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We put our game out a week ago, it is still de-indexed, we still don’t know why, and now our page is quarantined

A topic by TEAM SUZIRA created 3 days ago Views: 163 Replies: 11
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(2 edits)

Hi, we made a post a week ago asking why our game Gotcha Gals, which we had just published was de-indexed, the post was closed pretty quickly with a message telling us to read the rules and that our game was only one day old, and so we assumed after having re-read the mentioned rules that our game would be indexed eventually. It’s still de-indexed, which is kind of annoying since we see numerous AI slop games come out fully indexed day one, but that’s fine, whatever, we are happy to keep waiting, but now we have also had our page quarantined. One of the main suggestions to get our game indexed was to link it elsewhere and have people look at the game, but now anybody that tries to look at it gets a big scary message saying to not download it. I get that it’s a safety precaution and I get why games don’t get indexed for free, I am accepting of that. I just want our game to actually be playable. It’s out and available, and yet it can’t be found on the site, and anybody who does somehow find it gets told to avoid it. Is there a rough estimate on how long it takes for a quarantine to be lifted? We kinda just want to know anything, we didn’t even know we were quarantined until a player went out of their way to tell us 6 day ago.

Edit: We emailed support directly for help with this, our ticket number is 395213. Thank you!

Okay, let's take this step by step.

This forum is answered by the community, not the staff. I'm clarifying this because you won't find any official answers here, and no one can tell you exactly why your game is in quarantine.

The rules stipulate that if you still request support, you must include your support ticket number (which you haven't done). This way, the moderator might bring that ticket to the staff's attention.

As far as we know, Itch has an algorithm that determines if a game or creator is considered high-risk and their projects should be reviewed by a staff member. The same applies to quarantine. Your project, for some reason (or combination of reasons), has been automatically quarantined, and until it's manually reviewed by a staff member, you won't be released from quarantine.

--How long does it take the staff to resolve this issue?
It varies greatly. In some cases, it takes a few hours, in others weeks, and I've even seen cases that have taken months. There are cases that have never been resolved, and I personally suspect that the staff has decided that the game or creator shouldn't be indexed. The problem is, there's never any communication clarifying this. Personally, if you try contacting support and months go by without your game being indexed, it's best to assume that for some reason you're not eligible for indexing.

--Why is an account ineligible?
The staff very rarely clarifies this. The few times I've seen these cases on the forum or Discord, it's usually because the creator has broken a rule, for example, spamming the game in Jam, lying in the description of sensitive content, etc. If your game or you haven't broken any rules, normally, your game will be reviewed within a couple of weeks, and if everything is okay, they'll lift the quarantine and index it.

-- But the rules say...
I'll tell you what I've seen over the years I've been participating in Itch, and I'll explain, based on my experience, how Itch works. Many others agree that it would be good to rewrite the rules to make Itch's operation clearer.

-- What can I do?
Contact support and be patient. From what I've seen, they're usually willing to help, but unfortunately, the staff is very small and they're often very busy, so they rarely respond beyond what's absolutely necessary.

Thank you for the in-depth reply. I wasn’t aware that the form post needed the ticket number attached to it, I’ll edit the post to include a ticket number and hopefully someone can let staff know about it, if that’s possible. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know how this all works, since we don’t really use these forums much at all. It’s hard to express tone over text, but we genuinely do appreciate it!

Moderator (1 edit) (+1)

I’ve let our admins know about your ticket, but as pointed out in the unofficial FAQ pinned at the top of this category, it can easily take a week or more. Please focus on promoting your game instead of worrying about being indexed.

It’s more about the quarantine this time, to be fair haha. We’ve had pretty good success with outside advertising so far, more even than we might have gotten from relying on just showing up in the itch.io algorithm, so we’re kinda happy in a roundabout way about the index situation. Just the quarantine is kinda scary, we don’t want to worry our players or anything. Ultimately though, we promise this’ll be our last post about it, patience is our plan right now on this topic. Thanks for the reply!

Just the quarantine is kinda scary, we don’t want to worry our players or anything

Disable your downloadable files and remove any links on the description (official links in the info box are fine). Playing the web version does not show the quarantine message.

And if you do not already, maybe crosslink your socials. That means, if your itch points to your patreon, your patreon should point to your itch. There are impostors, and crosslinking your socials makes it easier to have confidence that your account is not fake. Might still be hacked, of course.

Itch does investigate quarantine, and that might take time and might not be a thing that can be sped up. Essentially, they are suspicous that your account might be compromised or that you are intentionally doing bad things.

Even clicking on the update log brings up the quarantine log, is the thing. Are you certain itch doesn't investigate quarantine? The game's just going to stay quarantined? That's kinda brutal, no?

Is this a translation issue? Because you said two things here that are not true.

Clicking the update log does not open the quarantine log. Where did you get that? What exactly do you mean? There is only one log and it does not open a quarantine warning, when you click it.

And I did not say that Itch does not investitage. I said the exact opposite. I just pointed out, that it can take time, and might not be something that can be done in a hurry.

If you want to "hide" the quarantine and not scare users, remove any links from your description and disable the downloadable files. A quarantine message only appears when clicking links and trying to download files. Your game will not be indexed while in quarantine, but the warning will not appear for playing the web version. 

(1 edit)

I misread, for some reason my brain read “itch does not investigate quarantine”, that’s on me haha. The update log thing is weird, it’s not technically quarantined but upon clicking it when not logged in it tells you that the page is under moderator review and you can’t view it unless signed in. So, not the exact same quarantine message, but still spooky. Forgive my inability to read, I am a little sleep deprived, and even on my good days I’m still pretty slow haha.


Edit: Also, when you say to remove the downloadable version of the game, would simply disabling the download work, or would I need to fully delete the download from the page entirely?

There should be a checkbox to hide the file. I would assume that this ... hides the file.

Ok, I’ve tried that, along with removing a link to the page on our other game, just in case that cross-referencing thing you mentioned before was having an effect that way. Hopefully our page can leave quarantine soon because of it! Thanks for your help, it’s really appreciated! :D

I do not think you understood what I meant with the linking.

You want consistency. If you link to Patreon, you want to have a link to Itch on Patreon. And if you link to Discord, it is the same. And for every other platform you link to.

And if you want to "hide" the quarantine, you can delete this thread, if you want to.

Itch will not notify you about the ending of quarantine. They did not tell you the game is in quarantine either. This can take longer than a month. Delisting is a side effect of quarantine. So if your game is listed again, the quarantine is also over.