
Introducing itch.io: a marketplace for hosting indie games - neur0mancer
http://leafo.net/posts/introducing_itchio.html
======
leafo
I created itch.io, I posted it on hacker news back in march.

You can find the homepage here: [http://itch.io](http://itch.io)

Here's the traffic I've received (the initial spike is hacker news launch):
[http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png](http://leafo.net/shotsnb/2013-12-25_11-16-16.png)

A few milestones, I've paid out 12k so far to developers. I use pay what you
want pricing, the average purchase is 1.79 above the minimum price of the
game. 35% of all the money paid to developers on itch.io is "extra" money paid
above the minimum price of the game.

Since launch I've primarily focused on adding features, hoping for organic
growth to come along. (hence the huge flat line for months in the graph above)
I've been starting to network more, mostly over twitter, which is really
helping to bring the traffic up.

I'm very open about the process, feel free to ask me anything.

If you want to follow my development adventures you can follow me on twitter:
[https://twitter.com/moonscript](https://twitter.com/moonscript)

~~~
neur0mancer
Great work leafo!

I just "reposted" this here, because i didn't know this cool website.

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Cyph0n
Wow. I'm more amazed at the variety of libraries you've written for Lua than
the end product itself (which is definitely an achievement on it's own) to be
quite frank.

I mean, come on, a web framework for Lua AND and a scripting language that
compiles to Lua AND Vim and ST2 syntax support for said scripting language?
Seriously?

Great work. Oh and sorry for typing like a 3 year old in a candy store (with a
laptop in hand?).

~~~
nathancahill
Seriously. That's very impressive.

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nddrylliog
From a user's point a view — itch.io is everything I need, and then more.

    
    
      - Upload your game & customize your game page in a few clicks, without artifical walls: check
      - Quickly generate download links for press/friends and monitor their download count: check
      - Manage sales / price / updates from the web interface: check (instead of having to e-mail people a-la Humble widget)
      - Check out analytics on page views / buys / etc. - check
    

Since the default page look wasn't enough for me, I simply used the widget on
my game's website, and it works perfectly well.

I'm a happy camper so far :) With the revamped 'buyer profile' update that's
coming, it'll be even better. Plus, leafo is always listening to his userbase!

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neur0mancer
I'm happy to see another DRM-free game marketplace/store.

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Lockyy
This is really nice, I'll almost definitely be using this in the future. I
just have one question, how does downloading work? Can the purchaser download
whenever they want or is it like uplay where you only have a month to
download?

~~~
leafo
They get a private download url that can be used to download the latest
version of the game whenever they want.

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Lockyy
That's good. Is there a page that shows all your purchases like humble bundle
eventually implemented? If you purchase a lot of games it could become a pain
to keep a hold of all your URLs.

Another question occurs to me; Do you have a policy regarding early access to
games? I saw you mention it on your twitter but your FAQ doesn't set out a
requirement for games to be feature complete.

~~~
leafo
Right now all purchases are associated with an email address, you can request
a list of your purchases to be emailed to you from this page:
[http://itch.io/about/support](http://itch.io/about/support)

I'm very close to deploying a feature for registered users to view their
purchases. I'm doing a revamp of user profiles and that's part of it.

Early access games are interesting, I think it's a realistic alternative to
kickstarter. I don't have any rules regarding them, still thinking about it,
but I very much encourage them.

~~~
Lockyy
I'm glad early access games are encouraged. I enjoy them. However I feel like
they run the risk of having potential fans becoming bored relatively early in
development and not staying hooked till release. Prison Architect was hit with
that for me, I played it none of the updates since have added enough to keep
me interested and testing.

Thank you for itch, it's a great service and I hope I can use it in the
future.

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ohmygeek
looks like one of the best platforms for indie games! appreciate the effort to
get this up together! :)

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nacs
Site looks clean but the 10% fee the site takes on every sale seems a bit
high:

>First, itch.io will take 10% of the total, 10$. Then the payment provider
will take $0.30 + 2.9% of the total price, $10. Leaving you with $8.41.

~~~
leafo
There's actually no fee now. And I'll be changing the pricing model in the
future to something much more flexible and friendly.

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slazaro
Note that this is from March 3, so itch.io has been up and running for some
time now.

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justinator
Is this like the Marching Band? [0]

0: [http://itchyo.com/](http://itchyo.com/)

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darkbot
You should seriously consider to user another payment gateway other than
PayPal.

~~~
leafo
I support PayPal, Amazon Payments and Stripe. The original blog post it a bit
outdated as it's form when I originally launched.

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joliv
Man, no linux games :(

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neur0mancer
Fortunately, you are wrong: [http://itch.io/browse/platform-
linux](http://itch.io/browse/platform-linux)

~~~
nunodonato
Its very easy to be wrong on this one, since there are 2 buttons for "win" and
"mac", and none for linux

~~~
leafo
The linux button is not visible on the top if your resolution is too narrow,
It's the least clicked button so I chop it off first. As for whether this is a
good idea probably not.

