The reason why a lot of the games on itch.io are low quality is because they are made by either people who are still learning to make games or people who don’t have enough time to polish their games (such as in a game jam).
The reason why these types of people post their games here is because the barrier for entry is extremely low: All you need is an email address, no paying for a page like on some other platforms (namely Steam).
Creating high quality games is rather difficult, especially when it is one person creating them like many are on itch.io. Maybe you should try making one yourself before you call other people’s work a “compleat bag of garbage”.
I agree completely with veridis_quo_t on trying to make one yourself before disregarding other itch.io members' games. Even the ideation process before putting together a project can be difficult. While incredible works may eventually receive the praise they're worth, appreciation during the early phase is very minimal. Also, many of the games here are free which means you aren't losing out just by trying other people's projects. A little gratitude goes a long way.
"it ALL turns out to be a compleat bag of garbage" doesn't help anyone. Why not take your time and tell the developer(s) in the comment section what exactly didn't work? This would help a lot and the developer could improve his game. I test my games as much as I can, but there are always bugs that escape my view. I'm grateful if players point them out for me in the comment section so that I can eliminate them. As a player, you can do a lot to help us improve our games!
I see the people here posting on your comment being so nice and actually replaying in the most ethical way you could imagine! I am impressed by the community here on Itch.io and you should as well based on getting a strong statement like "complete bag of garbage" and you know better how much your words can pick a fight.!
With that being said, YES! you are right about the majority of games here, and there are many reasons, some of them have been mentioned above! However, being here for at least a year can change your whole perspective! And once trying some games you will be impressed by how much they are good!
I started with YouTube with random games like Trover Save The Univers, The Forest, Dying Light... and then I made Indie Games on this website my passion for the simple reason they are fun to play. Had a lot of devs join to the channel, got chances to work with some awesome projects! I have seen incredible Visual Novels which was something I hated about a year ago! Now, I am loving it. (The first post of Krunchy Fried Games is one of the dev who makes great VN Games)
Do not forget, some of the most famous Indie Games out there started here, example? = Among Us, Friday Night Funkin'
The games you see here are for free, and horror games on this website is the feed of big YouTubers like Markiplier for his 3 Scary Games series! You can for sure see some bad games, and that is because these developers are still learning on THEIR OWN to make games.
Now, if you still don't see good games on Itch.io that is fine! But I am sure you have not played even 1% of the games here and that is so far away to judge anything or anyone based on less than 1% of what they have to offer. Don't trust my words, see by yourself:
Yep I agree with you man. itch.io is the deviantart of games. There are some gems, but it's too hard to find them among all the junk.
And it doesn't help that the site is personally curated by staff, so your game won't even have a chance to be featured unless it happens to coincide with their agenda, whatever that may be.
I still think Steam is the gold standard for discovery and distribution, even for indies. For whatever reason, they actually want to help you put your game in front of players. It's not just that Steam has more users; it's that the Steam platform has better discoverability functionality that will actually display your game to people, in an unbiased/non-curated way if it aligns with the player's interests and triggers the site algorithm.
I'm not complaining (much) about itch.io but I think it has a lot of room for improvement in that regard. It's a pain in the butt looking for a fun game to play but only ever seeing streamerbait horror games on the "top rated" or "most popular" tabs, and for the featured games, only ever seeing the games that the staff of this site enjoys.
I think you have underestimated the amount of junk is actually on Steam. You obviously haven’t looked at the later pages of Steam Charts to see the thousands of games that have extremely few to absolutely zero players.
The only reason Steam has less junk than itch.io is because of the higher barrier to entry: You have to pay ~ 100 dollars to just get a Steam page.
plus, that $100 steam fee gets you a lot. So much that it's almost charity how they promote your game. I'm dead serious, they actually want to see you succeed so much that it makes the admins of this site look antagonistic by comparison. You get exposure by doing nothing on Steam, whereas here you get... well, nothing, you're at the mercy of the staff who curate this site, unless you happen to be making a generic streamerbait horror game as I have already stated.
