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Comment by 60654 | Hacker News Reader

Itch is very cool. Their tools are dev friendly, even the download client got released as open source (https://github.com/itchio).

And on the publishing side, they allow anyone to publish on the site, for free, no hoops to jump through. And if it's a paid app, they charge much less than Steam / iTunes / etc. Too bad they're not as popular with players.

But I'm idly curious why Itch popped up now, since it's been around for years.

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I've been following @fasterthanlime on Twitter for a while, and it's always really nice seeing them constantly trying to make itch.io the best it can be or working with people to fix bugs they've hit. As far as I know, it's a just them and leafo running it.

@fasterthanlime was in the same uni I was, he basically lead a project for students in first year when he was in second year, a really impressive coder.

I remember that! We guided first-year CS students through implementing a complete BitTorrent client.

I put a lot of work into that project (giving extra presentations to students who had additional questions, uploading unofficial slide decks with extra information about the protocol etc.)

It's one of my favorite memories of EPFL! We had a ton of fun organizing it, and it was exciting to have students work on something closer to the real-world than usual. We did hear from the network admins once everybody's implementation started working, though... they weren't exactly thrilled!

Hi I'm from India and would love to buy from itch.io if you support regional pricing. I know it is a hard problem to solve and requires a lot of variables like payment processors and such, and is probably not lucrative enough, but this is what prevents me from buying from itch.io.

Itch is a 2 engineer operation. Its incredible.

They could undercut steam by 20% for each sale.

As a gamer, I haven't really dived into Itch even though I see it recommended all the time. This is despite being a Linux gamer, a fan of indie games, a supporter of open source and a believer in multiple marketplaces (although I feel like we need better aggregators and agnostic sync/update tools).

I think the problem may be that I have absolutely no idea where to start. With Steam I started with games that came with Steam that I wanted anyway (Portal, Left 4 Dead). With Humble I started with Overgrowth and their original bundles. GOG was a great place to get games that I had already played or wanted to play and now is a good place to get DLC free stuff.

So with Itch I think what is missing is a 'killer app'. Not a 'killer feature' (it has plenty of those), but more a draw that will give me enough drive and interest to overcome the initial cognitive energy barrier to entry.

Taking recommendations!

I don't have any personal recommendations, but next time you are looking at purchasing an indie game, you might consider checking if it's available on Itch first. That's how I got into it anyway. The developers I've talked to prefer that I buy on there as well because they take much less of a cut than others stores.

For interesting short games, check out past game jam entrants from something like ludum dare (https://ldjam.com) or the game jam tag on itch. They're usually free, short, and interesting. It reminds me a lot of old newgrounds, where you could find an interesting new game to play for 1/2 hour.

> I'm idly curious why Itch popped up now, since it's been around for years.

I expect this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19012083

yep my game is on itch. It's a great community. The tools and the developer side of the website are very good.

I did just some experimenting mixing genres, packaged into a browser game. itch low barrier to entry was great to find testers. got couple thousand person try it, with a 30% retention over a week, which to me, being hobbyist at the first game, is a huge success.

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