Hi and thanks for the feedback. Honestly! It’s useful to hear from someone who has run into these problems elsewhere.
On mood that’s fair. It’s not for everyone but sometimes is valuable in the sense a game fits to how you feel like playing something relaxing and short or intense on a given time. I personally like moods in games and maybe movies, but not books as well but you also have the traditional also search by name, genre, theme and etc.
About the AI-assisted work is not banned, but AI disclosure is there. If AI was used for any part of a game (art, music, text), the developer has to say so in the game’s description, so players can decide for themselves. It also protects developers since AI is a sensitive subject in indie dev, and being upfront about it avoids backlash later. Personally, I don’t mind AI-assisted work, but I think disclosure is right given how people feel about it. I’m open to feedback on whether that’s the right line, especially for AI-generated cover images and blurbs.
Pirated links. Honest answer is it isn’t written in the policy yet. In practice, every submission is reviewed by a person before it goes live, and wouldn’t approve a listing that links to pirated copies. But that isn’t in the guidelines, and it should be. Your question made that obvious, so I am going to add (already created a ticket). along with extra checks on store links that point outside the known storefronts. Logged-in users can already report a listing from its game page, and I will add a specific option there for pirated or illegal links. Thank you for raising it.
For analytics plausible is used alongside Google Analytics. Google Analytics is the part I’m least happy with, so thanks for saying. Matomo on the other hand is a reasonable option and I’ll keep it in mind.
For error monitoring It’s Sentry. Known sensitive data is filtered out before anything is sent.
If you have more thoughts, I’d like to hear them you can join Discord https://discord.gg/9TjkwrYfY8. I have changelog issues reporting channels discussion and etc.