What is Itch.io? A short history of one of the most unrestricted platforms for game developers

What is Itch.io? In this video, we take a closer look at the history of one of the most accessible platforms for game developers and digital producers, starting from the company's humble beginnings in 2013 to the growing pains it experiences today.
Games from itch.io featured in this video:
00:08 - October
00:47 - Code, Eat, Debug
00:55 - X-Moon
01:20 - Voting Simulator
01:26 - Gate
01:31 - Gift Distribution
02:38 - Uploaded
02:49 - Coding Buggies
03:03 - Money Money
03:12 - Fee to Play
03:21 - The New Hire
04:01 - Community Companion
04:12 - Launch
04:18 - Control
04:23 - Definitely No Game Development
04:40 - Refinery Rush
04:48 - Freelancer
04:52 - Overland
05:55 - A Good Snowman is Hard to Build
06:24 - Completion Lawn Care
06:34 - Bowuigi Zine
07:22 - Growing Pains
07:26 - Sorting Radioactive Trash
07:40 - Bots
07:49 - Office
07:57 - Grow Crow
08:35 - X-Moon
#itchio #indiegamedev #indiegame

[@TheVoiceOfChaos]

Itch is the modern newgrounds for me. Like a place i can go to feel something new for once. No bots, no algorithms Just vibes

[@mrtruman4339]

It's the Newergrounds.

[@getrdygames1146]

newgrounds addictinggames miniclip armorgames kongregate ebaumsworld trackmill, as a kid all i needed were these sites, oh and warcraft 3 lol

[@brunitoknolastname69420]

the NEWESTgrounds

[@jakefrenchflyman]

Itch and Gamejolt are the modern gamejolt

[@jacobnicola5950]

PristineFloor

[@themore-you-know]

A problem I see with Itch is the lack of tooling for better searches. Example: searching for assets in the assets store is done by "tag", and using the search bar will default back to searching games.

[@vgexplain]

Yeah, I agree. I had trouble searching for developers on the app since it always defaults for searching games. I had better luck using Google to find developers on the site.

[@Scypek]

What a wonderful corner of the internet that is. Like a glimpse of utopia! I'm well familiar with the pay what you want scheme, but I forgot about the revenue slider. When I put my own games on there, I think I'm gonna set it to 31%.

[@vgexplain]

It's such a fun platform that really makes a lot of effort to let devs do what they do best!

[@CHONK-Music]

Nice

[@yektaagra741]

Nice

[@Aethelbeorn]

Nice

[@Aethelbeorn]

@@RaisedWhiteMist Should have waited till March 31st

[@particlesystem]

As the artist of freelancer and on behalf of the team , thank you for this video. It is a great honor to be one of the examples you've chosen to show.

[@vgexplain]

Thanks for being apart of FreeLancer! I really enjoyed the game mechanics (particularly jumping around with the lance) and art style of the game. Keep up the good work!

[@MalicProductions]

I wouldn't be half the game developer I am without Itch's open platform. This was a well done origin documentary, you have most assuredly earned a sub.

[@RenderingUser]

same

[@nicknesses]

Wow! This is great on so many levels! And the whole story is short and sweet. What a wonderful little documentary. Good luck! Also i thought this was a channel with 600K+ subscribers. With that video quality you'll get it soon :)

[@vgexplain]

I'm glad you enjoyed the video! And thank you for the compliments!

[@rajder656]

i actually started using it a bit when they had a great bundle for ukraine 10 bucks you got a bunch of games, apps even d&d stuff

[@Waspeil]

This is so professional I thought that this must be a massive channel. I hope you find the success you deserve.

[@bloodraven2537]

What a nice documentary. Good job!

[@vgexplain]

Thank you for watching! I'm glad you liked the video 😎

[@brandonlogan11]

It's friendly to adult content as well. Places for adult creators are shrinking every year an it's so nice to have a safe haven like itch.

[@judeduval5724]

Yeah you have a point. Game jolt use to be friendly to adult games into last year or the year before. They decide that they won't host adult games anymore.

[@woutervanham8246]

2:29 I made the most rated game on a GMTK gamejam once! Still one of my proudest achievements, even though it wasn't the highest rated.

[@SebastianGraves]

Wasn't aware of the founders background. He seems like a really cool dude.

