7 ms·

Itch.io – Marketplace for Indie Games

170 points by galfarragem 8y ago

indigochill 8y ago
I was trying to explain Itch to a colleague recently and settled for "You know Bandcamp? It's that, for games." Two super-friendly platforms for independent creators. On the other hand, I don't use either of them as a customer. Bandcamp because I prefer the way Spotify helps me discover music based on my listening history, and Itch because it feels like a bit too much visually when I'm browsing games there as opposed to Steam/GoG.
- KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
  Just had a look and it feels very "designed by engineers". Clearly the idea was to put as much content on the landing page as possible instead of thinking about what they want people to see.
60654 8y ago
Itch is very cool. Their tools are dev friendly, even the download client got released as open source (https://github.com/itchio https://github.com/itchio). And on the publishing side, they allow anyone to publish on the site, for free, no hoops to jump through. And if it's a paid app, they charge much less than Steam / iTunes / etc. Too bad they're not as popular with players. But I'm idly curious why Itch popped up now, since it's been around for years.
- dazzawazza 8y ago
  yep my game is on itch. It's a great community. The tools and the developer side of the website are very good.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    I did just some experimenting mixing genres, packaged into a browser game. itch low barrier to entry was great to find testers. got couple thousand person try it, with a 30% retention over a week, which to me, being hobbyist at the first game, is a huge success.
- chc4 8y ago
  I've been following @fasterthanlime on Twitter for a while, and it's always really nice seeing them constantly trying to make itch.io the best it can be or working with people to fix bugs they've hit. As far as I know, it's a just them and leafo running it.
  - Randomswiss 8y ago
    @fasterthanlime was in the same uni I was, he basically lead a project for students in first year when he was in second year, a really impressive coder.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      Itch is a 2 engineer operation. Its incredible. They could undercut steam by 20% for each sale.
    - fasterthanlime 8y ago
      I remember that! We guided first-year CS students through implementing a complete BitTorrent client. I put a lot of work into that project (giving extra presentations to students who had additional questions, uploading unofficial slide decks with extra information about the protocol etc.) It's one of my favorite memories of EPFL! We had a ton of fun organizing it, and it was exciting to have students work on something closer to the real-world than usual. We did hear from the network admins once everybody's implementation started working, though... they weren't exactly thrilled!
      - tough_luck 8y ago
        Hi I'm from India and would love to buy from itch.io if you support regional pricing. I know it is a hard problem to solve and requires a lot of variables like payment processors and such, and is probably not lucrative enough, but this is what prevents me from buying from itch.io.
- Zhyl 8y ago
  As a gamer, I haven't really dived into Itch even though I see it recommended all the time. This is despite being a Linux gamer, a fan of indie games, a supporter of open source and a believer in multiple marketplaces (although I feel like we need better aggregators and agnostic sync/update tools). I think the problem may be that I have absolutely no idea where to start. With Steam I started with games that came with Steam that I wanted anyway (Portal, Left 4 Dead). With Humble I started with Overgrowth and their original bundles. GOG was a great place to get games that I had already played or wanted to play and now is a good place to get DLC free stuff. So with Itch I think what is missing is a 'killer app'. Not a 'killer feature' (it has plenty of those), but more a draw that will give me enough drive and interest to overcome the initial cognitive energy barrier to entry. Taking recommendations!
  - zrobotics 8y ago
    For interesting short games, check out past game jam entrants from something like ludum dare (https://ldjam.com https://ldjam.com) or the game jam tag on itch. They're usually free, short, and interesting. It reminds me a lot of old newgrounds, where you could find an interesting new game to play for 1/2 hour.
  - meditate 8y ago
    I don't have any personal recommendations, but next time you are looking at purchasing an indie game, you might consider checking if it's available on Itch first. That's how I got into it anyway. The developers I've talked to prefer that I buy on there as well because they take much less of a cut than others stores.
- sofetch 8y ago
  > I'm idly curious why Itch popped up now, since it's been around for years. I expect this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012083
philsnow 8y ago
This year's 7-day roguelike challenge had all the entrants put their games on itch.io [0]. In the episode of Roguelike Radio [1] that covered the 7drl, they lauded itch for requiring a working download, since entrants are allowed to use any platform at all (some write in c with raw escape codes written to the terminal, some write PICO-8 games, etc), and in years pay the hardest part of judging has been getting some of the games to run at all. It turns out people who like making roguelikes in a 7 day sprint don't tend to prioritize little things like making sure their work can actually be played. [0] https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018 https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018 [1] http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/03/episode-26-how-to-make-7drl.html?m=1 http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/03/episode-26-how-to-make...
- jere 8y ago
