itch.io

Worse support than Valve

Itch.io is a great player in the DRM-free indie game distribution space and has a lot of good intentions and values. And all of that is great until you have a problem, regardless of how patient you are.5 weeks ago I put in a support ticket during their racial justice bundle, I've yet to receive a response. The issue needn't have even happened as I pinged staff in their Discord server to warn them that the bundle would end soon, making my query much harder to solve. But apparently their Discord is not used for support, which is less helpful when their official channels don't seem to be sufficient either.The excuse constantly spun is they're a small team with thousands of queries from paying customers and developers to work through during the bundle, creating a massive backlog. Which initially I completely understood, I run my own small company and spikes in visitors have put me and my partners in constant fire-fighting mode, but what can't be excused is that they decided to follow this bundle almost immediately with two high profile events, their summer sale and 2020 game jam, bringing more attention and support tickets through their system.Itch.io need to remember that those who contact them are either people spending their hard earned money on their platform, or small developers who may depend on them for their income. Just holding your hands up and saying 'sorry, no time' is not good enough and is borderline dismissive. Recruit more staff, even if just community volunteers, or space your events apart so that you can respond to all queries before moving on to your next project, we are the reason after all that you exist in the first place.Valve and EA are known for having terrible customer service, but I've never waited over a few weeks and never been ignored entirely (and I won't even go in to how short and rude some of the itch staff can be).I love the itch platform and what they're attempting to provide to the indie game community, but if they continue this pattern of inadequately supporting their memberbase, we're more likely to have the fate of another Desura on our hands.He's hoping for big changes.

Date of experience: Jul 18, 2020