itch.io

the term is witch hunt, i believe. some "activists" that never played that fictional game did engange in the real world game of cancel culture. whipping up a mob and sending the mob against platforms.

instead of checking any legal aspects, platforms just pulled it. hence you could cite "worse" games that are not pulled. please don't.

the worrying thing is the steam pull. they supposedly check games before they allow them. so that means that it did not violate any terms and was deemed suitable as a game for adults only. the itch pull is annoying, but i think that was damage control against the ddos attack of whipped up facebook mums, that try to save the world by banning an adults only game, so said adults cannot play that fictional game.

while we are at it, let's ban the bible. and the news. too much disturbing things in those. especially the news. it might teach kids that a criminal can get away with it and even lead a country. sadly there are too many correct answers, for which country that is true. far too many. maybe if we had only banned the tropico game series the world would not be in that mess. it made it acceptable for society to accept such leaders. (yes, this a joke. but it is the kind of logic that such activists use against games of any kind that they are offended about. does not matter if it is gta, counter strike, any lgbt game, adult games, specific topics in adult games or even video games as such.)

i finally figured out, what is bothering me about the cover image! the hand. the hand on the head with the white hair.

it makes it look like there is a silly middle ages hat on that head.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tudor+French+Hood&t=opera&ia=images&iax=images

put the game in a collection for games to play later. add a browser bookmark. wait till the next update. try to play games from your collection. wait, where is that game with that exhibist woman? no bookmark either. so what. must have been another one of those viruses or other illegal things and itch removed it.

edit: the funny part was, that such a virus was actually uploaded with stolen files from this game as a disguise not long ago. seems to be removed by now. but i do guess some people put the fake into their collections.

from a new and untrusted game with single bad ratings and no comments, that game transformed into a promising game that is on the top pages of popular in the sub tags for it's audience. with good ratings and comments.

in short, this game does not need any boost from recent. it is visible from popular and deleting it, will destroy all this again and is against quality guidelines and bad for user experience.

could you please not delete your game to update it.

you disappear without trace from user collections. that is negatively affecting user experience. itch does not like such things.

what? making a devlog and being on top of recent again? those are staff approved. so maybe every few months. your game is "published" 35 days ago. why should they give you that boost after such a short time period.

maybe consider removing the version number from your title. it looks strange.

needs a new genre that separates it from everything ordinary and limited

independent games.

but if you do explicit stuff, it still ain't for minors, even if you do not aim to sell it in an adult video store. it is the same with violence. you can show a person getting killed and still have the thing be at 12+. but if you do that with bits flying around and gore everywhere, it will have a higher age rating that will change with location. to pick germany as an example, they might even legally ban your game, but will allow showing nudity in day time tv. while a nude pixel bosom on an us site like itch will get your game the nsfw rating.

no. this is simply someone not understanding english idioms and building an offended opinion with that false premise. adult games are about as understandable as adult toys. it is not the same as young adult novels. adult games are not games aimed at adults, but games that only adults are allowed to play.

i did not quite get your points, but the important word is explicit. you can tell any story, but if you tell it in explicit pictures and the story is about sex, that is considered porn. there is no need for explicit visuals. it does not add to the story. it is eye candy. but people like their entertainment with some eye candy. same as they like good audio and gameplay mechanics.

but this is seldom done in mainstream. hence the apparant popularity on an indie site for those games.

and there is no distinction between porn and other games for adults

actually, there is no distinction between such games "for adults, but are not rated AO" and games for children on other sites and itch and physical stores.

"adult" is an euphemism for sexual things. adult toys are not paintball guns and motor skies. adult book stores do not sell kafka. adult games are not about doing your taxes.

If my target buyers (parents) click on show adult content to then be greeted with 50% porn on most sold games page they ain't gonna stay

... because they would expect more or less percentage of porn in the most sold games page? or because they also do not know, what adult games are? 

not having an account. privacy concerns. not liking the rating system. not wanting to skew recommendations. indifference to ratings. or maybe they will rate later or have done so at an earlier time.

stuff like that.

even if you set your privacy options for your followers to not see your ratings, some unprofessional developers have screenshotted those. and of course, if you do have followers and public ratings, you might not want to tell those followers each game you visit.

do not name a channel, that you do not want to name. not that this was necessary to find the channel. if you complain about the channel monetising videos about your games, i suggest the channel should complain about your site getting advertisement out of those videos.

even if the legal situation of gameplay videos is a brown mess that does not help anyone involved, it is very unwise to shun or forbid it.

complaining about free advertisement is kinda strange, especially for an indie developer. 

you got it backwards. ntr requires more plot than non-ntr. you need one more character for cheating to occur.

for real ntr you need to create the humiliation fetish. if this is missing, you might have such netorase as here. or things that are not actually ntr, but called so by people hating ntr and that other stuff, so they call that other stuff by the worst term they know, which is ntr.

but plot complexity is not the deciding factor. sloppy developers create for a perceived audience. creating for mainstream smut audience means competing with mainstream smut. and ai is not good for that. creating for nieche smut audience means an audience that has less games to chose from and even mediocre ai games can shine there.

