Itch.io viable?

[Elvishious]

Hi guys,
Before starting this thread, i want you to know that in the

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of itch.io (7. Acceptable Payment Forms), it says that itch.io follow the payment rules. I know on paper this platform seems to be non-friendly to niche game dev with "borderline" themes for the law.
However, I saw many games on this

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that have non-suitable themes, and still continue to exist and generate income (with donation or selling games).
I found nobody online sharing his/her experience on this platform for nsfw games. Does someone here already tried? Is there any stories of game that got shutdown by itch.io?

 

[PingPanda]

I haven't posted my game there but I did release 2 image packs on there.

My experience with the site is...ehh at best.

Raised just over $100 for the image packs, requested a payout ( which you can't do until 7 days after a sale ), then once I requested a payout it took like 23 days before they actually for to my request ( as they manually check each request ), after the 23 days my payout was declined as they said I needed to fill out some tax form, which I don't pay tax in my country on payments like this and they said I needed some form of tax code from my government, which being unofficially self employed I don't have, so had to get one from the government which took 2 weeks, once I finally got the code I requested another payout from Itch which took another 28 days to be paid out, despite messaging them multiple times asking what's taking so long.

Anyway, long story short, they don't answer support emails, they take a shit ton of time to payout and they generally take the piss.

For a NSFW game I'd suggest patreon, even with all the crack downs it's still ( so far ) the best place to be.

 

[Elvishious]

Did you got those issues with the donations or the image pack sales? (I don't know if the donations and the sales are separate on Itch.io)

Anyway, long story short, they don't answer support emails, they take a shit ton of time to payout and they generally take the piss.

As far as I know, every sellings ask the seller to pay tax on it (no matter wich country). Donations, in the other hand, can be different (some countries doesn't tax revenue from donation).
The payout time is every 30 days, like patreon. If you missed the current payout date, you actually have to unfortunnatly wait 30 days since your previous request was rejected. To get a regular payment like that there is some legal stuff to do, like having a self-employed/freelance statut (for my country at least).

 

[TeamInfernus]

Itch is pretty good - just know that you will never ever get featured if you have a nsfw game. Not that you need it since you get pretty decent traffic from recommendations

 

[BlueCat_Ecchi Sensei]

So, NSFW games will never be showed into some featured posts at itch.io ?

 

[Elvishious]

Itch is pretty good - just know that you will never ever get featured if you have a nsfw game. Not that you need it since you get pretty decent traffic from recommendations

If people can actually find the game when browsing intentionnaly nsfw contents, I don't think it's a problem. If someday a nsfw game dev want to make a more mainstream game and wishes to get featured, he could just make another account (like many 2D artist on DA or insta, that use a SFW account and a NSFW one).
The recommendation system is pretty solid on Itch.io, the 'tag' system may have defaults, but you can still reference well your games.
Did you used some other publishing platform?

 

[TeamInfernus]

If people can actually find the game when browsing intentionnaly nsfw contents, I don't think it's a problem. If someday a nsfw game dev want to make a more mainstream game and wishes to get featured, he could just make another account (like many 2D artist on DA or insta, that use a SFW account and a NSFW one).
The recommendation system is pretty solid on Itch.io, the 'tag' system may have defaults, but you can still reference well your games.
Did you used some other publishing platform?

Just using itch right now - looked at gamejolt but not really sure how to promote there. Itch's recommendations are pretty good and the majority of our downloads are from them.

 

[Dezue]

Just using itch right now - looked at gamejolt but not really sure how to promote there. Itch's recommendations are pretty good and the majority of our downloads are from them.

With gamejolt, I don't know if it's the same that you can't get featured with a NSFW game, but you can definitely get in the HOT section... which kinda makes sense

Our views and downloads are roughly in the same ballpark for both platforms