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Game download fails immediately with 403 error

A topic by 2DArray created Jan 02, 2024 Views: 339 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3
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Hello! I got a report from a user that they weren't able to download my game "Not the Robots" and I'm getting the same result. When I click the download button in the browser, nothing happens, but I get a 403 (forbidden) error in the javascript console.

I saw another post about getting a 403 when attempting to restart a stalled download in the browser, but in this case my download doesn't even begin. I don't have any download manager plugins, and I get a similar 403 error when trying to download the game from the itch.io app.  As a quick sanity check for my local setup, I tried downloading another product from itch ("RemedyBG"), and that one downloaded correctly (both in the browser and in the itch app).

Any idea what's going on? I haven't updated this game in quite a while, and this is the first time I've heard about any download problems. Maybe just a temporary outage of some sort?

I'm repeatedly failing to download a 2.3gB demo myself (Slay the Princess). It gets to 1.5ish gB, and fails with a 403 Forbidden. Tried with Chrome. Tried with Edge. Poked around a bit ("itch.io download failed forbidden" on google) and it seems to have been happening to various people for various downloads over the last five years or so, and the workaround always ends up being "get our app, you can resume downloads from there"

It would seem a security measure (making download links unique and temporary) cuts people off on big downloads too early or something. I thought I was doing pretty good at 4mB/s, but I guess I'm not getting it done fast enough :(

Anyway, I hate installing new stuff on my pc so I'm off to find an alternative download for my thing. Getting the app will only be a very last resort, and if I have to get it, I'll uninstall it immediately afterward

Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I've been trying to download your game today and it isn't working for me, either.

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