I’m curious to why most IF Comp entries are directly hosted rather than on a platform like Itch.Io It seems from the rules that the comp encourages both. The Parser Comp uses Itch.Io exclusively. But I think for IF Comp 2025, only two games (one author/pub) were not directly hosted. Is there some unwritten rule or unfavourability in doing so? Is going to an Itch.Io download page, and maybe having to bypass a Donations Page - is any of that a violation or against the spirit of the IFComp?
Hosting a IFCOMP entry on Itch.Io, gives a budding writer/game designer more tools to build an audience. Every writer wants that, right? Or am I missing reasons why one would choose IFCOMP hosting over a more powerful platform?
IFComp has existed for way way longer than itch. Why would they switch now?
Edit: also it feels like all your points assume that a “much larger gaming audience” is a good thing and I’d emphatically disagree. It’d be great to see the IFComp community grow at a sustainable rate, but this isn’t an everyone-on-the-internet popularity contest of who has the biggest fanbase, it’s a “what is this particular niche community into” one, and in fact some of the rules (and AFAICT a bunch of work behind the scenes) goes into protecting it from the negative side effects of chunks of people from other communities (accidentally or otherwise) messing things up too much.
There’s nothing stopping individual authors from putting their games on itch (and making an IFComp tag?) as long as they don’t do it before judging opens, and people often do that.
Itch jam rules/voting are extremely extremely limited and don’t allow working the way IFComp wants to work. Also it doesn’t (I believe) provide a lot of the tools the IFComp platform has for detecting bad-faith voting behind the scenes.
Some people (not many, but a couple) would probably not enter if it were hosted on itch.
Exposure – AFAICT most itch jams get way less ratings and reviews per game than IFComp does
You can look up the author on IFDB to see their other games
Ditto
Many authors don’t particularly want this: one of the strengths of the IFComp platform is that feedback through the IFComp gets filtered by the staff before authors have to look at it.
Updates beyond bug reports are intentionally not allowed in IFComp during the judging period.
Again, nothing’s stopping anyone from commercializing their game after IFComp is over, but also one of the rules IIRC is that the comp version must remain free, and the way IFComp works now allows for that.
Again, put your game on itch if you want that
ditto, plus you can update things just fine with IFDB/IFArchive, which is where the games currently go after the comp.
Nope.
Um… have you even looked at the IFDB and IFComp pages? They do this already.
Basically this is a platform that’s been around for a long time that’s evolved to be what it needs to be for this event; it has things that could be changed or improved, for sure, but its goals aren’t the same as itch and that wouldn’t be a good fit. And for the parts that are a good fit, authors can just use itch if they want.`
Keep in mind that the IF Comp is 18 years older than Itch.io. Many of the social features you mention are served by the IFDB, which is itself 6 years older than Itch.io.
Is going to an Itch.Io download page, and maybe having to bypass a Donations Page - is any of that a violation or against the spirit of the IFComp?
I’m not sure if it’s strictly against the rules, but I think it is against the spirit of the comp:
All entries must cost nothing for judges to play. Entries may not request payment in order to play through the game, require the player to view paid advertising, or make similar commercial demands of the player.
As someone who does upload to both IFComp and Itchio and also empathically agree with what others have written, I also think the current IFComp reviewing crowd has a different perspective on what is IF from the average Itch user. This is not to downplay the latter, but when I submit to an IF competition, I want to specifically get feedback from the IF community and not like people who tell me I should add graphics or sound.
I hope I make this clear as I go down the list of points you brought up:
Exposure to a much larger platforming audience: the “larger gaming platform audience” isn’t receptive to text-only games. I’ve received terrible feedback ranging from “you should add audio and graphics” to “this needs more action”. The feedback doesn’t at all help me grow as an IF creator.
Author creator page: IFDB profile pages exist. And frankly, I don’t need another webpage to play CSS with. I already do that with my own website and Twine games.
Ability for the author to be followed: RSS feeds for IFDB author pages do exist, but also game jams and competitions are just a better way to follow what’s going on. I also feel creative projects shouldn’t be a social media enterprise, but that might just be a me thing.
