There are now 200k games on itch.io | Hacker News Reader

There are now 200k games on itch.io

itch.io

39 pointsPudgePacket9 comments

I only play a couple games now and then, but Itch.io is a really cool platform for digital publishing.

On Linux, your typical options are 1. make a package for each distro's package manager and offer it on your site, or use your language's package manager. On Windows, your only real option is to provide a zip file or installer exe and hope people update every once in a while. Chocolately is unfortunately clunky and hyper-niche.

With Itch you get cross platform distribution with auto updates, a simple forum, and a payment system. Unlike Steam which is locked down and has an approval process, you can just sign up and upload your stuff to Itch. A lot of it is open source too.

The only real complaint I have about Itch are a lot of the ecosystem is built up around games so if you upload an office application it might turn away some potential users, and there's no support for other languages in the UI currently (apparently this is being added though).

Great place, you an stumble upon gems like this https://thecatamites.itch.io/magic-wand Playthru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fizq2qBUh3I

Is itch.io for browser games or any games?

Any games, but I think since there's a certain low barrier to entry for making browser games there might be more of them. I see a lot of people publishing prototypes on Itch.io and publishing full games on Steam later too.

Except from .io games, browser games have never recovered from Flash times. Guess it's mostly due to the proliferation of mobile games. There were promising demos for high quality triple A games on the browser before, but it didn't catch on. Maybe with WebAssembly. Who knows;

I know there is a small but growing tabletop rpg community on there. After drivethrurpg (the current de facto leader in rpg distribution - think of them like Steam, but for PDFs) had a kerfuffle about whether they should/should not take down a product that was offensive to many, the community started to notice that there wasn't really any competition to threaten to move to. That got some companies looking at itch.io. (I'm not aware of any high profile switches, but companies like EvilHat have started to make sure they are selling on both)

Meanwhile people as have an indie community there developing tabletop RPGs that dont always follow traditional expectations - I dont know if that community was already in place and just got some new attention, or if it coalesced as a result, but I assume the former.

> kerfuffle about whether they should/should not take down a product that was offensive to many

I hadn't heard about that, do you have a pointer to find more information?

TL;DR: Someone put out a product called "Tournament of Rapists". This followed on the heels of a good year+ of debate about the role companies in the RPG market should play when dealing with people like Zak Smith (see also controversy about Zak Smith as alleged rapist, largely recognized jerk, yet well-known author and credited for work with D&D 5E) and products like a GamerGate card game that also caused debate with DriveThru.

This led to people yelling at DriveThru for selling this supplement, so DriveThru followed through with a new content policy, which led people to be angry because they were either not doing enough or doing too much (debates that should be familiar to the HN crowd). Regardless of position, the realization that DriveThru is an effective monopoly and neither players nor companies have much leverage somewhat sunk in, so alternatives (itch, indiepressrevolution) got some more attention.

This has links to what should be decent summaries, though my work is blocking them so I can't confirm. https://michaelduxbury.com/2015/09/03/on-the-drivethrurpg-of...

Here's a tweet I have in an open tab waiting for a tuit: https://twitter.com/levikornelsen/status/1184949595685543936

Thank you for the explanation.

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