  This year's 7DRL starts in just over a month, on March 2! :) https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019 https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019 I can highly recommend the challenge. It's a great community, it's got an organized judging phase, and roguelikes are one of the easiest genres to get into, especially for programmers. You can do all systems and no graphics if you want. Also, I think you meant to link to this episode (the one you linked came out the year before itch launched) http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018.html http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018... I was on this one and we talked about itch quite a bit. My submission last year also ranked #1 and I bet HN might find it interesting as it's got a hacking theme: https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018/rate/232187 https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018/rate/232187
  - philsnow 8y ago
    Argh, thank you for those corrections. I had just listened to the RR episode, did a quick search for it, and copied the link for the first result assuming it was the right one.
randylubin 8y ago
They also have the most dev friendly fees I've seen. You're only obligated to pay credit card fees, beyond that is a voluntary percent of sales you can give to Itch (set at 10% by default.
failrate 8y ago
Itch is great. Their search by tags system is broken, but everything else is wonderful. Full disclosure: I publish on itch. Https://failrate.itch.io
- leafo 8y ago
  how is it broken? (I do know our search results page isn't ideal, but if you search a tag there's a link that takes yo to that relevant page)
  - failrate 8y ago
    Well, in recent memory, I tried searching by tag, and it straight up didn't find a known result with that tag. To be completely fair, I will regress the bug and see if it is still present. If so, I will submit a bug report.
    - failrate 8y ago
      Could not reproduce. It was maybe user error.
wishinghand 8y ago
They also publish PDFs for table top games, which I think is cool, since the other big player in that space, DriveThruRPG, has a slow interface for both users and authors of role playing games.
amyjess 8y ago
Interestingly enough, I first heard of Itch not because of the games they publish but because they've become quite popular in the transgender community as a platform for publishing light novels with transgender themes.
nindalf 8y ago
I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the kicker is "the service you're thinking of already exists - it's called itch.io" [1]. And yet when I think of an indie game I want to buy, it's not there. Just today I saw an excellent review [2] for a game called Hollow Knight. I couldn't find it on itch, ended up buying it on Steam instead. FWIW, the game is also available on gog.com, the Humble store and all consoles, so it's not like the devs haven't taken the effort to make their game accessible. [0] - https://github.com/itchio https://github.com/itchio [1] - https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-steam/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-... [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksexEs7FKf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksexEs7FKf4
- umvi 8y ago
  Many excellent indie games are on itch though - take Celeste, for example. https://mattmakesgames.itch.io/celeste https://mattmakesgames.itch.io/celeste
  - nindalf 8y ago
    Oh of course, Itch does have several games. It's just that it didn't have the game I wanted when I went there. It might be a long time before I want to try a game and check out itch once more. Coincidentally the video I linked reviewed Celeste in addition to Hollow Knight, but Girlfriend liked the latter much more. That's why I went with Hollow Knight.
- rocky1138 8y ago
  You are using itch wrong. It's like Netflix: you don't use it with a movie in mind. They won't have it. Instead, you go to it to find something new that they are recommending.
- beerlord 8y ago
TheRoccoB 8y ago
Itch is awesome, been up for years! I run a semi-competitor called https://simmer.io https://simmer.io. My focus is: -WebGL Games (only, no downloads) -Youtube style presentation (and embedding) -Being the easiest place to upload a game, no rigamarole. Drag your webgl build onto the page and call it a day. We have about 2500 games and developers signed up. It's currently mostly a place to show off your work, but working on more monetization options right now. Feel free to reach out if you have any feedback or ideas for the site. rocco@simmer.io
mysterydip 8y ago
True or not, itch has always been categorized in my head as "the place you put your game if you can't get on steam/GOG", like having your website hosted on geocities instead of your own domain. I don't know what could be done to change that stigma, maybe a "killer app" as someone else in the comments said, because as has been pointed out, everything else about the platform seems favorable.
- suby 8y ago
  I think that's a common perception of the site, but the barrier to entry on Steam nowadays is a 100 dollar fee. Nowadays if you want your game on Steam, you can get it on Steam.
  - mysterydip 8y ago
    Agreed, and I think Steam's perception is eroding but still there. If a AAA dev released on itch, I think it would get instant elevation in status. But the way things are going, they're opening their own stores instead.
neilsense 8y ago
If only solving bullying was so easy... https://ibb.co/q5Cy94Y https://ibb.co/q5Cy94Y
PostOnce 8y ago
check the HTML5 stuff for games you can play right now (most are free): https://itch.io/games/html5 https://itch.io/games/html5
wildpeaks 8y ago
Shoutout to Leaf and Amos for building such a great community for indies and continuously adding more features to itch.io: https://twitter.com/moonscript https://twitter.com/moonscript & https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime

