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redonihunter20 days ago

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.

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Simpl_pseudocode20 days ago

So, your response comes full circle into agreeing with the core problem. You start by arguing that defining basic standards or friction is "impossible" and "arbitrary," yet you conclude by stating that demanding some kind of minimum standard and imposing publishing limits is actually a good thing. That is literally the entire point of this discussion.

A few clarifications:

    • Nobody is asking Itch to become Steam. Protecting a platform from mass produced AI slop and automated shovelware is not "trying to be a corporate store"; it is maintaining basic operational health so that actual indie beginners aren't buried under automated noise.
    • Politely asking mass spam accounts to stop does not work. Believing that automated scripts or spam operations will simply comply because you tell them "such activity is not wanted" defies the basic logic of how web platforms operate.
    • Friction is not about punishing amateurs. An amateur spending days on a rough, genuine project is completely different from a bot or account pumping out 50 template flips a day. The fact that even you admit "slop posters are easily detectable" proves that identifying these patterns is neither impossible nor subjective.

    Ultimately, if we both agree that minimum publishing standards and rate limits are needed to curb low effort flooding, then the debate is already settled. The only real, complex, and remaining question is implementation, and as other users have constructively pointed out, there are plenty of viable models to achieve it, provided the actual will to do so exists in the first place.

    Reply
    redonihunter19 days ago
    Protecting a platform from mass produced AI slop and automated shovelware

    But that is not what your suggestion would accomplish. You did not even list ai mass producation as a criteria to fail the $ 100 bet.

    According to the title's thread you talk about low-effort submissions. And you talk about protecting indie developers. But you would not protect indie devs, you would protect the players from being exposed to slop and low effort games.

    You start by arguing that defining basic standards or friction is "impossible" and "arbitrary,"

    That is not what I said. I said the criteria you proposed are vague and arbitrary. I did not say it is impossible to have basic standards. Even Itch has those in their quality guidelines. But "low effort" is not a criteria you can use on Itch's catalogue of games, else you would lose 90% of all games here.

    Politely asking mass spam accounts to stop does not work.

    Why would it not work? Oh, I see why. Because you think that all those spam accounts are acting with criminal intent. That they will ignore platform rules and will circumvent restrictions.

    Friction is not about punishing amateurs.
    The fact that even you admit "slop posters are easily detectable" proves that identifying these patterns

    Oh, but it will mostly punish the amateurs. The pros know how to get a pass. And your suggestion is not about pattern recognition. So admitting that there are patterns is proving my points, not your's. Let's revisit this paragraph

    As for the idea that slop comes from just a few accounts, that is a huge assumption unless you have actual backend data to prove it. But even if that were true, relying on staff to constantly hunt down, review, and ban accounts after they have already flooded the store is a purely reactive approach. It leaves the damage done and keeps the workload on staff unnecessarily high.

    You just agreed to that "huge assumption" by talking about these patterns. Plus, I think it is hilarous that you think that workload for staff would be less, if they have to vet each and every game that wants to be indexed. And the "damage" is already done. There is 1.5 million game projects. For your suggestion to have any effect, all those games would need to be revisited by staff.

    Ultimately, if we both agree that minimum publishing standards and rate limits are needed to curb low effort flooding

    I focus on the flooding. Your suggestion focuses on the low effort.

    And I tells you that going for low effort will not work on Itch. Most games here are "low effort".

    Reply
    Simpl_pseudocode19 days ago

    You are shifting semantics to avoid the reality of how stores operate.

    • Politeness does not stop spam operations. The assertion that mass spam accounts will cease activity simply because staff tells them "such behavior is not wanted" demonstrates a disconnect from automated abuse dynamics. Scripted accounts and industrial slop uploader operations do not operate on polite compliance.
    • Flooding and low effort clutter are the exact same issue. You attempt to separate flooding from low effort content, but mass flooding exists precisely because producing zero effort or AI generated noise costs nothing. Limiting one inherently requires friction against the other.
    • Prevention applies to incoming submissions, not retroactively scanning millions of legacy pages. Claiming that any new quality hurdle or rate limit would require manual staff review of the entire historical database is a strawman. Platforms implement friction and verification not by manually re auditing years of archived files.
    • The amateur excuse is a false equivalence. Rate limits, identity checks, or page completion requirements do not harm real amateurs; they target structured abuse.

    If you acknowledge that publishing limits and flooding controls are necessary, then arguing against every single mechanism to enforce them while relying on polite requests to bot accounts is simply defending the status quo under a different name.

    Reply
    redonihunter19 days ago (1 edit)
    Scripted accounts and industrial slop uploader operations do not operate on polite compliance.

    But those are not the type of accounts that your suggestion is aimed at. Your suggestion is aimed at low effort submissions. From regular people. If your suggestions are not aimed at low effort, but at bad actors, that is a different discussion.

    The account I mentioned that uploaded so many ai games does proclaim on the profile to be compliant. In case you did not know, ai disclosure is not mandatory for games. So this account does play by the rules. Problem is, to my knowledge Itch has not yet made a strict statement about ai agents or mass uploading of ai games yet. There is some vague hints in the quality guidelines, but nothing outright telling naive vibe coders and ai agent users that what they do is not wanted. At least not in the scale they do it. 

    Flooding and low effort clutter are the exact same issue

    No, it is not. X is 1 account uploading 100 games. Y is 100 accounts uploading each 1 game. Fighting the "flood" of hobby developers is not a thing Itch would do. But fighting the flood some accounts produce is a thing Itch should do.

