I think this is a pretty good idea. Maybe not on itch.io specifically, but for game distribution sites in general I think it’s pretty good. Only worry is that you would have to have very consistent reviewing, probably involving teams rather than one person, and I’m also not sure legally where this lies as whether or not you give back money relies solely on someone’s opinion, which can be wrong or biased

Low-effort slop

The problem is that not all "low-effort slop" is necessarily a game with technical issues; you could build a game using engines like Ren'Py—where the engine handles all the technical hurdles—and still end up with a game that qualifies as low-effort slop.

A monetary barrier would effectively kill off developers who lack the financial means to spare $100, even if they’ve poured a great deal of effort into their games.

Ultimately, such a filter would reward projects that sell well (since people would be trying to recoup their investment), thereby reducing variety and penalizing the truly independent scene.

It would also create new headaches for the staff; right now, the support team is already flooded with complaints from people asking why their games haven't been indexed (even though the process is free). If people stood to lose $100, the sheer volume—and especially the tone—of those complaints would become a nightmare for the staff to handle.

You might argue for a more transparent process—like Steam—involving a series of steps where the staff notifies you of any specific failures so you can fix them. Yet, even then, you’d end up with games that technically function or meet the minimum requirements but remain nothing more than slop.

I really don't see this as a genuine solution to the problem you're describing; I see quite a few downsides to it.

The moment Itch starts charging $100, it will essentially become a less-trafficked version of Steam

This.

Also, this type of wager about your opinion of your own game vs. Itch staff opinion about the game is not a good idea. Such deposits work on Steam, because all the games there are paid and Steam will deduct the deposit from earnings. It's not a wager. You cannot lose that money, except if you release a game no one buys.

it gets pushed off the main page in minutes

What main page are you talking about. Recent is not the main page. Recent is the place for brave and adventurous people to tip toe around the malware and slop.

The main browse page is sorted by popularity and you will not find slop there on the top pages.

Much could be achieved if Itch would actively search for slop creators. In some cases that is fairly easy. Just look at the accounts with most uploaded projects and work downwards. Most of the slop people complain about is uploaded by very few accounts.

That would disqualify me, despite the efforts to code my projects from the ground up, keep the pixel scaling consistent and try to make my projects look as legitimate as possible.  My online financial footprint is non-existent and $100 is out of the question.

Thanks a lot.

(It's also kinda why I am fed up with the constant 'starving artist' harassment I have been receiving quite regularly, these days).

No, lol.

Itch has survived for many years (through many less secure versions of Windows) while hosting all manner of software. There has been slop the whole time. Visibility has literally never been good from inside the site, you've always needed to bring people in from outside or appeal to other devs since the site community is mostly devs. It has been a jam-first environment as long as I can remember, and it's literally just a place that's easy to host your work which is why people use it.

Your work is not impacted by the presence of other people's work, and if it was, the problems you're talking about have been endemic to itch.io since the beginning. AI games are the new "asset flips" and suddenly asset flips are high art.

I'm only 13 years old and I make games that are bad, but not all slop(they works and contains at least a few hours of effort). Making and playing games are very fun, and I would like to see better games on the page too.

The problem is, 100$ is something I get in a year. Also, I can't use systems like Paypal so I need my parent's account and info and all the difficult stuff. If what you say becomes true, I would have to quit. Itch is good the way it is now.

calling other peoples games and projects and efforts slop, ai slop or worse in just disrespectful imo

its ok to not like something but calling it names ;/

i could not do that i could maby say i dont like the project

As someone that has recently joined the itch community a few months ago, I agree that something needs to change in the near future. There has to be some filtering of some kind and making a barrier for entry is probably the best approach. However, instead of simply a financial "down payment" option, there should be several options available:

1. Keep the $100 down payment option idea for fast-track access (gets refunded once verified/audited) - but this has the issue of bias and potential lawsuits claiming theft like "my project wasn't slop but was labeled as slop by an inept reviewer and now I'm suing for my money back" (this needs to be very, very carefully done)
2. Add an option for verifying in some other way (e.g. linking some phone number or photo ID or something) - this is hard to do in some countries due to privacy laws but works in countries like South Korea to greatly curb bot abuse (and in itch's case, low-effort spam).
3. Add some endorsement option (this is what arXiv has implemented) where verified users can endorse new users to post content. This is a bit tricky though as there would need to be some strict criteria regarding verification.

I'm personally in favor of option 2 and/or 3 here but I don't mind paying $100 if needed since I'm not financially burdened (but very possibly many itch users could be).

These approach is doing nothing. No one is going to get indexed, and it would turn users away from the site, in favor of Steam if they still have to pay $100. 

This does not limit jam spamming, external slop marketing, or anything else.  Put the limit on getting 100 plays/downloads instead, and give badges. People with more free badges get better indexing, increased jam limits and shorter cooldown on project creation, and more external links.  (Add these restrictions)

Also add basic limits for page quality, such as 500 character description,  custom theme, and screenshots.