[@hcam93]

Way to go man, this was very well made video and was very interesting

[@vgexplain]

Thank you so much! Very much appreciate the kind words!

[@DesmodiumGames]

Brilliant mini-documentary- I assumed you had 100k+ subs but when I went to subscribe I saw you didn’t and was very surprised! Keep up the great work 👍

[@UliTroyo]

I never thought the Itch backstory could be interesting, even though I love the platform. Great video! Subbed :)

[@lynxstudio7636]

Its nice to see people like this helping out and being community-friendly. We need more people like these guys.

[@thefirehydrant]

This was a very well done video man, keep going with this quality and your channel will grow fast. (:

[@torahu4443]

Itch is where I get 90% of the games I play. And they are all free because I mostly play Visual Novels

[@kid6417]

While watching, I noticed that he says "Itch tries not to be like other platforms" but in the subtitles, it adds "especially Steam" at 5:41 lol

[@vgexplain]

🤫

[@islar7832]

They are legends! I've uploaded my game there and didn't encounter any problems or gate keeping or stupid algorithms obscuring my game in favor of others. I really wish that itch would be our main store and not steam or others.

[@Zoek_Het_Uit]

Thought this was a way bigger channel, nice video quality keep it up!

[@vgexplain]

Thank you so much!

[@Cansyrian]

Got your Channel recommended, I'm really glad it did! After finishing the video i looked at your channel and I legit thought that u had so many subscribers ! Your production quality is great and the video was really interesting and fun to watch ! I subbed keep up the great work you will grow big !

[@projectgorgonfan]

6:50 It's Equality, not Equity. Actually an important distinction to make

[@Elkdin]

Wow I didn’t even know that this existed.

[@vgexplain]

Isn't it great? It reminds me of early internet flash games.

[@drakesayshi3321]

How

[@NicTheThicc]

I've been on itch for quite some time now, but never really knew about its origins. Great, well researched video; keep it up! (:

[@colbyboucher6391]

...I'm really surprised at how many people don't know about Itch

[@SeanStClair-cr9jl]

Love itch! Great video, hope to see your channel take off

[@vgexplain]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@sachizumii]

I honestly thought you had over a million subscribers, your editing and delivery is on par with the big guys, I'm honestly looking forward to your uploads

[@RobinTenTwo]

great video! never knew all this about the platform

[@vgexplain]

Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@EIement]

I started hearing about itch through some videos a few years ago I'm glad it's a thing that exists theres so many unique games that even have far better quality and hearing that some pages have custom designs sounds amazing

[@noeldev]

itch is amazing, it is maybe not perfect, but due to how developer friendly it is, it's the best play for indie game developers

[@TheDJLionman]

that says equality, thats a different word than "equity" which is the word you used

[@decoy3641]

Nice to see this channel getting the recognition it deserves!

[@k3nny]

I sneaked around the site once in a while, but never did I expect it to be this amazing

[@RenderingUser]

ive been using itch since like 2018 put up a few small games there. and participated in a couple gamejams ive always considered itch as the best game sharing platform for indie devs

[@MarcelQT]

As an aspiring video creator, I like your balance of B roll (game/web footage) and face/real shots. I’ve been trying to strike a good balance and I think you nail it!

[@brandonmichael2111]

I think you left a typo in your script; at 6:47 you said, "protests"

[@captaincommando9839]

Should've been "peaceful protest"

[@brandonmichael2111]

@@captaincommando9839 "Firey but mostly peaceful protest"

[@ifjNagyMiklos]

On the other hand, complete freedom also means the lack of quality control...

[@kalimacho1]

You can't have everything Everythings got trade off

[@cheezballz8146]

this is like newgrounds just more modern and with gamejams!

[@DunhamLockhart]

One thing I love about itch is how fantastic it is for Tabletop RPG developers! It's not just digital games!

