. 

For a catch22 you would have to need to be in a bundle to get ratings and could only have the game in a bundle, if it has ratings. Neither is the case to my knowledge.

Many people complain about reviews not being attached to the games. They would like to see their reviews.

I can imagine several reasons why this is not so on Itch. But if they were public, they should also have this verified purchase icon.

But for pay-what-you-want games, I doubt that it would be usefull to have your proposed differenciation between ratings of customers and other ratings. There is bound to be heavy bias.

To be honest, having ratings at all is a big deal alreay. Most people do not rate the games they play. Only if they care. And this happens usually if they like it very much or are disturbed or angry about something.

So for few ratings the bias would be even bigger and for many ratings it does not matter, because it evens out.

Search your username in the search box. You must do this on a logged in account that has adult games active.

For a non-generic username like your's, your games should appear first in the results.

If you updated your games with a vpn, they might even be in quarantine. But either way, Itch staff will have to have a look and there is a waiting time and holidays are coming. I would not count on being visible before the next year.

But this does not hinder your marketing efforts much. Linking and visiting and playing your browser games works unimpeded.

The rate button is on the game page. Do you not see it maybe? The page changes layout depending on screen size.

multiple 1 star

You might want to contact Itch support, if you suspect harrassment.

Other than that, this is not unusual: being able to rate things that you did not buy. On platforms with public reviews you usually see something like a verified purchase or something, but the unverified reviews still exist there.

On Itch specifically, you can buy without having an account. In generall, you could know the game from some place else. But a new game and multiple 1 stars sounds odd.

Only two of your five projects are currently indexed.

As above, please wait and read this https://itch.io/t/4120453/game-quarantined-search-or-indexing-problem-read-this

Could be anything and most likely is temporary. There is also payment on your projects and your two indexed games have no payment. Who knows. It is only guesswork. Updating sometimes puts games into a staff review queue again.

Define "best".

Paying a professional would probably yield the best results. But since this is Itch you probably are asking for the easiest method of how someone not knowing how to do this could do this without paying moneys.

It is a combination of art and marketing and likely some mundane techniques that take the medium into account. A cover image has different size than a screenshot for example.

So I would start at looking at covers of popular games for your genre, if you find some common trends. Imitation should be a good starting point.

Also, you might want to attract people that would like your game and not attention for the sake of it. If you wanna do that, look at clickbait images. That is what they do.

Me too. But I would prefer if people looking for answers or discussion would do so too with their postings, instead of typing away as if everythign here is written in their own langauge.

https://itch.io/t/4120453/game-quarantined-search-or-indexing-problem-read-this

If you did not market it and got so many views, your game might have been temporarily delisted after your update.

If you did market it, it might not have been indexed yet. You have payment active. Indexing usually takes longer for first time payment active.

tl;dr Please wait.

 it’s also impacting my ability to market it effectively.

No, it does not. Direct links work just fine. And who is gonna search for your game's name without knowing it at a place where you promoted the direct link?

Itch will not tell you why or why not a major devlog is approved to push your game on top of recent again. They do not like people trying to game the system.

Your account is 41 days old. Number of expected approved devlogs: 0. You seem to have gotten one. Lucky you. Some games wait to get indexed first time for a month.

You have over 250 followers in that short time. So you are doing pretty well. So you should not worry. Do your devlogs/updates for the sake of it and not to optimise any perceived bonus attention. A devlog itself is already a bit of promotion, because they appear in https://itch.io/devlogs

It's an adult game.

There should be some recommendation or rule to post in English. Or are you all browsing with auto-translation from the browser and do not even notice that things are not written in English or your own language?

I was talking about having the alternate version on the same project page.

No.

Only if they happen to be in a bundle. Some devs might make a bundle of their games for this purpose.

That feature is wished for often.

Imho,

If you maintain both versions of the game simultaneous, just denote the ai version as the bonus version or whatever and tag your main version.

If you switch from one art style to the other by update and want to tag correctly, tag the current version.

You might have missed that part where op already said, that using 911 for marketing the game would not be done.

But by the logic of tragic events, there would be a lot of things that could have no media being associated with them. No movies, no games, no books. And what is the reality? There will be a movie being made shortly after any catastrophe about the exact catastrophe - in addition to the regular desaster movies. Real and fictional tragedies are a way to tell drama. And many books are written by survivors of tragedies. It is popular media.

For 9/11 there are so many movies made, that there are click bait list articles about them. The x movies about 9/11 that have attribute y.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=movies+about+911&ia=web

A game where you can shoot down planes before they crash into buildings is by far the most harmless thing that you will see done in games about the topic. But we all here agree that using 911 as a marketing ploy is not a good thing.

Nope.

That is why I use bookmarks a lot. My browser does not randomly make pages unavailable and at least saves the title and project name, so I can search for it on the net, if the page goes missing.

And that is also why I made that thread I linked. 

This behaviour is very annoying for a catalogue system what with all those collections.

(If your browser's history was not removed, maybe you can dig there.)

I do not know.

But they improved name search, actually. Previously you could only find exact profile names. So if you were to have a profile named bobbywojak and changed your display name to Bojak the Destroyer, you could not find bobbywojak with the display name.

Search is a bit literal and not very forgiving for typos and missing words. This was enhanded too, but is far from googles typo resilience. It is also a title search, not a description/content search. This is often not apparant for new users.

And the worst is searching for generic titles with clutter (words that are not part of the title, but were put in the title)

What exactly?

You did notice that link, did you?

https://itch.io/search?q=BobbyWojak

That search for your name results in only one project and that is yours.

Since that feature actually was removed, it is unlikely that it will return. Or rather it was modified to include projects of users as the search results, if you search for profile/display names.

Itch is project centric. Not user centric. Searching (and finding) a user that has published no projects makes little to no sense at all on Itch. You cannot interact with a user directly. There are no private messages.

Search previously did search for profiles. This was changed a few months ago. Now search searches for profile names and display names. But the results will only be projects published by those profiles, if any. It will find indexed projects, unless the profile name is very generic, because search results are capped at about 60 results.

Search does show up games made by your search term. Either there are no indexed games by that creator or it is a very, very generic name that is part of many game titles. I imagine you would have trouble finding games of a creator named "fps".

https://itch.io/search?q=BobbyWojak

Also, search engines do not care how popular a publisher is. If it is a non generic name and you search that name, they find it.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=itch+BobbyWojak&ia=web

And, uhm, if you do know the name, just replace the part in front of replaceme.itch.io with that name.

tbf, the header on all games does display "community" rather prominently.

(Not for me though, because Itch's css cuts it off.)

Since you are on Itch, I would guess the game in question is in development, or in other words: not finished. You might have reached the end of the available content.

But ask this at the game page. Maybe there are devlogs or changelogs that say how much content there is. Some developers use version numbering. There is no universal agreement how to version, but something with version 0.1 or 0.2 usually is far from finished.

Uhmm. Isn't your thread asking for a donate button, like literally? ;-)

I suggest putting it at the place where people are reaching for their wallet anyways.

You can't un-buy games.

You can only un-rate a game.

Use collections to organize your library, instead of the Things you own.

I for one would also welcome an option to at least hide purchases. You can display the games you own publicy, but maybe you do not want to show the world the purchases you were unhappy about. There is collections, but displaying it on your profile is bragging and bragging works better, if the list has the official sign that you supported a game.