Yeah, but if I’m downloading all the works in advance, I’m probably not going to launch each one and see whether it’s actually a link to Itch—I’m just going to assume the download is complete.
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That’s correct. It also covers trivial stuff like “you uploaded your game zipped, we serve it unzipped via the unbox service.”
The “affiliates” line covers the fact that archived games go through Cloudflare, AWS, and/or Akamai as you move around different IFTF services.
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I’m not a great expert on this questionable aspect of the "common “right” " called “precedent”, but I think that the “derivative” point stems from the shareware era, when happened that unscrupolous people removed the registration-related part of the archive and the shareware licenses (later somewhat standardised around the ASP (Association of Shareware Professionals) guidelines) explicitely forbids alterations of the archive (often allowing the insertion of BBS’s file_id.diz file (for automated cataloguing)
(I don’t hide that sometimes I “evaluate” ancient shareware under emulators, as pastime…)
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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No matter how boilerplate and necessary, I can see how the language used in that agreement might be off-putting to some.
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I’m pretty sure itch.io has something very similar, if not more restrictive, though. Any sort of hosting service will require a license.
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Yup, here’s the relevant itch language. It’s largely the same, which makes sense since they’re doing more or less the same thing under more or less the same legal regime – it’s broader in some ways, but the main difference is that users can terminate the license (which, as folks have been discussing, would run counter to the IFTF’s focus on archival, though of course I can see how some authors would prefer having the ability to be forgotten):
To the Company, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the content in connection with the Service, including without limitation for promoting, redistributing in any and all media formats. If you choose to remove your content from the Service, this license shall terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove your content from the Service.
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Thanks for clarification. I don’t like the perpetual bit. I think there should be a way for authors to revoke permission. Things could still be archived, but they would be removed if revoked.
Some web games wont work unless served. For example, you can’t always just point a browser at the html files and expect it to work.
I try to keep my web games as static as possible, but i do make ranged GET requests which need, at least, a very basic web server to run.
Yeah, that part is mostly a cultural thing. Reviews are a major thing, with IFComp judges and other reviewers going to a lot of effort to provide feedback to the authors. So there’s a certain expectation that those games will remain available and part of the record so that people can look back on them later, compare them, and so on.
Some other comps have started adding a specific way for authors to opt out of archiving, and the result is that reviewers have started avoiding non-archived games, because it’s very possible all the work they put into reviews will become meaningless after the comp.
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Does this mean that technically IFComp entries can also be hosted on itch during the comp without disqualification, in a totally author driven, independent way, that is in no way endorsed by IFComp legally or otherwise, and therefore they cannot be held legally responsible under a particular act? I mean I usually upload my games there after the comp ends, but given a certain section of the community might be looking for particular unavailable games…
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I have my games hosted on itch (as well as uploaded to the IFComp site), and I password protect them for beta testing. On the start of the judging period, I remove the password so the game is publicly available. As far as I know this is allowed.
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Yeah, I don’t remember what if anything has been said in past years, but in this year’s pre-launch author update it was stated that if you had the game hosted elsewhere and password-protected, you could remove the password on August 31 as long as you didn’t start promoting the game until the comp opened. So it is explicitly allowed!
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Yes. As others have said. I also have done exactly this.
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While there are many theoretical advantages in publishing on itch, advantages that were taken into consideration when the french community decided to host the Annual French Comp on it (as opposed to self hosting for the previous 15 years), the reality is that it brought only marginally new players (and I’m being generous here, it’s actually closer to “none”).
The only real bonus is for the small team of organisers : there are no maintenance of the website and moderation tools are easy and ready to use. This has a cost though : we lost the ability to archive locally and have the game listed on the main website (we’re working on that)
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Knowing that people visit your page is a pretty compelling reason to use itch. Without it, the last known sighting of Repeat the Ending would have been February. It’s nice to know people are looking at your work.
So far as in-competition updates go, I can say that at least Inform authors will want to avoid doing this, as it breaks existing saves.
I can also guess that being on itch will not necessarily grant parser game authors a wider audience; most of my referrals are from IFDB
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Shameless plug: I just released a tool to solve that.
i7-tools, subcommand add-to-multirelease
It manages I7 releases by keeping all of them and it selects the correct one for the player based on their saves. If you have a save for an old version, it asks you if you want to use that version instead of the new one. It’s limited because I only did it for me (so 6L38 & MacOS) but it should be easy to make it work for other versions & systems.
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Funko managed to take itch.io down last year for a few days with DMCA nonsense, and they were involved in some, ah, controversy last month, too. Nothing against itch, but all the people behind ifcomp of the decades have always done an excellent job.
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I do the same thing except with “Draft” mode - I leave the project in Draft status which means it’s not searchable nor promoted on itch. Nobody but the creator can access the main URL, however you can click the “secret” button to show a static but obscure URL that you can share privately so whomever has it doesn’t need a password but can view the site. Once the game is published, the secret URL redirects to the public page.
The viewable statistics on itch are absolutely wonderful. My only complaint is reviews and star-ratings are a little hard to uncover. Also the fact you can opt for a comment board below the game, or even a dedicated threaded message board if you’ve got a complex RPG that warrants it is really nice.
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