[@justiceforjoggers2897]

I get a few games from Itchio every month, it's nice to actually own what I buy

[@kxdsh]

I knew itch was awesome but I didn't know quite how awesome they are towards developers

[@OfficiallyMaidenless]

I hope this doesn't come across rude or insulting, but it's actually extremely hard to discern what you're saying sometimes. I'm not expecting you to teach yourself a whole new way of speaking more clearly, but I do suggest maybe getting captions done. For the most part I can hear everything you're saying, but there are times where you quite literally seem to slur a whole sentence together into 1 word. An example would be at 0:26 I'm not exaggerating it actually took me at least 10 (but less than 15) passes to figure out I think what you said was "Creators can take home as much as 100 percent" (I'm pretty sure that's what you said) what I kept hearing was basically: "creditors ken tag home as Munchausen 100 percent" (fairly certain that's not correct lmao) I do hope this helps, because I found this super interesting but I also had to work way too hard to make out what you're saying. I'm not sure why I seem to be the only person who had this to say, no doubt someone's going to insult me and think I'm being rude but I truly do wish success for you :)

[@seedmole]

Hell yeah! I instantly thought of Bandcamp from the start of the video, cool to hear that the creator explicitly was trying to bring that openness to the indie gaming industry. Bandcamp has been an indispensible part of the independent musician ecosystem for as long as it has been around, awesome that itch takes it even further with the cut slider.

[@polocatfan]

Bandcamp is owned by epic though

[@nitro8416]

@@polocatfan It was not always

[@oshit2874]

this video was great! that was lot of research

[@nemo_is_real]

DAMN! You're not even at 1k yet? This has to change. Take my sub, good sir!

[@veryupstandinguy]

You deserve more subs and views bro

[@coco_rthritis6462]

A platform that actually gives a single iota of a fuck about their creators? Based.

[@VoltitanDev]

Whenever I make my games itch would be the first place it would go to before I released it on steam since unlike Steam at least Itch is more consistent on their policies on adult games.

[@SkillterASMR]

Great video, it's underrated. the only thing I could say is you're talking and giving information too quickly, I think it may be overwhelming. Also there's a small echo to your voice, you could speak more directly to the mic or change the room. Good luck with your channel, you're doing an amazing job ❤

[@dvanko4062]

that was a great watch .simple, informative and entertaining .Subbed ofc

[@GameDevJourney]

Enjoyed your video very much, thank you and keep it up!

[@davidwusoftdev]

That's a cool mini documentary! Good job!

[@matthewvilla2920]

thanks for the info!

[@terrancopeland6978]

I still think bundle for Ukraine would have been cooler if it went towards arming their military. What are civilians even for anyway?

[@Samuel-pt7rm]

Great work never heard the full story before.

[@vgexplain]

Thank you for watching! 😎

[@andrewhonious7099]

This is a very good video

[@dackss3520]

Very nice video! The topic was interesting and also presented well.

[@WillJackDo]

Amazing video!

[@pollisgaming3168]

Loved this. Great for beginners over steam

[@bigthings1818]

Been using it a lot lately, now I’ll be using it more

[@sylvia5925]

yo this is so cool im so glad this showed up on my recs

[@RockyMulletGamedev]

Interesting and informative 👍

[@vgexplain]

Thank you! 😎

[@SPACEGAMESstudio]

Nice video! Definitely deserves more views than it has

[@ifandor1]

Great video!

[@collinvisser7108]

Neat - Ludum Dare always brings down itch - Sumit your games early is not so easy in a jam. - Very good video - thx

[@robotplant5260]

Great content 👍 subscribed!! Also love you’re hairstyle bro 😅

[@rithvik119am6]

SeeIng the video quality i felt you had atleast half a million subs

[@nyuh]

Finally! i remember looking around if theres a vid about this

[@JayadevHaddadi]

Good stuff! Keep it up!:)

[@thenonconformistt]

Very interesting! Thank you :)

[@happykadyan4976]

That's a really amazing video.

[@liameberhardt4462]

Im an Indie developer and would love to collaborate!

[@luucy025]

Without itch I would not have become a programmer I started off just making games for fun publishing them and getting feedback I also joined s couple of gamejams where I met a lot of people I still talk to 3 years later if I didnt get feedback and didn't meet those people I would have probably quit a while ago and wouldn't even have attempted the transition from games in unity to software development

[@LORDSofCHAOS333]

ichio its batter then steam because you don't need to wait on a green light approval + you don't need to pay 100 dollars just to publish you game . the same goes to epic they don't tax you 100 bugs to publish you game but it can still be removed if you don't get green light

[@darknetworld]

It good stuff to learn how this company think outside the box. But there should be some bad apples of users use assets copy or reused brought content from brought sites that are not license free or permissions to resale example audios.

[@Tpbraut]

Good job on this documentary!

