Autumn ChenRegarding itch, right now I'm more worried about the suspensions than the delistings. The questions I have are, 1) have any no-payments games been suspended, and 2) how are games being targeted for suspension? I think they did an automatic ban on certain author-provided tags, and I would like to know what those tags are. I do not believe anyone manually reviewed (for example) Bi Lines for suspension.
Right now it seems like the best option for authors to avoid suspensions is to not use tags as content warnings. And to just minimize the use of descriptive metadata.
Lone SpelunkerFrom the statement they released, it sounds like they had to do a blanket delisting immediately to avoid the payment processors shutting them down, and now they’re going in and auditing content manually, which will probably take considerable time.
“We are currently conducting a comprehensive audit of content to ensure we can meet the requirements of our payment processors. Pages will remain deindexed as we complete our review.”
@lonespelunker I understand about the delistings, but there are a number of games that have been completely suspended from the site rather than delisted. For example https://norbez.itch.io/bi-lines. And I don't think outsiders know exactly how those were selected...
Yeah that must be frustrating for those devs and their players.
Given the nature of the big bundles, itch seems to be better than most sites. They could play it safe and not allow fundraisers about ICE, Palestine, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. It may be why processors went after them.
So itch has earned a bit of patience IMO. Maybe I am being naive but I’m willing to let them finish their audit, figure out the best “new normal” processors will allow, and communicate it.