i just went to an adult site. for science. setting the location for usa, just to be sure.

the current ranking of that site was:

family (sure explains all the incest games)

around 30 "regular" nieches.

cuckold.

around 120 other nieches.

so, no, i do not agree that ntr is nieche and therefore hated. i think it is of immersion and projecting into the mc, so every other dick in the game makes the player uncomfortable.

the plague is incest. patreon bans it, so it feels like every second game on itch has landladies and roommates banging. ntr is not that commonly seen, but on every ntr game, the haters flock and give it popularty. like closeted gays would publicly hate on gay stuff.

like mixing a fighting Game whit a Game that your characters try to avoid violence

that is actually quite common. a game where your character can chose between violence and non violence to solve a problem. be it sneaking, negotiation or other options.

moral dilemmas are also a thing. remember bioshock. where you could chose how to treat the little sisters.

i agree that it is not wise to try to attract fans of all genres.

but i wonder why there seem to be very little games that have the plot device of a good and a bad ending for the love interests. winning for the mc is getting the girl. losing for the mc is, when the girl choses someone else. i am playing a game after all, and not watching a movie. 

there is not even consens what ntr is and what is not.

is a threeway ntr? no, it is not.

is casual sex outside of an exclusive relationship cheating? no, it is not.

is regular cheating servicing the cuckold fetish? no, it does not. you need the cheated husband watch while his wife gets banged in front of him. bonus points for humiliation and other things i shall not mention.

there needs to be another word for so called ntr. maybe a simple dick counter. how many different dicks does a smut game show? (excluding gay games)

0 -> lesbian or even sfw

1 -> ntr haters go there

2+ -> complex games be here. ranging over actual story whithout mindless sex dolls that vow sexual loyalty to the mc, flashbacks, group sex, multiple pov, bad endings where someone else gets the girl, futa, and so on, up to the dreaded cucking/ntr scenarios.

what ticks me off, that most ntr hate is for games in #2 that are actually not cuck games. and even if they are, what's the point. it makes as much sense as going to a lesbian game and complaining about lack of a male mc.

harem and cheating are not mutual exclusive. actually, harem does just mean that the male mc cheats a lot on his love interests with other girls.

and most harem games are not so much harem games, but having a lot of friends with benefits. i do not see exclusivity coming into such relationships by default. so "cheating" is not a concept to apply.

real cuck games are rare. pandoras box comes to mind. go there for the cucking experience.

ai is enabling people to make smut games. ntr is popular. so the answer to your question is: a lot.

the funny thing is, that ntr "haters" go out of their way to search those games and give them even more popularity.

i see a lot more incest games and incest is a far more extreme fetish. ntr is vanilla. cheating is a standard porn plot. bored housewive doing the poolboy. a classic. but then again, doing your "step" mom and thereby cucking your father is also quite popular.

if you installed by the itch app, that will not work. it is hosted on external file hoster. you need to use the website.

if you do not make such a thing abundantly clear in your description, your customers will be eglible for refunds.

naming the game with a version number is not enough. the default expectation is buying in early access. so the finished project is expected to be released on this page. if you do not intend to do so, you need to tell this.

also, your itch is not linked by your other socials like patreon.

thats not quite what i said.

no one will buy your game, if they do not know either you or the game

gratulations to your first sale. you can overcome the "know the game" part with advertisements. should have included that ;-)

Soon I will upload new version of the game here, on itch. And I wonder, should I create new project for latest release or simply edit old project? Will edited game show up in "Most Recent" tab? Is there any way to edit game and report it for showing in "Most Recent" tab

as you have been told, that is what devlogs are for. make a devlog. if it gets approved, you appear in recent again. look how other games do it.

if you continue to delete your game and reupload it, you will lose your posting or indexing privileges because of spamming and trying to game the system. itch does not like it, when developers do such things.

also, you screw over all the people watching your game. it disappears without trace from any collections. you are not doing yourself any favors. you also start at the beginning every time with 0 ratings and 0 comments. this is not how an attractive game looks.

i did not recommend releasing on steam. i wanted to point out that you are basically unknown on itch. no one will buy your game, if they do not know either you or the game. so a demo version is highly recommended on itch, even if the same developer might not have one on steam.

on steam the users have two things that itch does not provide, that will make them more likely to buy from unknown developers.

they can give it back within 2 hours, no questions asked. and there is a certain level of quality standards a game must meet to be published there at all. 

if your game is not an online game with a login, i misread the descriptions either on the page or on your website.

i hope you realize you can link to your twitch / discord / whatever on your game page and not only on your profile page.

since this is a paid mandatory online game - without online interaction with other players as i understand, you should consider making an offline demo version. unless you have an established fellowship on twitch or elsewhere, i doubt many people will buy your game without trying out the gameplay. steam has refunds within 2 hours. itch does not.

