itch.io

Oh, something needs to be done. Especially against ai agent usage.

A complete ai ban is unrealistic. I mean, even the browsers we visit Itch with have AI in it. The Itch app is Chromium based. So even the Itch app has AI in it.

That yes/no disclosure lumping every usage into one single "ai assisted" and subsequently a no-ai filter is not all that helpful, except for ai haters. But most people are not at the extreme end of that opinion. And for hobby devs it can be a useful tool to overcome barriers.

AI-generated content would die out naturally.

Itch is self publishing. It would only die out, if people had to pay for publishing. And more so, if there were a gatekeeper demanding a certain standard to be published on the platform. That's whats going on on Steam.

But on Itch, we have things like an ai run account that is 2 months old and has published 400 projects. And that is not an exagarration.

Mass produced slop is a problem, but the core of this is not AI. AI just makes it a lot easier and profitable with less risk. For example, there are content farms for youtube, where they produced those faked 5 minute life hack videos and whatnot. That was done long before AI and with humans. But slop it was and is. Indie video games are just not the type of content you usually can mass produce and make profit by clickbaiting. The account I mentioned has many paid projects and also sells assets. Even with token costs, that ai agent can make a profit with a few sales. And there are gullible people that do accept that type of content. The bot account has about 100 followers.