itch.io

It's good to know that the owner and administration are working behind the scenes to confront some of the abuses on this site:
/t/7172464/october-updates-on-indexing

This post is mostly about project indexing, but as he acknowledges:
"We get a lot of scammers and spammers uploading every day."
"Given the state of the world with AI and LLMs, this type of problem is only going to get harder. Bad actors have access to more resources and more sophisticated systems to circumvent protections. I just wanted to mention this to ask for your patience as we deal with this stuff."

Hello!

Unfortunately, this doesn't guarantee you're a proper human. The scammer did the exact same thing: establish connection and report through Discord, send portfolio pieces to authenticate work, negotiate work and price, accept money, disappear :( It took investigation to find they were likely never involved with the pieces they sent :/

It's a scary world we live in these days, supercharged by AI. You probably are a completely earnest, friendly human, but it's very difficult to prove that anymore. Even a phone / Zoom call is no longer guaranteed. If you have other authentication ideas, please feel free to reach out and convince me. I really need a quality pixel artist for this project. At the moment, I'm back to pursuing personal references again (from humans I communicate with in person). If none of those opportunities work out, I'll probably have to take a risk again. If so, I'll reach out.

Crazy!! You'd think they would dig in to these people and ban them or something.

I feel like a moron. That's the first time I fell for a scam my entire life lol. I can usually spot a fake, but I'm running out of time to ship this game, and I rushed in when I saw the great work posted :(  I started getting weird vibes after a Discord convo, like AI speak where it summarizes what you say in its reply. But stupidly I sent money thinking I was working w/ someone legit and didn't want to be rude. Afterward, I dug into it and sure enough it was pretty obvious they're using a bunch of profiles online with all kinds of random work, and replaying to every job no matter the art style. None of the work posted was legitimately done by the poster (no listed credit on any of them in MobyGames or other official lists). I have scammer's Zelle info, but it's probably fake name too. Sucks, man. I'm an idiot :(

Well, since it's the first time I ever had this issue, I'm not giving up on Itch yet. I've bought assets here before w/ no issues, and talked to some legit good people. But 100% I am going to be much more wary in the future. Also using another site now too.

Anyway, thx for at least trying to help. Like your music btw! Checked out your YouTube sounds. Keep up the great work!

Hello. Posting here because I couldn't find any other contact. I'm looking for a pixel artist for a mobile game I'm working on. I recently posted in Game Dev -> Help Wanted. Still looking. If you are open to paid commission work, please contact me! I'm not interested in purchasing pre-packaged assets. Love a lot of the work on this site, but the problem is that it's difficult to find matching assets that will cover an entire game in a consistent style. 

Thank you for doing this!

I'm embarrassed to say that one of them got me 😭

Is there anything else we can do to pinpoint / report them more seriously? I have a Zelle account of one. Though I suspect it is hard for anyone to track these jerks down.

Hello. I just want to add that I found this thread because one of the artists on this thread just scammed me out of $150 of first commission work (different post). I thought the portfolio they posted was legitimate, but then after doing more research, I found exactly what the person above is accusing that artist of, multiple profiles, often with work from games that they have no credit on. I'm gathering more evidence and I'm going to report this officially however you do that on this site. But I just wanted to let you guys know that. Thank you to the person calling this out. I personally should have been more careful before transferring funds. The next artist I hire on here, I'm going to make sure I talk to them over the phone or something first. It's a shame because there are definitely legitimate people on here as well.

Actually, moderator, if you could give me the link to where we report that officially on Itch, I would appreciate it. Thank you very much!

Hello,

We're a very small studio working on our first Android game using Godot (not first game for us as developers, just this studio). We've been working on it for about a month and have some core basics implemented and tested on Android. Currently targeting a Christmas release, but it will be very tight, so might bump to early next year.

As for theme, all I can say is... frogs :)

You will get credit on the game of course.
We can pay upfront and can also offer revshare plan if interested.
But be mindful that we are definitely an indie studio, powered by savings, not a publisher budget.

We need pixel art backgrounds (battle maps).
We need pixel art UI, icons, entities, etc.
We need pixel art enemies / units. (-- promised to another artist who has yet to accept)
We have already vetted one artist that unfortunately may not work out (art style / experience).

Must have experience with pixel art!
Shipped games are not required. Just passion for pixels :)
Prefer artists that draw / paint w/ pixels at low resolutions vs downsampling.
If no pixel art examples, we will ask for a single asset to see if there's a fit, which we will not use if we don't move forward.

NO AI GENERATION (art or code) on this project (Google++ is fine)
If you use AI to generate your art or prompt your ideas, please do not apply.

If interested, please shoot me a formal email or reach out here on itch.io
And please include a link(s) to some public portfolio work / relevant pixel art.

Thank you, itch.io community!

Hi! Sorry to bug ya again; just wanted to say I reached out via email about a paid work opportunity for more frog anims for upcoming game, if you're interested / have time. If not, not worries, just wanted to make sure you got it (sometimes people abandon email so just double checking). Thank you for the great assets!