Hey everyone whos reading this, I want to know how was your experience using itch, whether you are a developer, gamer, or poster in the community.
I’m a developer that have published games on a few platforms other than Itch.
Itch.io has made it very easy to make a project and just publish it. It’s indie friendly, so there’s not many rules quality-wise, as long as your project does not act maliciously.
It’s one of the most indie-friendly platforms I’ve used, which comes with it’s own ups and downs.
itch.io has provided a great opportunity to connect with a fantastic community and develop my skills as an artist. Although there have been a few hiccups here and there, overall my experience has been overwhelmingly positive and I don't see myself migrating to another platform as my main anytime soon
From my point of view, it is the best site for publishing and downloading indie games in a general purpose. I think even indie is an understatement because I've seen medium sized studios and companies publish stuff here.
Other sites have features or cons that you can't publish or play games that you can find on itch.io, there is everything here and they recommend great stuff. In my opinion, there is no better option at the moment. That doesn't mean it's perfect, but the staff seems to listen and act on the things that are said in the community, so the bad things have to be said so the site can improve.
Personally, I'd like the launcher to be little by little more " cool" like the Steam or GOG launcher. It's not bad but the way it navigates and uses it feels dry and very 'to the point'. In the future the launcher could be redesigned to make it more attractive and varied.
I found out about this platform because of a game jam, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of what I’ve gotten out of it as an incredibly new game maker, or at least found it valuable. I was allowed to founder with some pretty meh releases without being out a sizable lump of change, and just today was the first time I got picked apart for my store pages, and they were really detailed, so even though that stung my ego, it was useful and helpful.
I'm an end-user, not dev. My main complaint for itch is the search system.
I think more tags should be implemented (i.e. retro-inspired games vs games that can run on retro systems).
itch desperately needs a tag exclusion option other than an old workaround. Example: I like games featuring gay characters and a variety of subjects, but I do not want visual novels! There's no easy way to filter them out, and the gay and LGBT+ tags seem inundated with that type of game.
I would say that the front page is filled with jump-scare "horror" and creepy pasta-esque garbage dragged-n-dropped-developed by 12 year olds on twitter that got scared from a low effort creepy-pasta hoping that a youtuber would spotlight them, but as of now I think it's getting curated for goodness sake because now I've only seen 1, and I am impressed. If you screeching rabid who-knows-what want me to shut down, all I need to go is the Browse > Games or Games by price > Free games, where all the creative and original title such as spongebob characters getting ready to maim you or themselves can have their way.
To improve the quality of game as well as making this website sustainable, I recommend IP banning Markiplier and Jacksepticeye from using this site.
The fake download ads are a bit sketchy and spam jam submissions are not an infrequent occurrence. But all in all it's a very generous site, just the fact you can upload almost anything no questions asked, even paid games where payment is taken off-platform or with itch.io's share set to 0% in the settings. I know doing that gets a bit ethically dubious, so I'll say I haven't made any money from this site, nor have I tried to.
As an end-user, I like Itch.io as a platform and have had generally positive experiences - it occupies a useful place in the market that most of the major competitors underutilise. It allows for independent developers to publish and for me to find, titles with more artistic or unique qualities that larger corporations would forcably remain hidden. They just aren't as profitable or cannot be sufficiently expressed when working in a very large team, it can't be helped.So in this way numerous very talented individuals have been able to both get a foothold to move onto higher places or be able to continue their expression alone.In fact, there are numerous things here I have enjoyed here that were both free of charge and had some qualities which in one or more departments were objectively superior than games I paid good money for.
But it is in the finding where the troubles lies. The majority of posts I have seen typically say something to the effect of "I see lots of this game genre I don't wish to see", there seems to be a many small factors compounding this issue. I don't really have a reasonable solution to the problem, other than that the entire structure of the storefront and such would have to undergo vast, timely, and tedious overhaul for only a small benefit.
Having said that, the platform seems to be under so much strain because:
I'm just a customer. I like that Itch has DRM free options for games. I like that the Itch client is FOSS. I like that the store pages give the option to list details such as the engine used. I like that I can download the game files stand alone without using a client.
I wish that the notifications for game updates were easier to find. For example on GOG when I look at my game list for games I own it tells me which ones have had updates since I last downloaded the files. I also wish that Itch would do a better job moderating developers that falsely advertise their game. For instance some list a Linux version but when I go to download the game it only has a Windows version and even after reporting this the game is still for sale advertising a Linux version. Lastly I wish that reviews were public for all not just developers and those who follow me.