itch.io - indie game hosting!

[timmeh42]

I assume this would only work well for DRM-free games (which I guess applies to most Indie games), somewhat like Humble Indie Bundle does? I can imagine it would get horribly complicated to try putting support for DRM in.

Also, something's wack with your facebook button thing next to the G+ on Chrome / windows 7 - Its long, unlike the neat G+ and tweet buttons, and the text clips through on the bottom.

Also, if a user specified $0, would it still ask for credit info, or would it just provide a download link?

[jjmafiae]

Hello everyone!

I've just finished making a new site for hosting indie games. It's called itch.io. Essentially, if you've ever heard of Bandcamp, it's that but for hosting games.

http://itch.io

It's a site for uploading for creating customized game pages where people can download your game with a pay what you want model. As a game dev you upload the files for your game, upload some screenshots, then set a minimum price (which can be 0 if you want your game to be free). Then you can customize your game's page by changing text, colors, font, and images.

I think the pay what you want model is really powerful for indie games. I assume most people will set the minimum price to 0 because they don't expect to make any money off of their games. But with something like this, if someone really enjoys what you have created they can give back to you what they think is fair. Pretty cool, eh? Of course if you do intend to make money off of your game, you can still use the site because all the annoying payment infrastructure and file hosting is handled for you!

I've seen a few other indie game marketplace sites but I've been disappointed in them because there is just too much crap on the game pages. Big logos for the site itself, instead of the game, unimportant things like comments and ratings, and just poor user experience. I tried to make something clean and focused. The page you create is just about your game.

I've got a lot of ideas to expand it, but the basic idea is fully functioning. Here's a screenshot of the game page editor for one of my Ludum Dare games:



And here's the link to the actual page: http://itch.io/g/leafo/x-moon

Payments are currently handled by PayPal. It's the only thing I've had the time to implement at the moment, but I'd like to add a bunch more payment methods. Right now I have it set up to take 10% of all transactions as a fee for hosting. I'm honestly not sure of this number. I wouldn't mind lowering it for people especially if you help me test the site out! (Everything is also in USD at the moment, I'll add support for other currencies as I figure this stuff out)

Also, if you've got a finished game and you're serious about distributing it here I'll help you make a pretty game page. I have custom CSS disabled on the game page editor by default for security reasons until I write a sanitizer, but I'll enabled it for you so you can make even cooler layouts.

This is pretty much the first place I've announced this site. I just finished it in the past few hours. If you get any errors or problems please tell me! There is a support link on the bottom which emails me, or you can just email me at leafot @ gmail.

I'd love any feedback, whether you plan to use the site or not.

Thanks!

this so awsome gonna use it later

[jjmafiae]

what about DLC support like on steam some under pages for that?

[vitaminx]

Hi, I think it's super important that you force the game devs to publish minimum hard- and software requirements + platforms on their game page.
Just imagine I buy a game for some $$$ and it doesn't work on Linux, would be super annoying.

But anyway, nice idea, hope it'll get famous.