First off I wanted to say that I honestly appreciate the fact that you took the time to reply and with a detailed breakdown it really means a lot.
On IGDB: Agreed it misses the deep itch.io long tail, but I don’t want to exclude it either, plenty of IGDB games are also on itch.io, and players shouldn’t lose access to those. The dev upload path exists specifically to bring in games that IGDB never touches. You’re right that the devs who need it most won’t opt in, that’s an unsolved problem I’m still thinking about. The dev upload path addresses this. I mean upload and you’re visible from day one with no signal needed. The harder problem is reaching the devs who don’t market at all and may never find the platform. Still working on that one and open to ideas if you have any.
On cold start: Discovery here is content-based first like genre, mood, tags, description and not “people who liked X.” A game with zero ratings and zero collections still surfaces if someone searches for its mood or genre or play style or theme and etc. Interactions improve ranking over time but aren’t required to appear at all. On top of that, a dev who uploads directly gets surfaced in a dedicated section immediately, independent of ratings or collections. That idea actually came from an indie dev who pointed out exactly this gap. It’s still opt-in, so your point about reluctant self-promoters stands but the incentive is at least explicit: upload and you’re visible from day one.Nothing appears there yet since no dev has uploaded through it, but that’s the path for games that IGDB doesn’t cover. Happy to share a screenshot of how it looks on the test server if useful.
On tags: Valid concern. Currently relying on IGDB data which has its own quality issues. I’m actually working on a feature where players can add their own tags after playing a game, the idea being that player-supplied tags, mood and etc after real playtime are more accurate than dev-supplied ones. Curation and validation beyond that is also on the roadmap. Also in the long term devs maybe can edit their game as well anytime.
What’s your game? Happy to check how it currently shows up. If it’s not on IGDB you can create an account and submit it directly. There’s a short review process to verify it’s a real game and the data is clean, but that’s it.