Hello, itch io community!

I have read the Getting Indexed documentation, and Im writing this because my game has suddenly been de-indexed, and the consequences have been devastating.

The game no longer appears in Search or Browse. Its impressions and CTR have completely disappeared from analytics, and it can now only be found through a direct link or by visiting my profile.

Before this happened, the game was actively gaining new players and was at strong point of its growth. After being de-indexed, it received fewer than ten views in twelve hours. This has effectively erased all of its momentum and is reducing the work of our entire team to nothing...

The page was apparently flagged after reports were submitted. I have already responded to those reports, explained why the claims were incorrect, and provided evidence supporting my response! Ticket - 379348

I understand that the team receives an enormous number of requests. However, legitimate developers need a clearer and faster way to resolve false positives. For a small independent game, being removed from discovery is not a minor inconvenience, it can completely stop the games life!

I have published games on itch.io for years and genuinely love this platform. I am not writing this out of hostility, I am writing because I care deeply about the game and the people who worked on it!

Game: https://protzz.itch.io/moonhide

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and support this!<3

My game sat in the queue for a long time (18 days) to be indexed, although there were views and downloads, albeit in small quantities

Some people wait more than me, so maybe it's worth considering setting something like this up somehow

Please make the system simpler or don't allow this to happen

This is a good game, why should the developers have to deal with this, it has been going on for too long, and the problem is not being solved.

It's terrible that a game that brings joy to players can be destroyed for some made-up reasons.
itch.io has a reputation for being the most honest platform for developers. A good game = good views. And nothing extra. But more and more stories like this are very frustrating.
I hope the administration is also thinking about how to solve these issues.

I have been gathering a list of games that are being de-indexed, and it didn't take me long to gather like 40+ of them, where developers have just been ghosted, essentially forever.  This needs to be fixed! This platform is important, and it's letting the developers down! If you have a game that's been shadowbanned like this, please add yourself to this spreadsheet!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sW8RoGUIpANUCf09X9CjYUFuv5FhhWmOZWWKlweK...

Add account verification and remove indexing, enough of ruining developers lives

Why can a game be de-indexed just because of one person’s complaints without any verification? It’s terrible, especially when the game gets a lot of attention. It turns out that after making a good game, I should be afraid of being banned because of a random person? It’s very frustrating.

The game in question being a jam entry is what makes it that much more sensitive to me.

Don't get me wrong, it is no laughing matter when a full scale game, which might be providing much needed sustenance to the developer, is being de-indexed. And though that developer probably has other channels to promote the game and ultimately overcome such hurdle, it still hurts.

But consider game jam participants. They've likely just finished an exhausting stretch of several days of full-time game development. For some it may have been their first game. For others, it was another step up from their previous tries. Most of them likely never released a game outside of jams. Some are on their last legs, while others have also put considerable effort into the jams, their blood, sweat and tears.

And then there's the rating period. itch.io is by far the largest, most popular jamming platform, and a lot of these jams use this site's convenient functionality for the ratings. Once again, some aim for the first place. Others seek a few precious drops of feedback. But being randomly excluded out of ratings for even a day, especially in the early days of the rating period (which rarely lasts more than a week), can effectively nullify the creators efforts. Nullify. Doom. All of that. And by no means there is a track record of swift responses to those issues from the support, so it's likely to be more than a day.

Of course, there are options, but those options put additional effort on the shoulders of jam organizers and cause friction with the participants, purely because using itch.io is the "status quo".

This is is a titan in the game dev scene. I am in no small amount grateful for the opportunities it provided for us jammers. But though there is no alternative, the issue at hand raises the question of itch being a viable platform for jams going forward.

Don’t get me wrong: itch.io is great for hosting game but it terrible for promoting – no guarantees about getting into algorithms properly and there’s no transparency on a process of indexation. I’ve been ghosted before when support stopped responding and pinging doesn’t help. I wish someday platform will be more developer friendly without some shady rules on how to get be indexed. 

Some random users can send a report and have a game de-indexed in a few clicks, with these reports being applied instantly.
At the same time, when creators post their new games, they have to get through an indexing phase so that their game will be shown to the players.

1. It is valid to review new games for safety of the platform and its users.
2. But to not review reports is extremely unbalanced.
   

This platform has outgrown the full-freedom approach, but this harmful loophole is with us right now. What can we even do about this? Why not just introduce a review queue for reports, similar to the indexing phase we already have for new games?

Something has to change on this platform. Currently it punishes devs creating high quality games while new and popular is full of pure slop. This is not the way.

It still worked, why break indexing?

What I dont understand no matter how much I try, why there are no credit or verification system for user accounts or something like that, I have seen new fake accounts who through brute force get their scammy or stolen games get indexed instantly, while creators who have been on a platform for a very long time, who have a bunch of well rated games, who are obviously legit, they wait for weeks if not months, and then they get their games deindexed because of some random shmuck, who report them for no reason.

It feels like in hierarchy of this platform actual legit creators are at the bottom , right under bots and scammers.

Been de-indexed since 2019....ALL our games, our account, with no response.

Sad to see this still going on this platform. I don't have any idea why, never found out.

I have receipts.

Been a indie game dev since 2006 with flash games, mobile apps, pc games, html5.

It was a wakeup call.

If This Is True, They are Cooked