Mass communication between author/publisher and audience and followers: No thanks, I am a popular subculture media blogger and I am always concerned that I could accidentally start a vote brigade. I want to be judged by my IF peers, not fans of my writing. Also, see 1) and 3).
Game devlog update feeds: As Josh points out, updating during the judging process except to fix bugs is not allowed. Also, IFDB has this functionality. I’d be shocked if anyone actually follows the bug/update feeds on Itch games religiously though. It’s hard to find/read.
Potential for commercialization after IFComp is over: Nothing stopping that. Open Sorcery used to be a free game before it got expanded and commercialized.
Ability to allow donations: Sure, Itch exists. Ko-Fi and others too.
Manage critical updates post-IFComp: You can do that with the services already mentioned.
Daily tracking of game/page views & downloads: Part of the reason why I appreciate IFComp not giving me anything to work with is so I don’t get the bad habit of checking the IFComp site forever. I already check the review spreadsheet a bit too much to see if anyone has said anything about my game. It’s unhealthy and I don’t have the willpower to say no to that tool. It’s why I avoid looking at the Itch page of my game too because I know I’m going to waste minutes refreshing to see if the play count went up.
Single repository connecting previous works in other competitions: IFDB.
There is certainly a place for Itch in the IF space, but I can also understand the hesitation people have in uploading on Itch. The IF Archive will likely stick around longer than a for-profit website like Itch.
In addition to the points other people have already made, maintaining a dedicated space for IFComp that’s tended by the community, for the community, without a profit motive makes it more resilient.
If itch.io were to go under tomorrow, whether due to attacks from payment processors or simple inability to sustain itself: then what? IFDB and the IFArchive would certainly make up some of the gap, but without the norms of taking the initiative to archive everything independently, there would be some degree of loss. (There are itch-only jams documented on IFDB that already have no-longer-playable entries among their links.)
I would argue, and I’m not the only one, that the increasing consolidation onto a smaller number of platforms isn’t exactly serving the online userbase so much as those platforms. See also: the communities that flocked to major platforms for “convenience” and have had to face them either going under or turning horrifying in their implications.
At a certain point, fostering our own community spaces is important and a worthwhile pursuit in itself. If people also want to post their entries to itch: great! As mentioned, nothing stopping that as long as they otherwise stay within the rules.
My coauthor and I typically host our games on Itch after the Comp is over. We’re not interested in advertising much so the vast majority of our traffic comes from IFDB and this forum anyway.
Everyone else has made good points already so I’m just going to focus on item #6, “potential for commercialization”. To put it bluntly: there isn’t much potential there for text-only games regardless of the platform you’re on. Games like Open Sorcery and Hadean Lands are the exception, not the rule. History shows the ways to make money with IF are more likely to be as follows:
Parlay your success into a career in other kinds of game dev (Emily Short, Sam Barlow)
Start a Patreon (Chandler Groover)
Make a popular game and sell the rights to remake it with graphics (Type Help)
Honestly, most of us aren’t in this for the money at all and it helps keep things chill around here. I for one am glad we can have a hobby community here that’s focused on the craft and not the rat race of making it big.
I feel as though people may be misreading this as “Why not host the entire IFComp as a jam on itch?” rather than “Why aren’t more people hosting their individual entries there?”
I actually have been wondering about the possibility of hosting an entry on itch myself because IFComp’s 500MB limit can be a little troublesome if you have a large game and/or would like to provide downloadable versions for multiple platforms. I managed to cram Linux and Windows versions of Quest for the Sword of Justice into my submission zip along with the HTML5 version, but there was no room for Mac. (QftSoJ performs a little better when running locally because there can be a noticeable delay when sounds etc. are loaded from the internet.)
Does anybody know if that 500MB limit is an intended constraint of the comp (meaning no submission should go above it) or if it’s just so large games don’t put a strain on the infrastructure involved? If my understanding is correct, itch allows multiple files of up to 1GB each (i.e. you could have a 700MB HTML5 version running on the page, plus Linux/Windows/Mac/Android versions of 700MB each) which is considerably roomier.