Itch.io is intended for people like Yosulman, to be properly indexed and use the site.

Your solution would not work the way you think it would work. And it is highly questionable. This "refund, but only if our staff was in the mood and it did not rain the day before" is problematic. The criteria are too vague and you cannot define them in a way that will not also remove 90% of current Itch games. 

proper execution, absence of malware, adequate descriptions, and basic effort

What does proper mean. What does execution mean. Excluding malware is nonsensical, as it is of course forbidden. Mentioning it, does not improve the idea. What does adequate mean? And the most important bit: basic effort. What does that mean? A feature a pro does in 1 minute an amateur might need 3 days for. Who put more "effort" into it? The 3 day attempt of the amateur might still look like slop in comparison to the hand waved half attempt of the pro. You cannot quantify "effort" in a trivial way. It will be arbitrary. And you cannot bet money on arbitrary criteria.

And yes, the games that ai agent account publishes will fulfill all of your vague and formal criteria. It is not malware. It is proper games and it will have "basic" effort, evident by the well phrased description and the fact that it is a playable game and not a bricked exe. And that ai agent account is not a criminal account. It's just slop because of mass production and overusage of ai. But it is not malicious. You could remove that account by simply telling the account holder that such activity is not wanted on Itch. The account holder either complies or turns to malicious tactics - which then should be fought with the systems that fight all the criminals trying to abuse Itch.

Banning and curbing malicious accounts is all good and well, and I have seen a huge amount of those . But your topic and your proposal is not about them. It is about a quality standard. You want games to pass a greenlighting test. Something that reminds me of  Steam. Steam is geared towards professional publishes. Itch is not. Itch is geared towards self publishing developers and includes inept and beginner devs, that will release low quality games - if you compare those games to professional games.

You think that all is ok, because, yeah, they can still upload, and they are only not indexed on Itch. But ... why? There is aleady a store for professional games. Several, actually. And even on Itch you can always go look at /games/store . There is still a bit of slop there, but the section of paid only games only has 50k games and not 1.500k games.

So in short, your proposal might achieve locking out "low effort posters" and some criminals (who, btw, would just pay with fake credit card or publish on hacked accounts and collect their payload in the time it takes to notice the fraud. Bolstered by the seal of approval of Itch staff. I have seen that happen a lot. They used hacked accounts with exisiting credentials and even released paid games. They try everything.)

... but the result would not be Itch anymore, it would be a less popular Steam, with less features.

A more prudent suggestion would be a new default section of browse that would combine

 /games/new-and-popular/featured and /games/newest/fresh

Browse a constantly updating set of projects sourced from curated collections by our members. Check back for new additions.

I have no clue what that means, but I sure hope those curators do not put slop in there.

And yeah, your whole suggestion is about weeding out recent. The problems you describe are not existent on the other browse pages or the homepage.

Do not get me wrong, I think demanding some kind of minimum standard for publishing projects is a good thing. And imposing a publishing limit would be even more prudent. The (non criminal) slop posters are easily detectable. I just do not think your solution is doable at all, or in way that Itch is still Itch.

I agree with the sentiment that there is too much slop. Used to be I'd get a message from a noob to check their steez and you'd open up a horrific .blend file or some single huge file of uncommented nonsense code, and I'd spend the time to give them pointers, and seeing them grow as a dev was rewarding. Nowadays a noob sends you a project and it's so much further along than it has any right to be and it all looks amazing and extremely sloppy and I feel like they're just wasting my time. What's the point of me critiquing the output of AI? You're just going to feed my critique into the AI some more and let it run. There's no learning or progression here.

I would like to see a version of itch.io where you _have_ to post the source code.

I also disagree with your $100 deposit idea. That won't soothe your chafe it will just change the entire schtick of this site. For me, itch is a place to chuck MVP's and prototypes while you learn and discover with the eventual goal of releasing a "real" game on a "real" platform. I don't see making any money through itch being a sensible goal, so the $100 would just make me go somewhere else to post my garbage games.

EDIT: As the posters above have alluded to, human curation is the only real answer here. You can already create your own collections so maybe find a set of devs who are curating good non-sloppy games and follow them (or do that yourself)

We also need a way to call out and shame slop to make it less socially acceptable to waste everyones time anyone want to build slopshame.com?

No, thank you. I would rather Itch Io impose a limit as to how many projects a single account can post within a day or a week, as well as give more controls to Game Jam hosts, such as the ability to queue submitted games and approve its addition to the Jam's submission page manually. This will give the site a chance to "breathe", as well as young AI developers to carefully consider what to publish first.

Young developers are excited and impulsive, so this cool-down period will give them time to think and consider things without barring them out from being indexed completely with a paywall that they cannot afford.

