Recently Oxenfree/Netflix made the news because they are completely taking away Oxenfree from everyone who purchased it here. On other stores like Steam when a company delists a game anyone who purchased it keeps that game and can still download it later even though it is no longer available for sale.
Allowing companies to wipe away purchases on a whim like this is a really bad look for Itch especially when their primary competitor doesn't. Historically I brought up Itch very positively when discussing game stores but that has somewhat changed and I will likely be mentioning this incident when mentioning Itch going forward. This might feel like a small issue in isolation but knowing your purchases might fade away at any moment really changes things especially when I know I can go and buy it on Steam and not have that happen.
Also to be clear I'm writing this because I'm concerned about this happening on a broader level and the Oxenfree incident is just a good example. It doesn't cause me issues specifically having this game removed from my account here. Now users are in a position where they might be asking themselves "Wait are there other games missing from my library that I might not remember?".
You can already see it damaging Itchs reputation here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1fcivq7/oxenfree_will_be_removed_for_dow...
It's one of the top comments on a trending post on one of the biggest game forums and I'm seeing similar discussion elsewhere.
Anyways sorry this comes off as such a blunt rant post, I just found this pretty concerning and it affects my likelihood to use itch going forward a ton and I like Itch so that makes me sad.
I hope everyone reading this has a lovely week :)
skye0
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A member registered Mar 19, 2018
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itch.io Community » itch.io » Ideas & Feedback · Created a new topic Allowing Campanies to completely take away purchased games is bad for Itch (re Oxenfree/Netflix)