Yeah I think that’s a good use of external hosting (on Itch or elsewhere), although I think it’s hard to hit the 500mb limit without a lot of sound or graphics. I think the size limit for self hosting helps keep the focus on the text aspect of the Comp but allowing outside hosting means people are free to play around with multimedia if they want. And as far as I’m aware there’s nothing stopping anyone from submitting an externally hosted game, correct? So I’m pretty sure it’s a number based on how much data the IFTF can afford to host.
As a bonus, smaller games are much easier to store in the IF Archive for posterity which is something this community really values. Non-externally-hosted games get archived by default which is nice.
The latter, and I think it’s not intended as a hard limit. As in, if you have a larger game, you should think about it and talk to the comp organizers.
(I am not in charge of this part of the policy, though. You should ask the comp organizers directly.)
The main use case of externally-hosted games is games with a server-side component. The IFComp site can’t run arbitrary server code for you. (Neither can Itch.) You’d have to host it on your own site.
These are an archiving problem – the server may go away someday, and then the game will be lost. This is sad, but IFComp accepts this kind of game regardless.
A side note which has only been briefly touched on is that IFComp has driven innovation over time by producing a stable set of free games that are commented and reviewed on then kept for future generations.
A few people who host on itch over time have used it to delete or hide their games after a while. I helped one such author recover one of their games years later after they changed their mind, but their other game was permanently lost. The archiving of games (which is something everyone who signs up for IFComp agrees to, though some find ways around it) is a gift to future authors and is one reason IFComp has been such a good incubator for game designers. Shifting the culture to ‘my ball, my rules’ is like the prisoner’s dilemma; it benefits the first person to do it, but if everyone does it it’s the worst-case scenario for the community.
Thanks! This would very much be my preferred option - especially for a sound/graphics-heavy game where the HTML5 version itself exceeded the limit.
If it were just a matter of making downloadable versions of a sub-500MB game available as well then I imagine that might be achieved through a link to an itch page within the IFComp submission. That would be more complicated than ideal, but could allow an easily archivable IFComp upload and slightly better-performing alternatives without tripling the amount of data for IFComp to deal with.
One tip: If you’ve got lots of high-quality audio that is 48k bitrate at like “CD-quality”, I’ve found I can easily cut the filesize significantly by downgrading the bitrate/sample rate by half or sometimes more without any noticeable loss in sound quality except for the most discerning audiophiles. This can be set in audio tools like Audacity, or I create the game at full quality and then use a batch tool like Switch on Mac to cut the bitrate/sample rate of all audio files consistently before release.
This also improves the game as the audio files that must be loaded are smaller and cause less delay.
One downside I haven’t seen mentioned yet: many people (including me!) download either all the games or the games they’re interested in, in order to play offline on long commutes or other times they don’t have internet. If the downloadable version of your game is just a link to your itch.io page, then I can’t play it like that.
FWIW, i prefer to host on Itch or self-host. Often the latter. This is not specifically for any of the reasons you’ve cited, but one reason is that i don’t totally agree with the IFComp/IFTF upload TOS.
For clarity, you retain any ownership rights that you have in and to your User Submissions. However, for the IFTF site to exist and provide fantastic content to readers around the world, in submitting a User Submission to IFTF, you hereby grant IFTF a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, display, edit, modify, tag, cache, index, codify, adapt or create derivative works of, host and perform the User Submissions in connection with the IFTF Services and its affiliates, where such right is terminated only upon a user’s deletion of said User Submission, at which time IFTF may copy, retain, use and distribute User Submissions that have been removed or deleted by the individual who submitted/uploaded the User Submission.
Am i right to understand the license to distribute is in perpetuity. A word I’ve seen used elsewhere?
Yeah, a perpetual license is necessary to archive the submissions afterward. The “create derivative works of” is, I believe, necessary to make the Play Online system work—if you submit a Z5 file, IFComp needs permission to turn that into a playable web page.