Moreover, imposing a fee to have a project listed will turn away many people from hosting their projects at all. If they cannot be indexed and found without a paywall, they would not have a reason to post here at all, even if hosting itself is still free of charge. They would simply look for other sites to host their games where they could be indexed and found, or start a new one.

The same people who would potentially use your tool will no longer browse the site for tools to use either, as they would now have every reason to believe that it's become a site where only people with money will get discovered and be seen, even if their tools and games are bad. There is a reason why many of them are not on Steam, and are here instead. You would lose the very same community you claim to love and are part of.

And then, you would have to move to this new site and find them. That same problem with discoverability that you currently have will arise again. By then, you may be seen as the enemy, and have all their backs turned against you.

In fact, you see the results in this thread itself. Many community members are taking it very personally - and they have every right to. Even as a person with money to spend and who will not be personally affected by this paywall, I can see where they are coming from.

It is very, very tempting to solve problems with money and a paywall, Master Simpl. But it is not always the best solution to all things.

The other thing I wanted to bring up was about the tool you have developed. In all honesty, I think the problem you're facing isn't the "buried by slop" issue, but rather another issue altogether.

To preface, I make hand-drawn assets, and I have also experienced one of my neighbors running my art through AI to make it "better" for the neighborhood security logo. This led me to believe that all my assets will no longer have downloads, because people now have the ability to use AI to generate superior-looking images and assets and would no longer need to download my assets.

To my surprise, I found my asset downloads tripling within the last few months. I also see some of my traffic coming from telegram, likely passed around within development teams. This is likely because many players are actively ignoring and avoiding games with AI-generated assets, so a lot of developers have come to realize that they needed to use hand-drawn assets to attract organic players and stand out against all the other games with AI-generated images all vying for the same pool of organic players.

What this also means is that there are now possibly a lot of developers using AI platforms to create new games, as I have not experienced getting so many downloads for my assets before. It is now the new style of development, and as such, it may also mean that many developers no longer require tools like yours to create their games, and therefore do not browse the tools section of the site at all. Moreover, a lot of traditional developers also already have very updated engines and methods they have chosen to stick to. They, too, may not find the need to browse for independently-made tools to use.

This is a bitter, bitter pill to swallow, but from what I personally see, it's one of the likelier causes to your current problem. As the IT world changes at breakneck speed, tools like yours become obsolete very, very quickly.

This is the reality that every developer must face - much like the IT world, the developer community changes very quickly. We now have young, new developers using AI. I feel that rather than shun them and call their work "slop", we need to understand them and work with them in order to co-exist with them well.

I understand your point, but Itch is a corner stone for new devs to get their game out there without having to pay for anything unlike steam. 

In 2026, with everything so expensive, making users pay a fee to post their game might sound like a good idea to weed out bad games, but it will also weed out good games from devs who just can't afford to pay the fee. 

Also, a lot of devs use places like itch to get their game seen and then move onto bigger platforms like steam, so itch is a stepping stone and if you make the stepping stone harder to step on.. well people will avoid itch and turn to other free platforms, so in the long run I believe a fee to post a game will only hurt itch. 

It's impossible to clear out all low effort/slop games, but what we can do is pay little attention to them, hoping that the less attention it gets will send a message to others that if you make a low effort slop game you will not get much attention. 

a potential (and purely hypothetical) solution would be to condition the indexing and visibility in the public store catalog of a game or tool on a deposit of at least $100.

You’ve been registered for almost ten years but seemed to have formed an entirely different impression of this site than I have.

Making indexing an entirely commercial process would be a disaster, in my opinion. The best-loved feature of this site might be the pay-what-you-want payment on otherwise free projects.

We would no longer be able to search for free art, assets, or games? Then why bother returning to Itch.io after all the highly-creative, hard-working creatives who offer works for free give up and leave?

Anyhow, it would look like pure greed coming from Leafo, the sole owner of the site. He’s a publishing site host, not a marketer. Hosting on Itch.io is arguably worth $100 per publisher but nevermind how per project would entirely lean into a controversial, much-reviled practice of paying to publish, it would mean only wealthier individuals or teams would show up in search results.

Most small indie publishers would not come close to recouping $100 (USD?), even if we could afford it, which many of us can’t. That’s one of the reasons we aren’t on Steam.

Example: I’ve been lucky to make money through Itch.io, more money than I’ve made in any year selling work to “pro” publishers, but it wouldn’t cover what’s already indexed. Maybe you feel creatives like me shouldn’t ever appear in the main site search. Uh, I disagree, no much for my own sake but for others that I’ve found through searching.

Poverty doesn’t make our works less worthwhile for the people who would like to see it.

There’s also the problem with the abundance of slop producers who eagerly throw money around to game the systems in publishing sites.

It’s not as if adding these types of fees are an untested concept that hasn’t already affected people who moved here from other plaatforms.

We know what happens when a wealth gap is encouraged. The consequences are dire on spaces that preciously celebtated creativity over commercialism.