

Show HN: I made a site for hosting/selling indie games - leafo
http://itch.io

======
leafo
The technology stack of the site is pretty interesting. I wrote a little about
it here:

<http://leafo.net/posts/introducing_itchio.html#technology>

Essentially the web app runs directly inside of nginx (but a special build of
nginx from the project OpenResty[0]). The entire site is coded in
MoonScript[1], which is my language that compiles to Lua.

I developed a web framework called Lapis while making this site, it doesn't
have documentation yet but you can find the source here:
<https://github.com/leafo/lapis>

I you want to see another sample Lapis webapp you can check out my MoonRocks
project. The source is here: <https://github.com/leafo/moonrocks-site>

[0]: <http://openresty.org/>

[1]: <http://moonscript.org>

~~~
goldfeld
Congratulations on launching leafo, this is a great endeavor. And thanks for
moonscript, I have some plans for it myself. The striking similarity to
CoffeeScript allows for easy translation, which enables some nifty things if
you think about it (in the same way Clojure leverages the Java ecosystem, I
would say.)

------
tlarkworthy
Why no directory? I uploaded a game to this when it was advertised on
gamedev.net Only subsequently did I realised this site does no marketing, or
even a directory on the front page. So you take 10% just to filehost and not
even put up a link? 10% for 1 type of payment processing is not all that
competitive without some game discovery. I could just put my game on my own
random webpage for much the same effect.
(<http://t_larkworthy.itch.io/runesketch>) OK my game is a free to play so I
have no idea how you are supposed to charge me. You can gladly have 10% of
subsequent revenue for any conversion originating at itch.io but there is not
gonna be any unless you actually market the games on your site

~~~
pyre
How does the underscore in the hostname work? I thought that they weren't
allowed[1]. Just a non-compliant DNS server + a protocol that is flexible
enough to allow it? Is it not disallowed in CNAMEs?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname#Restrictions_on_valid_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostname#Restrictions_on_valid_host_names)

~~~
kristaps
I had to deal with this a while ago and I found out (sorry, but I don't have a
reference handy) that underscores are prohibited in the second level domain
(example.com), but are ok in any further levels (šķaudiens.example.com).
Basically subdomain names can be anything that your DNS server allows them to
be, just as email addresses can be whatever your SMTP server will handle.

~~~
pyre
In my reading, it looks like 'hostnames' are required to be compliant. The
best I can get for the definition of 'hostnames' is A records, and MX records.
So CNAMEs are fair game.

------
nwhitehead
Nice looking site!

I'm a professional programmer just getting started with indie game development
(it's so much fun!). The biggest thing I want out of a game hosting site apart
from actual sales is insight into the potential players/customers. I want to
know which categories are popular, whether free demos are increasing paid
sales, which platforms are selling, where are viewers coming from. I want to
see what people are saying about my game, what they are rating it and why.
It's not hard for me to put up a quick page with a paypal link to a file
download, but you can add lots of value with good analytics and things like
comments and ratings.

------
richardv
How did you do the recording for the <canvas> demo of the product? You got my
upvote just for that.

~~~
leafo
I used this cool project: <https://github.com/rprichard/x11-canvas-screencast>

It definitely deserves some stars. It's based off of
<https://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder>

~~~
rtopto
"Off of"? Are you retarded or just american?

~~~
obviouslygreen
Retarded or just American? Are you retarded or just retarded?

------
km3k
Just for fun, I tried to pay $0.00 for X-Moon. I got a fun message that said:

"Name your own price to get download access to X-Moon. There is no minimum
price, pay what you want.

Due to processing fees the minimum amount is 50 cents."

I realize it can still be downloaded for free, but it's not really "no
minimum, pay what you want".

~~~
namuol
As an alternative I would recommend showing a "+0.50$" bit when the amount
entered is $0 or the difference if it is below $0.50. A tool tip could explain
the "fee" - it'd be much friendlier than a pop up message.

~~~
Mahn
If he could afford it, it would probably be best to either drop the fees
altogether for prices of <= $1, so _free_ games can honor their price, or
otherwise set the minimum price to $1, so that the store at least doesn't
collect more money than the dev himself.

------
TylerE
What is your use case for why this has a reason to exist, in a market that all
ready feels over-saturated (Steam/Desura/GOG, etc)

~~~
leafo
All of those sites have a huge barrier to entry. If you were an indie game dev
and you wanted to start selling your game immediately it is not possible with
those sites. There is an entire market of tiny game developers who never would
dream of selling their game on something like steam. This gives them the
opportunity to host their game, and set a minimum price of say 0. Now they
have the potential to make money off of their side projects. I'd say that's a
pretty empowering.

~~~
TylerE
Smaller sites have a huge barrier to entry for consumers though. For a large
percentage of gamers, myself included, if it's not on Steam, it might as well
not exist. I'm far more hesitant to download/purchase from other services.

The nice thing about steam is that:

1: They're established, I don't have to worry about my CC security

2: I can re-download forever* on any computer. It is impossible to overstate
how big of a deal this is.

3: Nothing to remember. No serials/keys to keep track of. No installers to
back-up. IT JUST WORKS.

4: Auto-updates

~~~
abcrawf
1\. itch.io uses PayPal. Assuming you trust them, there is nothing to worry
about.

