
How the itch.io app sandboxes games - elisee
https://github.com/itchio/itch/issues/670
======
elisee
Context: [http://itch.io/](http://itch.io/) is a place for publishing indie
games and other creative stuff. There is no greenlight process like on Steam,
people can share content very easily without gatekeepers.

(Disclosure: I know the devs pretty well but I'm submitting because I think
it's interesting content for the HN audience)

They recently released a Steam-like app for browsing, installing & updating
games. There's an awful lot of interesting stuff being done like
[https://itch.io/docs/butler/](https://itch.io/docs/butler/) (CLI tool for
efficiently patching games with diffing for both upload & download).

The latest feature they added is experimental sandboxing which allows
transparently running the games you download from itch.io as a separate
restricted user / in a jail. The submission link details the research done to
make it work.

More info here:
[https://itch.io/docs/itch/using/sandbox.html](https://itch.io/docs/itch/using/sandbox.html)
and
[https://github.com/itchio/itch/releases/tag/v18.0.0](https://github.com/itchio/itch/releases/tag/v18.0.0)

~~~
ben_jones
I remember reading the other day in /r/sysadmin how a school initiative to
teach with video games was completely thrown out because their was no way to
sandbox Steam in such a way that it could be rolled out to school computers.
Steam community was unhelpful and a lot of people were disappointed. Could be
an interesting application of itch.io.

------
fasterthanlime
Hi! I'm Amos, the main developer behind the itch.io app. I'll check this
thread for comments tomorrow, thanks for your attention!

