Itch.io says new game pages have doubled in two months, but downloads haven't

Field note from the bottom of a very tall pile: itch.io says the number of game pages created each day has doubled in the past two months. In a Bluesky post on October 31, the storefront shared a graph showing roughly 3,000 new pages a day back in August and more than 6,000 as of October 30. ¹

This is not a spotlight on one game. It is a spotlight on the shelf all the games sit on, and the shelf is getting crowded. Itch.io is an open storefront where almost anyone can sell or distribute what they are working on: student projects, game jam entries, and plenty of higher-profile indies, some of which turn up in charity bundles. ¹

The uncomfortable part is what did not double. In a reply, itch.io confirmed that downloads and purchases have not doubled since August. ¹ More pages, same amount of attention. Other replies from the platform indicate AI projects make up the majority of the new pages. ¹

For a small team, the math is rough. A hand-built game now lands in a feed with twice as many neighbors, and nothing suggests there are twice as many players to meet them. Polygon notes the same squeeze on Steam, where Next Fest demos have been drowned out, and in one case stolen, by AI-made competition. ¹

For players, the practical question is how to find the real thing. Itch.io already has some tools aimed at this. Since November 2024, creators have had to declare generative AI use, tagging projects as “AI Generated” (with sub-tags for graphics, sounds, text and dialogue, or code) or “No AI.” ²³ Untagged AI-made assets were supposed to become ineligible for indexing on browse pages, and the tags let buyers filter AI work out of their searches. ²³ Itch.io said at the time that it would give creators a grace period to update their pages and then lean on user reports for the rest. ⁴

How well that system is holding up under double the daily volume is not something the sources answer. Engadget flagged back then that it was unclear what measures the marketplace would use to police its site. ³ Polygon’s own take is blunter: unless platforms closely monitor and restrict generative AI releases, the problem will keep growing. ¹

Field note: the disclosure rule only works if people use it honestly, and the “No AI” tag is now worth looking for when you browse. If you are a developer, the tags and filters are the one lever you control, so fill them in carefully.

Our read: The scary number here is not 6,000 pages a day. It is the flat line next to it. A storefront can absorb a lot of new pages, but only if players show up for them, and so far they have not. Indie developers are the ones paying for that gap, in lost visibility on the very platforms they rely on. Watch whether itch.io pairs its tags with stronger enforcement, because the tags alone are only as good as the honesty behind them.

Worth knowing: itch.io’s game pages and its AI disclosure tags are visible to anyone browsing the site. Look for the “No AI” tag if you want to filter.

Footnotes

1. Polygon, “Itch.io Reveals Just How Much AI Slop Is Flooding Gaming Storefronts”. Retrieved November 1, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. GamesIndustry.biz, “Itch.io now requires creators to declare if their work uses generative AI”. Retrieved November 1, 2026. ↩ ↩²

3. Engadget, “Itch.io marketplace now requires asset creators to disclose their use of generative AI”. Retrieved November 1, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Eurogamer, “Indie game platform Itch.io now requires developers to tag AI content”. Retrieved November 1, 2026. ↩