170 points by galfarragem 8y ago

I was trying to explain Itch to a colleague recently and settled for "You know Bandcamp? It's that, for games." Two super-friendly platforms for independent creators. On the other hand, I don't use either of them as a customer. Bandcamp because I prefer the way Spotify helps me discover music based on my listening history, and Itch because it feels like a bit too much visually when I'm browsing games there as opposed to Steam/GoG.

KaoruAoiShiho 8y ago
Just had a look and it feels very "designed by engineers". Clearly the idea was to put as much content on the landing page as possible instead of thinking about what they want people to see.

60654 8y ago

Itch is very cool. Their tools are dev friendly, even the download client got released as open source (https://github.com/itchio https://github.com/itchio). And on the publishing side, they allow anyone to publish on the site, for free, no hoops to jump through. And if it's a paid app, they charge much less than Steam / iTunes / etc. Too bad they're not as popular with players. But I'm idly curious why Itch popped up now, since it's been around for years.

dazzawazza 8y ago
yep my game is on itch. It's a great community. The tools and the developer side of the website are very good.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  I did just some experimenting mixing genres, packaged into a browser game. itch low barrier to entry was great to find testers. got couple thousand person try it, with a 30% retention over a week, which to me, being hobbyist at the first game, is a huge success.
chc4 8y ago
I've been following @fasterthanlime on Twitter for a while, and it's always really nice seeing them constantly trying to make itch.io the best it can be or working with people to fix bugs they've hit. As far as I know, it's a just them and leafo running it.
- Randomswiss 8y ago
  @fasterthanlime was in the same uni I was, he basically lead a project for students in first year when he was in second year, a really impressive coder.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Itch is a 2 engineer operation. Its incredible. They could undercut steam by 20% for each sale.
  - fasterthanlime 8y ago
    I remember that! We guided first-year CS students through implementing a complete BitTorrent client. I put a lot of work into that project (giving extra presentations to students who had additional questions, uploading unofficial slide decks with extra information about the protocol etc.) It's one of my favorite memories of EPFL! We had a ton of fun organizing it, and it was exciting to have students work on something closer to the real-world than usual. We did hear from the network admins once everybody's implementation started working, though... they weren't exactly thrilled!
    - tough_luck 8y ago
      Hi I'm from India and would love to buy from itch.io if you support regional pricing. I know it is a hard problem to solve and requires a lot of variables like payment processors and such, and is probably not lucrative enough, but this is what prevents me from buying from itch.io.
Zhyl 8y ago
As a gamer, I haven't really dived into Itch even though I see it recommended all the time. This is despite being a Linux gamer, a fan of indie games, a supporter of open source and a believer in multiple marketplaces (although I feel like we need better aggregators and agnostic sync/update tools). I think the problem may be that I have absolutely no idea where to start. With Steam I started with games that came with Steam that I wanted anyway (Portal, Left 4 Dead). With Humble I started with Overgrowth and their original bundles. GOG was a great place to get games that I had already played or wanted to play and now is a good place to get DLC free stuff. So with Itch I think what is missing is a 'killer app'. Not a 'killer feature' (it has plenty of those), but more a draw that will give me enough drive and interest to overcome the initial cognitive energy barrier to entry. Taking recommendations!
- zrobotics 8y ago
  For interesting short games, check out past game jam entrants from something like ludum dare (https://ldjam.com https://ldjam.com) or the game jam tag on itch. They're usually free, short, and interesting. It reminds me a lot of old newgrounds, where you could find an interesting new game to play for 1/2 hour.
- meditate 8y ago
  I don't have any personal recommendations, but next time you are looking at purchasing an indie game, you might consider checking if it's available on Itch first. That's how I got into it anyway. The developers I've talked to prefer that I buy on there as well because they take much less of a cut than others stores.
sofetch 8y ago
> I'm idly curious why Itch popped up now, since it's been around for years. I expect this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012083

philsnow 8y ago

This year's 7-day roguelike challenge had all the entrants put their games on itch.io [0]. In the episode of Roguelike Radio [1] that covered the 7drl, they lauded itch for requiring a working download, since entrants are allowed to use any platform at all (some write in c with raw escape codes written to the terminal, some write PICO-8 games, etc), and in years pay the hardest part of judging has been getting some of the games to run at all. It turns out people who like making roguelikes in a 7 day sprint don't tend to prioritize little things like making sure their work can actually be played. [0] https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018 https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018 [1] http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/03/episode-26-how-to-make-7drl.html?m=1 http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/03/episode-26-how-to-make...