2\. itch.io provides the same mechanism. You are paying for the game, not the
single download.

3\. As long as you can re-download the game, then there is no reason to save
the installer. Serials/keys are up to the discretion of the game developer and
I don't see why giving the game developers control is a bad thing. I think
most indie games are against DRM anyway.

4\. In order to support auto-updates, the game developer has to invest in the
Steam APIs. There is nothing stopping games on itch.io to using out-of-band
updates.

~~~
TylerE
The developer doesn't need to do anything to enable steam updates. Steam just
does a binary diff vs the master copy.

For 2 & 3, that's great, but to be honest there is a huge burden of proof -
frankly, I don't really expect any random startup that doesn't even have a
.com domain to be around in 5 years.

~~~
Justonius
dotcom is so 90s yo.

------
leafygreens
I'm an indie game dev who has used Indievania for a previous release -- it's
same kind of PayPal-powered setup, only they ask customers to tip them at time
of purchase instead of taking a cut of every sale. Could you explain why I
should consider using you instead of Indievania?

------
niggler
I'd change the default displayed price, even on a free game, to be something
other than $0.00 (and for those people who type 0.00, it should directly take
you to the link).

------
lucb1e
The video is a real eye-catcher, nicely done!

------
gamegoblin
I and a small team at my university are a month or two away from shipping our
game. I think that we will highly consider using this site! The minimum price
payment scheme is exactly what we wanted to do. Thanks a lot for posting.
Bookmarked.

------
lucaspiller
I like it, and went to create a page for one of my games (free, but I'd like a
nice landing page), however you only support downloadable games. I guess it
makes sense to begin with, however if you add support for browser games, let
me know!

~~~
leafo
Browser games is definitely close to the top of my to-do list

~~~
namuol
Pretty easy to support nearly everything if you just use an iframe and ask for
a fixed width/height. Kongregate rebate does this for HTML5 and Unity games to
great effect.

------
basicallydan
I really like this. I do want to see a directory though.

Just a little detail I really like the way you show how much money will go to
each party involved in the sale:

[http://itch.io/about/faq#someone-buys-my-game-for-10-how-
muc...](http://itch.io/about/faq#someone-buys-my-game-for-10-how-much-do-i-
get)

I know it's just a sum, but I like the way you formatted it :)

------
shurcooL
This is pretty cool.

It might just reduce the friction enough for me to post my unfinished 2D
Counter-Strike -like game that I worked on for 5+ years, that otherwise the
world would likely never see (I have a lot more important things to complete
before I can afford to get back to working on it).

------
dmils4
The video actually threw me off. My cursor was right there, very confused for
a sec - imo it's not separated enough from the rest of the experience for it
to be entirely helpful, felt like more of a distraction. Just my $.02, cool
site outside of that one small thing!

~~~
leafo
Yeah I thought about that. I figured a small percentage of people would be
using linux so not that many people would get confused.

------
MichaelGlass
what are tags? Are there plans for in-itch discovery? As a buyer, the front
page doesn't really help me at all.

as a seller, I can see the use case. Maybe integration with online arcades?
kongregate, for example.

------
jmduke
Why confine this to games?

I think the layout and format of the site is great, but I dont see anything
about it that necessitates that particular vertical. Why can't I use this to
sell my OSX app?

~~~
egonschiele
There's nothing stopping you from uploading an app. From the readme:

> Can I upload/sell other stuff besides a game?

> Sure. Got a game soundtrack or art book you also want to sell/distribute?
> Feel free to upload it as well.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Those examples they listed are strictly things that would accompany a game...

------
braco_alva
This looks good, but one of the things that could stop us from using it, is
Paypal, we can't withdraw money from Paypal where we are located.

------
spoiledtechie
Love the idea. But I would consider one thing. Changing your domain name. It
doesn't ring and the .io will be confusing..

~~~
Mahn
It's not that bad. It's short, a real word and memorable. I've never seen a
product with an .io domain catch on and become mainstream though, but I guess
that's not really relevant.

------
jiggy2011
Is there an ability to upload a demo of the game? Will there be some kind of
discovery system for buyers?

------
sodafountan
You should accept Bitcoins, this could solve the issue of Paypal and foreign
countries.

------
codegeek
Are you using redactor.js for the WYSIWYG editor ?

~~~
radq
That's definitely Redactor.

------
opzionale
"I’m a 24 year old male living in San Francisco."

Really? You're "a male"? Not a man? You disgust me.

~~~
egonschiele
It's easy to troll behind a fake account. Use your real account next time.

