Hi everyone!

I’ve been running into a strange issue lately. After every project update, my game disappears from itch.io’s indexing. I contact support, and after some time the indexing gets restored, but as soon as I release another update, it disappears again

I’ve asked support what could be causing this, but the only response I usually get is basically, “Your project has been indexed.” I haven’t noticed anything in the rules that I could be violating, and I haven’t received any warnings either

From what I understand, after an update the project may be automatically sent for manual review, but recently this has been happening every single time

Has anyone experienced something similar and knows what might be causing it?

Could changing the artwork/images on the project page during an update affect this? The images are tied to the current version of the game, so I usually replace them with new ones whenever I release an update

This never used to happen before, and my updates were indexed normally

AI image-generative models have a reputation for illegal content. AI image users have a reputation for caring less about social rules for production over time.

My guess is there’s a flag on your game or account, along with others, for the moderation team to watch out for this downslide. When your update surfaces in the moderation queue, a peek at the page shows the characters still look like adults who don’t closely resemble real celebrities abusing moral rights, and it’s approved for indexing.

Hiding the images might worsen the delay. An obvious drop in quality could do the same. Changing out the images… eh? I can believe that matters.

In my opinion, previews should match downloads, so if they need to change, they need to change.

Well, here's a little update on the situation

About two days after I published this post, my game's indexing was restored. However, after the recent update, the project was apparently sent for manual review again and lost its indexing once more

This time, I didn't change the page description or any of the artwork displayed on it, so that didn't help either

Of course, I understand the current attitude toward AI, and I doubt anyone is going to look into exactly which stage of the art creation process it was used in

Someone suggested that I try using Butler, saying that uploading builds this way might increase the platform's trust in new builds

Does anyone know anything about this or have any experience with it?