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redonihunter14 hours ago

Complaining that the statistical data on that platform is useless is not the same as calling out the platform as useless. When searching a game from OP that game's indiedb page only appeared at #9 in results. That "low" number would be the indicator that indiedb is far less important than Itch or Steam. But it does show up. People preferring that site can go there and look up information about the game there. If they download there, is another question. I would not. I would go to other places for the actual download.

My main issue was the chain of logic. It does not hold up. You can't infer bots from those patterns and the other oddities. The only thing you can direcly see, is, that people do not use indiedb to download a game very much and there are a lot of other plausible reasons for that. Also, there actually was a rise in downloads with the November spike correlating with the bigger spike in November. 

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KozmoWorks14 hours ago

Redoni i think you're still missing the most definitive proof here. You're saying we can't infer bots just from patterns, but you are forgetting that Ofihombre literally stated the DBolical administration already confirmed the issue and actively tried to block this specific traffic.

Platform admins don't spend time writing filters and blocking IPs for "random fluctuations" or "private browsing humans." If the people running the servers classify it as bot traffic and take measures to stop it, then it IS bot traffic. That completely validates the logic.

As for Google ranking, ranking #9 doesn't justify a platform having corrupted analytics dashboards for its creators. We aren't arguing about whether the site is completely useless to find a game; we are arguing that the stats system is broken, which is exactly why Ofihombre's points are valid.

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redonihunter11 hours ago
that Ofihombre literally stated the DBolical administration already confirmed the issue 

Then why not simply cite this. Instead a non conclusive mess of oddidites is presented as evidence. Did those admins say how much such traffic there is, and if they remove such traffic from statistics?

 We aren't arguing about whether the site is completely useless to find a game; we are arguing that the stats system is broken

No, we do not. You might. Ofi is not. And I am pointing out the flaws in Ofi's logic.

The thread's title is:

IndieDB/ModDB is a bot/crawler farm! Don't public any game/mod!

I think that is supposed to mean publish and not public. Ofi calls for other people to not use this platform and claims it is used to simulate traffic, rather than there being genuine traffic.

Ofi is not arguing that the statistics of that site are broken and should not be used for marketing analysis. It is a call to boycott that site.

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redonihunter11 hours ago (1 edit)
Redoni i think you're still missing the most definitive proof here. You're saying we can't infer bots just from patterns, but you are forgetting that Ofihombre literally stated the DBolical administration already confirmed the issue

That there is a confirmed bot problem on this site does not mean, you can infer it just from patterns. One does not follow from the other.

And most importantly, I do not happen to see those alleged patterns. What I see is perfectly normal traffic to download ratio for an indie game on a less popular platform.

When the views go up, so go the downloads. That directly contradicts this assumption that the views are mostly patterns of bot traffic.

So from what I know currently, I assume that most of this bot traffic is either removed from the statistic, or the games of Ofi are just not hit by that fake traffic.

I did check out a few other games from the currently popular sorting of that site. They had even less traffic than Ofi's game. And no such patterns.

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KozmoWorks11 hours ago

You are replying to yourself now, which shows you're just trying to force your theory.

You say downloads went up with the views, so it can't be bots. But as developers, we know exactly how web crawlers and modern AI scrapers work. They don't just look at a page; they script click every single link on it, including the download buttons, to scan the files and data. That’s why both metrics inflated artificially at the exact same time.

Ofi already proved with the Garry's Mod and World of Padman charts that these spikes are synchronized across completely different games. If you choose to ignore synced charts, admin confirmation, and basic web crawler behavior just to protect your own opinion, that's fine. But the developer community sees the ghost traffic for what it is.

I'm done debating this.

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Ofihombre11 hours ago

I admit I was sensationalist in choosing the title to grab attention. And what you call a boycott wasn't done to make the site sink even further; what I wanted was for it to improve and regain its credibility.

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