    Sure, for a player it might seem as the same issue, if the recent section is full of 200 games that are either low effort hobby projects or mass produced relative high quality seeming ai games.

    Your suggestion would put burden on all 101 accounts, but in my opinion it is quite enough to only deter that 1 account with the 100 games.

    Prevention applies to incoming submissions, not retroactively scanning millions of legacy pages. Claiming that any new quality hurdle or rate limit would require manual staff review of the entire historical database is a strawman.

    No it's not. If you proclaim: look, Itch has now a quality standard, and does not allow low effort submissions, you need to deal with the previously uploaded projects and hold them up to the new quality standard. Else why boast the quality standard? We have "quality" now, but only for the tiny fraction of new games? Never mind the catalogue of 1.5 million projects that already fill up the browse pages.

    Your suggestion boils down to opening a new site. Like Itch premium. Where you need to apply to get listed.

    The amateur excuse is a false equivalence. Rate limits, identity checks, or page completion requirements do not harm real amateurs; they target structured abuse.

    Pointing out the flaw in your suggestion is not an excuse. You just claim that it would not harm real amateurs, but you have no data or cited a previous example where this was done and it worked out the way you predict. And people pointed out to you, how it would hurt those amateurs. You just hand waved those concerns away. The "straw man" here is, that you suddenly do no longer keep up your $ 100 wager suggestion but silently act as if you suggested rate limits, identity checks and page requirements.

    Reply
    Simpl_pseudocode18 days ago

    You are conflating flexibility with retreat, while doubling down on completely unrealistic platform mechanics.

    1. I have not withdrawn the $100 deposit proposal at all. I still personally view financial deterrence as the single most effective and reliable mechanism to stop low effort flooding. What I have said, and repeat now, is that I am pragmatic. If the exact same result can be achieved through rate limits, identity checks, or page standards, either alone or in combination with a deposit, the mechanism matters less than the outcome. Recognizing multiple paths to a goal is not a contradiction.
    2. Whether 100 low effort submissions come from one account using scripts or 100 disposable throwaway accounts, the resulting store catalog is equally degraded. Players and legitimate developers experience the exact same damage: discoverability is destroyed under zero effort noise.
    3. The idea that implementing an indexing filter today forces staff to manually audit 1.5 million legacy pages is illogical. Every major web platform, from app stores to video hosting, updates submission requirements for future listings and indexing queues without retroactively deleting or auditing archived history.
    4. Claiming that mass AI uploaders and slop posters are just naive creators playing by the rules because Itch hasn't explicitly forbidden them is precisely why structured friction is needed. Polite guidelines without enforcement mechanisms do not stop spam; they invite it.
    Reply
    redonihunter18 days ago
    Recognizing multiple paths to a goal is not a contradiction.

    But that is not what you did. You made some kind of reverse false straw man. You made that suggestion with the $ 100 wager. People argue against it. And as a comeback you misrepsent your own suggestions to be actually about other things.

    People here do not argue about your goal. They argue against your suggested method!

    the resulting store catalog is equally degraded. Players and legitimate developers experience the exact same damage: discoverability is destroyed under zero effort noise.

    You just assert things. That it is equally damaged and you load the terms, like saying "legitimate" developers. And you assert that discoverability is destroyed.

    But we are not talking about illegitimate developers here! A hobby dev uploading a "low effort" project is legitimate. Oh, and you try to pull of a false straw man here. You assert that I was talking about 100 throwaway accounts. I was not. You dishonestly misrepresent what I wrote. I was comparing the low effort projects uploaded by 100 hobby devs against the spammed slop of 1 account.

    The idea that implementing an indexing filter today forces staff to manually audit 1.5 million legacy pages is illogical.

    I pointed out that imposing a quality standard today would do nothing to the existing catalogue. And that the platform would have to scrutinize old projects to be able to claim a platform wide quality standard.

    That is the opposite of illogical.

    is precisely why structured friction is needed. Polite guidelines without enforcement mechanisms do not stop spam; they invite it.

    With that premise, it does not precisly follow, that structured friction is needed. It follows that the guidelines should be enforced.

    I think it is sad that you did not adress the major critique against your proposal:

    If implemented, your suggestion would make Itch not be Itch anymore.

    Reply
    Simpl_pseudocode18 days ago

    I have already stated that from my perspective financial deterrence would be the most effective solution. However, I am not a fanatic; I am pragmatic. I opened this thread to actually discuss a problem, not to preach absolute truths. When other users propose viable alternative options, I see no reason to fight them out of ideological stubbornness instead of incorporating them into a broader vision. The point is not forcing one specific mechanism over another, but solving what I consider to be a major structural problem.

    We can spend all day doing semantic analysis over what constitutes low effort or legitimate content, but at this point it just feels like moving the goalposts. We need to decide where we stand: either we agree that Itch has a severe problem with slop and noise drowning out quality work and genuine effort, or we believe the status quo is fine. If you believe there is no problem, then our views are fundamentally antithetical and there is no common ground to debate.

    Furthermore, the existence of 1.5 million legacy pages is not an excuse for inaction. Implementing controls now resolves the problem for the present and future. Once the floodgate is closed on new incoming noise, separate solutions can always be explored to handle past clutter.

    Finally, regarding the claim that my proposal would make Itch not Itch anymore: what exactly is Itch supposed to be? Is it meant to be an unmoderated dump for slop and shovelware? Is that what people are so eager to defend? I highly doubt that was the founder's vision, nor do I believe that introducing basic operational health would ruin the platform's soul.

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