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Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

itch.io

31–40 of 46 posts

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#32
post #19

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the ki…

We need to evolve the terminology. The games on Itch.io are not Indie games - they are sub-Indie. Mostly amateur, hobbyist and school projects. People who are making games as a serious side-gig or full-time job (ie. the typical definition of Indie) are all on Steam, and the best Indies are on console and Epic Games Store. People want curation and less junk on Steam. Itch.io is exclusively... uncurated junk. I think I…

This is wildly inaccurate. There are at least a few very well known game publishers such as Double Fine that have their games on itch.io. In addition, there are more than a few critically acclaimed indie titles such as Celeste, Crosscode, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, and others.

While I agree that I would personally prefer a more curated view, itch.io is intentionally pursuing an open marketplace and that means developers of all skills and kinds and all types of projects are represented.

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#33
post #19

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the ki…

Note that if you purchase Hollow Knight from Humble or GOG, you get a DRM-free binary that runs anywhere. You own the game and don't need a client like Steam running in the background.

For those who don't know, gog.com is basically the same as itch.io, although I'm pretty sure GOG has a strict policy against DRM, whereas Itch seems to just say "we don't implement any DRM ourselves". GOG also has a much wider selection currently. That said, Itch is doing a lot right, as you say, and I'll support the service by buying any games I want that are available there.

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#34
post #15
post #7

This year's 7-day roguelike challenge had all the entrants put their games on itch.io [0]. In the episode of Roguelike Radio [1] that covered the 7drl, they lauded itch for requiring a working download, since entrants are allowed to use any platform at all (some write in c with raw escape codes written to the terminal, some write PICO-8 games, etc), and in years pay the hardest part of judging has been getting some o…

This year's 7DRL starts in just over a month, on March 2! :) https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019 I can highly recommend the challenge. It's a great community, it's got an organized judging phase, and roguelikes are one of the easiest genres to get into, especially for programmers. You can do all systems and no graphics if you want. Also, I think you meant to link to this episode (the one you linked came out the y…

Argh, thank you for those corrections. I had just listened to the RR episode, did a quick search for it, and copied the link for the first result assuming it was the right one.

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#35
post #19

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the ki…

> they take 0% of the game

Not exactly, they charge 10% or allow you to setup your own merchant gateways.

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

That 10% is well worth it for having them deal with the tax/VAT madness.

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#36
post #33
post #19

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the ki…

Note that if you purchase Hollow Knight from Humble or GOG, you get a DRM-free binary that runs anywhere. You own the game and don't need a client like Steam running in the background. For those who don't know, gog.com is basically the same as itch.io, although I'm pretty sure GOG has a strict policy against DRM, whereas Itch seems to just say "we don't implement any DRM ourselves". GOG also has a much wider selectio…

I'd disagree with your characterization of GOG. I'd say they're more like a DRM free Steam. Just like Steam they also charge 30%. I also have a somewhat negative bias against them because several years ago they announced they were shutting down in under a week. This turned out to be a PR stunt but I haven't bought anything from them since.

They're also an excellent example of how tough this space is. Even though they're owned by CD Project Red you can still buy games like the Witcher on Steam.

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#37

Itch is great. Their search by tags system is broken, but everything else is wonderful. Full disclosure: I publish on itch. Https://failrate.itch.io

how is it broken? (I do know our search results page isn't ideal, but if you search a tag there's a link that takes yo to that relevant page)

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#38
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following @fasterthanlime on Twitter for a while, and it's always really nice seeing them constantly trying to make itch.io the best it can be or working with people to fix bugs they've hit. As far as I know, it's a just them and leafo running it.

@fasterthanlime was in the same uni I was, he basically lead a project for students in first year when he was in second year, a really impressive coder.

I remember that! We guided first-year CS students through implementing a complete BitTorrent client.

I put a lot of work into that project (giving extra presentations to students who had additional questions, uploading unofficial slide decks with extra information about the protocol etc.)

It's one of my favorite memories of EPFL! We had a ton of fun organizing it, and it was exciting to have students work on something closer to the real-world than usual. We did hear from the network admins once everybody's implementation started working, though... they weren't exactly thrilled!

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#39
post #19

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the ki…

> they take 0% of the game Not exactly, they charge 10% or allow you to setup your own merchant gateways. https://itch.io/docs/creators/payments That 10% is well worth it for having them deal with the tax/VAT madness.

No, they literally allow you to give them 0%. The 10% listed is an example as it's the default, the slider goes down to 0% if developers don't want to give them anything.

Re: Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

#40
post #19

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the ki…

We need to evolve the terminology. The games on Itch.io are not Indie games - they are sub-Indie. Mostly amateur, hobbyist and school projects. People who are making games as a serious side-gig or full-time job (ie. the typical definition of Indie) are all on Steam, and the best Indies are on console and Epic Games Store. People want curation and less junk on Steam. Itch.io is exclusively... uncurated junk. I think I…

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