(if you meant a reply here with your air quotes live chat, better give it to some of your twitch users.)

the recommended games section https://itch.io/library/recommendations would be the section of itch that should show games a player likes, based on previous interactions. but if you look at games via browse, that is the general sorting that everone sees.

any suggestions how to make the recommendation feature better? or more visible maybe. it seems a bit hidden, while "browse" is very prominent, even more prominent than the homepage. 

as far as i know you cannot filter your purchases or search your library at all. or hide something. or put a selection of your purchases in a collection as a verified purchase to show off your support.

you are not the only one wanting to find things in those huge bundles. itch should give some search options for the library already. the big charity bundles are filterable here, : https://randombundlegame.com/ 

i would not know what a locked profile is. you cannot view non public activity on any profile. those profiles do not use the same display name as their profile name. just like you do. your profile name is bladeseven and not blade7. and if you got a 404 by clicking on their names, those profiles might actually already be in the process of being deleted. itch will remove fake ratings, but it was said, that they remove those in bulk and not individually.

and as it was also said you should not post usernames of real users. https://itch.io/post/7586962 . why only protect your good ratings? those were made on the same day, maybe they are fake! i said that to illustrate that it being a 1 star rating is not proof for a fake rating. same as two 5 star ratings on the same day are not proof for you improving your rating with fake ratings.

the problem with your case is the straisand effect and the fact that some people really do not like your content. they have the same right to vote it down as people liking it have to vote it up. the real measure of your popularity is your follower count. some things here hint that you have fake ratings and with your discord threads it is likely. but it is unlikely that your game only has good ratings. give itch time to sort out the real accounts. as i understand it, they do not remove the ratings, but remove the whole accounts.

did you try these already https://itch.io/games/tag-coming-of-age

you can refine with other tags like story rich, or genres like visual novel. but it is only about 10 pages of such games, so you can glance over all of them in a few hours.

which leaves the games that did not use this recommended tag. maybe you see related tags on the coming of age games for other games that have similar topics but where the publisher did use different tags to describe the same.

there is no drm on itch's side. if the developer did not do some drm or login/online requirement, games cannot be removed from your computer or be bricked.

the license stays. it says so in the terms. https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms#4-publisher-content

but the elephant in the room is this: there is no guarantee that the files will stay downloadable. devs can delete their pages at any time. it is unprofessional to do so, but this is itch and most devs here are not professionals. there was a case with a rather successful game last year. i do not recall the name, but i think they released it on another platform that required them to remove it or any such crap.

you demand removal of 1-star ratings. within hours. on a weekend. in one of those threads i linked, it is explained how and when fake accounts are removed. 

your game currently has 25 ratings and an average of 3. that is about 13 x 5 star ratings and 12 x 1 star ratings. not all of those 1 stars can be fake. people do have opinions and rate up and down. your harrassments on discord are one thing, but those ratings you showed? "trash". "boring". come one. i have seen public comments that were way worse for mere ai games. and even worse for anything remotly to do with ntr. the haters on itch usually do not do so in private. they do it in the open. don't remove those comments, should you have those. so people know why your game has downvotes.

oh, and they do get banned. i have seen it happen. if they violate tos. downrating a game is not a tos violation. calling a game trash or boring is also not a violation. and it currently does not look like a downvoting campaign to me. it is just too few votes for that. a dozen people did not like your game. and almost 400 followed you. that is not a bad ratio for an unfinished game.

itch will not remove bad reviews from genuine people that just did not like your game. search for community with "review bomb" and you will find threads like this and this. 

one game had a problem with fake accounts and those were removed in bulk. if your bad ratings are from fake accounts, itch will remove them. but not within hours. leafo explained this in one of those threads.

and do not spam the report button. please. it will not help the time. it might even make waiting time worse for everyone.

maybe where you live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_content_rating_system

esrb rating for l4d2 is m for mature, and that is 17+. pegi rating is 18+.

you will not get a t for teen rating with graphical explicit splatter gore. and that would be closest to "basically" 14+.

thanks. good luck with your conversion back into the third dimension.

i suggest you have a look at this https://www.luanti.org first, so you do not reinvent the wheel. they do have an actual voxel engine. i believe your game should have something they do not have. might be something simple, like being a simpler game or a mechanic. but in direct competition, there are many minecraft-like games.

going full circle, are we.

you made a 2d volume-pixel game by name. and now want to make it 3d.

making your 2d minecraft clone into a 3d game, makes your game a regular minecraft clone.

is this a good idea? depends. if you included stuff to make it fun in 2d, will those things work in 3d? my guess is, that some people like your game because it is not another 3d clone of minecraft.

that is not the bundle. it is the jam collecting items for a future bundle.

those charity bundles are not handled like regular bundles.

there is one happening right now. i can see promotion for it on the front page itch.io, but not on the bundles page nor the extension of the bundles page, the on-sale browse filter.

if you have an arm binary, you might be able to get it to run on that device. but i am sure there are dedicated message boards somewhere in the internet for this hardware that will have guides and discussions about such things. maybe even a compatibility list for some games.

the itch projects are not filterable by architecture. or at least i do not know how. so most linux games will be for x86 architecture.