Some crazy stuff has been going on with Itch.io

I lost 100+ positions in the popularity (which is the default) sorting method across multiple different tags on itch, and this has really sent the traffic I get from there off a cliff. I'm not alone in this either, as at least a dozen other devs I've personally spoken to have noticed dramatic changes, mostly in a negative direction. This all happened in a single night, too, for all of us. This seems like an algorithm change. If you go check the site right now, you may notice that the popular sorting across all kinds of different tags is wildly different. It's kind of hard to explain, and in my three years on the platform, I've never seen any move this dramatic in such a short time. That it happened all at the same time also seems to indicate an algorithm change, or a bug of some kind.

Me and a few other devs have tried to get some confirmation on the issue, but we were largely disbelieved by a community moderator no matter what kind or how much evidence we presented, and so far we haven't been able to contact or communicate with anyone with actual internal knowledge of the situation. This is a big deal to most of the devs who've had big changes. Most of us have seen traffic drop off by anywhere from 25% to 80%; I'm right in the middle, with drops of 40%-50%. It is worth mentioning that the views are going somewhere, though, and a few devs have noticed big increases in traffic too. We can't figure out any reason why some games are suddenly favored over others.

So what does this mean? Eh, nothing really, I guess. I'm still gonna continue to use Itch to deliver the free and patron builds of the game just the same as I always do. I am a little disappointed with the way me and some of my fellow devs were treated by some Itch.io staff; we were polite but kept trying to push them on actually going up the chain to confirm what we were seeing, but the moderator we spoke to was rude and honestly quite malicious, going so far as to misrepresent things we said to try to make it out like we were delusional and had some kind of persecution complex, even though that wasn't what we were saying at all. Typical lazy Internet strawman stuff, but you would expect better from moderators working for a moderately sized platform like Itch.io. It was definitely a negative experience, I will say that. But hey, at least the mod didn't ban us or anything so we can still beg for confirmation going forward. Silver linings.

What I think I might do, if I do anything, is a Steam release of Succubus Stories, to see how that goes. I'm not sure I want to dive into Steam and all that comes with that, but on the other hand, it's clear to me that I need to diversify off of Itch's platform. I have brought my games back on to Newgrounds recently, but the only other storefront I can really use would be Steam--most of the others don't allow adult content. If you feel like helping me out, about the only thing anyone else can do is rate my game(s) on Itch.io if you haven't already. It's not gonna help with the popularity sorting, but if we can get higher in the "top rated" sorting, that'll be something at least. Of course, don't give the game a score you don't think it deserves.

Anyway, I'll have better posts with actual concrete news about v0.15 soon. The only thing I can really do anyway is keep working and moving forward.