itch.io

I think it’s rarely down to just one single metric like raw traffic or account age. Rather, it’s a confluence of multiple factors: established reputation, track record, legal/corporate entity status, and overall history across the industry.

All these elements together demonstrate that you’re dealing with a serious, consolidated entity rather than just an individual account. The main issue with automated or purely threshold-based verification (like “X downloads” or “clean history for Y months”) is the risk of a “Trojan” scenario: a bad actor could build a legitimate presence with a few small projects just to gain automated access, and then slip something malicious through once manual reviews are bypassed.

For a team like Double Fine, the reputational and legal stakes are massive, making the risk profile completely different. So I imagine Itch’s criteria are inherently holistic and handled case by case.