[@holdthetruthhostage]

You need to make a video about Steam Sheep devs who will literally do anything to be on oversaturated Steam that complain about Steam yet still want to be published by Steam

[@mobs2r]

An indie game dev I know (I won't name for their privacy) told me they prefer publishing Steam because of issues with bad actors refunding their games constantly. I like Itch as a consumer, but I do not know if it as good for developers as Steam is, I guess you get what you pay for. EDIT: It kinda seems like your optics are unfavourable to Steam, which bothers me. Even the big red X around Steam in the thumbnail, it just isn't right. You keep naming Steam as the evil platform when it just isn't anything like that. There are also plenty of alternatives to Itch like GameJolt which have done just as many good things for the indie space. Like what has Itch done over GameJolt beyond the flashy customization that makes it so much better? GameJolt is just less popular, but does everything Itch does & more with better social features + constant game jams... You know what Itch doesn't have? Achievements, visible playtime without exporting ALL of your data, Steam items that are tradable/marketable that allow a game developer to monetize their cosmetics in the most unique way ever long before crypto or blockchain was ever a thing which they get a cut of every transaction, trading cards that allow the user to craft badges to unlock emojis/backgrounds for their account which the developers also get a cut of every transaction for, any good online multiplayer games in general, Steam link for mobile play, Proton support to play all your games on Linux, it's own console like the Steam deck which is amazing, SteamVR which is basically the focal point of all VR development ever & you practically need it for every VR game including Roblox which isn't on Steam + Wolfenstein 3D VR as example since that is on Itch, & probably 100x more features I am missing here. Itch is good at some things, it may even help people find hidden gems more than Steam, but it just isn't as good as Steam, period. Valve is amazing to developers, they give so many tools & opportunities to their userbase it is absurd. Like sure, maybe Leaf will do something cool for me if I ask for it, but Valve has a ton of shit you don't need to ask for, it is all already there. VR? Check. Mobile? Check. Animation? Check. Good Games? Check. Video Editing? Check. 3D Modelling? Check. Cloud Gaming? Check. Linux Support? Check. Achievements? Check. Social Features? Check. Easy Mod Loading? Check. Trading/RWT Support? Check. Want to Have Digital Currency? Check. Want to Have In-Game Purchases? Check. Want to Have a Subscription Service? Check. Multiplayer Features With Little Work Out The Box? Check. Want To Post a Total Conversion Mod With It's Own Steam Page? Check. That 30% is going somewhere useful. The amount of features for developers makes up for the 30% easily, without question.

[@captaincommando9839]

Thanks for the reality check.

[@captaincommando9839]

This comment really deserves the top spot.

[@Dudjdhdhdhdhdjddgsgsisidj]

under rated, good content

[@microdavid7098]

well done. It's a great vid. I enjoyed it. I'm now a bit curious other websites like indiedb, coolmathgames, poki, crazygames and more

[@redthered279]

potential channel

[@foreducation408]

Really good video keep up the good work.

[@leowesterburgburr4734]

Great video man, make more!

[@sughost]

Good video keep it up

[@_GhostMiner]

Itch would be a lot better if they made a better text editor. The current one is quite limited and a little janky. At less from my experience.

[@ashton360]

cool video, but why is your microphone facing away from you

[@jo3ble664]

That's where I put "the psychedelic quest"

[@ignis2638]

I like the platform, though be careful, the games on there can be...interesting

[@Artenesama]

Great vídeo!

[@JmKrokY]

Facts bro

[@carlaohmm]

Great video! Love it

[@petrblue]

Nice one!

[@musikSkool]

What's the game @3 seconds in?

[@vgexplain]

I think the game is called Strange Island, but sadly it is not offered on Itch anymore.

[@musikSkool]

@@vgexplain Awww

[@Matthew_MBG]

subbed, thought was a 200k channel

[@TsjuunTze]

Its Indie and its open and its the future! And there is alot of Linux games! Love it

[@elijahjflowers]

thank you

[@TimeWisely]

GameJolt: *Copies homework and makes it worse*

[@portuguisianbralizian3293]

Play Faxdoc and NostalgiaTree's games, specially Treetris, Ecila and Rev

[@EnderElohim]

itchio still no where near steam just because it still not have regional pricing.

[@Forcoy]

no dev has asked for regional pricing to be implemented, so thats why :P

[@nutzeeer]

I saw "baba files taxes". It must be great.