jere 8y ago
This year's 7DRL starts in just over a month, on March 2! :) https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019 https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2019 I can highly recommend the challenge. It's a great community, it's got an organized judging phase, and roguelikes are one of the easiest genres to get into, especially for programmers. You can do all systems and no graphics if you want. Also, I think you meant to link to this episode (the one you linked came out the year before itch launched) http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018.html http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2018/05/episode-145-7drls-2018... I was on this one and we talked about itch quite a bit. My submission last year also ranked #1 and I bet HN might find it interesting as it's got a hacking theme: https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018/rate/232187 https://itch.io/jam/7drl-challenge-2018/rate/232187
- philsnow 8y ago
  Argh, thank you for those corrections. I had just listened to the RR episode, did a quick search for it, and copied the link for the first result assuming it was the right one.

randylubin 8y ago

They also have the most dev friendly fees I've seen. You're only obligated to pay credit card fees, beyond that is a voluntary percent of sales you can give to Itch (set at 10% by default.

failrate 8y ago

Itch is great. Their search by tags system is broken, but everything else is wonderful. Full disclosure: I publish on itch. Https://failrate.itch.io

leafo 8y ago
how is it broken? (I do know our search results page isn't ideal, but if you search a tag there's a link that takes yo to that relevant page)
- failrate 8y ago
  Well, in recent memory, I tried searching by tag, and it straight up didn't find a known result with that tag. To be completely fair, I will regress the bug and see if it is still present. If so, I will submit a bug report.
  - failrate 8y ago
    Could not reproduce. It was maybe user error.

wishinghand 8y ago

They also publish PDFs for table top games, which I think is cool, since the other big player in that space, DriveThruRPG, has a slow interface for both users and authors of role playing games.

amyjess 8y ago

Interestingly enough, I first heard of Itch not because of the games they publish but because they've become quite popular in the transgender community as a platform for publishing light novels with transgender themes.

nindalf 8y ago

I'd love to support this service. They do everything right - they take 0% of the game and give the entire amount to the devs. In contrast Steam takes 25% (earlier 30%). The tools itch offers to devs to package/upload their game are considered to be best-in-class in the industry and they're all open source [0]. There's an excellent article that talks about the difficulties in creating a competitor to Steam, and the kicker is "the service you're thinking of already exists - it's called itch.io" [1]. And yet when I think of an indie game I want to buy, it's not there. Just today I saw an excellent review [2] for a game called Hollow Knight. I couldn't find it on itch, ended up buying it on Steam instead. FWIW, the game is also available on gog.com, the Humble store and all consoles, so it's not like the devs haven't taken the effort to make their game accessible. [0] - https://github.com/itchio https://github.com/itchio [1] - https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-steam/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-... [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksexEs7FKf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksexEs7FKf4

umvi 8y ago
Many excellent indie games are on itch though - take Celeste, for example. https://mattmakesgames.itch.io/celeste https://mattmakesgames.itch.io/celeste
- nindalf 8y ago
  Oh of course, Itch does have several games. It's just that it didn't have the game I wanted when I went there. It might be a long time before I want to try a game and check out itch once more. Coincidentally the video I linked reviewed Celeste in addition to Hollow Knight, but Girlfriend liked the latter much more. That's why I went with Hollow Knight.
rocky1138 8y ago
You are using itch wrong. It's like Netflix: you don't use it with a movie in mind. They won't have it. Instead, you go to it to find something new that they are recommending.
beerlord 8y ago

TheRoccoB 8y ago

Itch is awesome, been up for years! I run a semi-competitor called https://simmer.io https://simmer.io. My focus is: -WebGL Games (only, no downloads) -Youtube style presentation (and embedding) -Being the easiest place to upload a game, no rigamarole. Drag your webgl build onto the page and call it a day. We have about 2500 games and developers signed up. It's currently mostly a place to show off your work, but working on more monetization options right now. Feel free to reach out if you have any feedback or ideas for the site. rocco@simmer.io

mysterydip 8y ago

True or not, itch has always been categorized in my head as "the place you put your game if you can't get on steam/GOG", like having your website hosted on geocities instead of your own domain. I don't know what could be done to change that stigma, maybe a "killer app" as someone else in the comments said, because as has been pointed out, everything else about the platform seems favorable.

suby 8y ago
I think that's a common perception of the site, but the barrier to entry on Steam nowadays is a 100 dollar fee. Nowadays if you want your game on Steam, you can get it on Steam.
- mysterydip 8y ago
  Agreed, and I think Steam's perception is eroding but still there. If a AAA dev released on itch, I think it would get instant elevation in status. But the way things are going, they're opening their own stores instead.

neilsense 8y ago

If only solving bullying was so easy... https://ibb.co/q5Cy94Y https://ibb.co/q5Cy94Y

PostOnce 8y ago

check the HTML5 stuff for games you can play right now (most are free): https://itch.io/games/html5 https://itch.io/games/html5

wildpeaks 8y ago

Shoutout to Leaf and Amos for building such a great community for indies and continuously adding more features to itch.io: https://twitter.com/moonscript https://twitter.com/moonscript & https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime