You Should Consider What Will Happen if Itch.io Went Dark

Have you ever thought about what happens you the place you call home goes dark or tells you to hit the road?

I make games with sex, kink, and other mature themes. Lots of games you wouldn't show to your parents (unless they're super cool like that). Some explore things tastefully, other not so much. Sometimes "it's just smut" or "I want to smash my dolls together". As someone that makes such games, I am subject to bans, more bans, unfair moderation, and repeated instances of demonetization. The list really just does not end.

For my use case, Itch.io has lost all the glistening charm it once had.

In case you somehow don't know, Itch.io is a small indie-friendly marketplace. It is an open-market place that specializes in game hosting. It's used by hundreds of thousands of developers (I think iunno, maybe it's just thousands). I am one of these developers, many of my friends are these developers. To you, I have a question.

If Itch.io went dark, could I still find your games?

Like, could I download them? Could you point me to a page where I could find them? Could I buy them? At the very least send you 5 buckers.

Ponder it for a moment. Then, let that pondering turn into dread. Let that dread wash over you. Dread is a useless emotion. Now, consider, if it is in your means, making a website. There are lot of extremely cheep hosting such as my host NearlyFreeSpeech and Neocities. You don't need anything fancy, just a static page and some links to some zip files.

Hell, you could just pay for some file storage and have that link on hand to point people at.

This, is very much aimed at folks mostly making "games as art/hobby/fun" rather than profit. For the type of games mentioned up top, you are severly limited in options. For, my general-audience games, consider multiplexing how and where people can purchas your games. Things like Gumroad, Big Cartel, etc. Even still, you should make a static website. Something that can't be lost to content delivery feeds.

You Are Just Fear Mongering

Yes. I am. Because I don't think people are considering what happens when you platform/space/tool is suddenly gone. The end of Flash had been fortold for years. However, nothing emerged that replaced it in terms of creating interactivity art. HTML5 and WebGL were sold by tech enthusist and savvy developers, but it never replace Flash culturally.

Flash was image boards, forums, personal websites, game collections, modding scenes, it was vulgar. Unity on asm.js wasn't a cool demo, it was a threat to all artist on the web. A threat that the software industry will kill you, replace you with their gluttonous tools, and you shall shut up and be happy. Unity should have never ran in a browser.

The internet was stripped of the interactivity and art that Flash brought. HTML5 was never embedded it forums, into image boards, personal sites didn't adopt it because the tools weren't oriented towards art. HTML5 is a software development tool. Tool for productivity (digital whiteboards, flow charting, ...) and tool for software development (libraries, tool chains, build pipelines, ...) can never be tools of art.

The field of software development is antithetical to the act of artist creation. Tools design for such thinking can only smoother creativity under layers of process and bureaucratic dances. Turning people into minds only capable of guzzling the words of creative soft-serve machines.

Your art culture does not matter to the vultures that are software developers. If you are using something deemed insecure, obsolete, unprofitable, un-engineering, they will cheer your execution. They will be in glee of your death.

The death of Flash was a devistating blow to online art. I don't think it ever recorved. I firmly believe the execution of Flash is why Itch.io has become such an incredibly load baring beam. And, I think that beam is showing cracks.

At the time of writing this (January 27, 2026), it has been six months since the Collective Shout Incident. There has been no word on this "high risk payment processor". I still find my games are getting unfairly deindex. Deeply personal pieces of queer art for unknown reasons.

There has been no updates to the situation from Itch.io. They have largely switch to "business as normal". Meanwhile, any game using the tags NSFW or Adult are hidden from the store page.

For developers of risque, sexual, mature, and other "unspeakable" topics, Itch is a dying platform. Do not wait for their final verdict.

Additionally, Itch.io has become notably less stable. It regularly goes down for extended periods. I am constantly greated by cloudflare checkpoints. And, replies to support tickets seem to be taking even longer. Itch.io is an opaque black box. Itch.io themselves state the following:

Additionally, itch.io is a small company, both in team size and in transaction volume, compared to a company like Steam. We have limited ability to “push back.”

Rumors place their head count as low as 5. Leafo is the only known full-time staff of Itch.io. As good nature as he might be, it is foolish to have the world of solo and indie art built upon a pillar maintained by a skeleton crew. This isn't a call to abandon Itch.io. However, you should imagine a world where, one day, we all wake up to the news "Itch.io Winds Down Operation".

Because if you don't, you'll end up like the culture around Flash. Executed.