About 9 months in the past, I wrote Running an indie sport retailer, a submit
describing a few of the analytics I collected whereas working itch.io for the
first 14 or so months. It was devoted to all the nice post-mortems I had
seen written by sport builders.

Luckily, that was not a autopsy for itch.io; we’re nonetheless going sturdy and
constantly enhancing the platform. This submit is a standing replace, taking inventory
of the place issues are and speculating a bit in regards to the future.

All the graphs on this submit are written in R and are
open supply.

I launched itch.io two years in the past as an open indie sport market. Since then,
it’s grown loads: There’s now a variety of content material varieties, issues like
belongings, instruments, and comics, along with
the ever increasing library of video games. Regardless of the content material, itch.io has
stayed a spot for creators to share their creations, and optionally earn money
from them.

Itch.io makes use of pay what you need above the minimal pricing. The minimal could be
set to 0: it’s free to obtain and you can even donate any quantity you need.

Itch.io integrates with PayPal and Stripe (bank cards and Bitcoin),
to facilitate transactions. Itch.io pioneered Open income sharing, a
variable market lower set by the vendor. It defaults to 10%, however a
vendor can set any quantity they need, together with 0.

Here’s fast overview itch.io’s library:

There are over 15,000 high quality tasks on itch.io. And it’s rising quick: our
library measurement has tripled within the final 9 months! I exploit the time period high quality to
denote something that’s an precise venture web page that’s publicly seen. Since
individuals like to check out the service by making a web page, I’ve filtered them out
to keep away from inflating the quantity.

Note: that’s a cumulative graph. It would be the final one on this submit since
they are often deceptive.

Over the previous two years many have requested about internet hosting and promoting different varieties
of digital items. I didn’t see any points assuming they had been correctly
labeled so I started including new content material varieties.

None of the opposite content material varieties make up a good portion of what’s
accessible, however I’m excited anyway that persons are utilizing itch.io for varied
artistic tasks. In case you’re , listed here are the pages for the
varied content material varieties: Games, Tools, Comics,
Assets, Physical & printable video games,
Soundtracks, Mods, and Everything else.

In the longer term I’m hoping to make these content material varieties extra first-class on
itch.io, giving lots of them the identical assist that’s accessible for video games.

(For simplicity’s sake, I’ll simply check with itch.io’s content material as video games for the
remainder of this submit.)

When I describe itch.io I’ll name it a market, although that’s a little bit of a
misnomer. The majority of the content material on the positioning is definitely free. Here’s a
graph of the tasks uploaded per 30 days, damaged down by how the video games are
priced.

Games uploaded per 30 days is trending upwards properly month over month.

Here’s a breakdown of the completely different pricing choices:

• Free – Can be downloaded/performed with out paying
• Optional – Some information accessible without spending a dime, and a few with a minimal value
• Paid – Files have a minimal value

Only 10% of video games have a set minimal value, and 89% of video games could be performed without spending a dime.

Just as a result of a sport doesn’t have a minimal value doesn’t imply the creator can’t
earn something. As I discussed above, the whole lot that may obtain cash is pay
what you need above the minimal, together with issues priced at 0. Creators can
obtain donations to their free work simply by enabling cost on their account.

44% of all video games are eligible to obtain cash. One of the unique targets
of the positioning was to present individuals who wouldn’t ordinarily be charging a simple
approach to nonetheless earn money, so I’m very proud of this proportion.

How a lot is itch.io paying out?

We simply completed our greatest month but, paying out $51,489 to creators. Itch.io
helps all of the currencies that the cost suppliers permit (view them
all),
however I’ve truncated all currencies to USD and summed them to make the
visualization less complicated.

As of June 2015, we’ve paid in complete about $393,000, properly over triple the place
we had been 9 months in the past. The month over month payouts have additionally been steadily
growing so I’m excited to see the place issues go.

Pay what you need

Since itch.io pay what you need above the minimal, I’ve completed some primary
evaluation about how persons are paying above the minimal.

Here’s a box-plot exhibiting the distribution of funds despatched to fully free
content material:

The common donation is $3.68. Most individuals pay between $1 and $5. I’m ecstatic
about this. Most of those creators are individuals wouldn’t repeatedly been capable of
earn money had they uploaded elsewhere. The most beneficiant individual has paid $500
for a free sport!

For tasks which have a minimal value higher than 0 there’s an analogous story.
Here’s the distribution of additional cash given, the distinction between the precise
value of the sport and the quantity given:

The numbers are (surprisingly) related, the median is identical, the vary is
roughly the identical, and the common is $3.67.

The indisputable fact that they’re so related is an attention-grabbing remark. Here’s what
the acquisition dialog appears to be like like:

I’ve a suspicion that this mix of buttons is encouraging the additional
quantities given to be uniform throughout each paid and non-paid video games, however I’ll have
to do extra analysis one other time.

Next I’ve graphed what proportion of all purchases obtain extra cash, damaged
down by month. (Sorry for the shortened time-frame, the database was up to date to
make this question simple just lately.)

About 30% of all purchases to paid content material obtain extra cash. That’s
fairly good contemplating that the majority marketplaces don’t provide the choice. I’m glad
to see that this fee isn’t considerably lowering though the variety of
patrons goes up. I used to be anxious that preliminary customers of itch.io had been
considerably extra beneficiant than the common individual, however that doesn’t appear to
be the case.

Purchase sources

In July 2014 all sellers on itch.io received the flexibility to see the place their
purchases are originating
from.
I additional classify the acquisition sources as both inner or exterior:

Although any type of buy is sweet, I wish to see extra inner purchases.
They recommend persons are discovering video games on itch.io as a substitute of being linked to
a sport from elsewhere.

I’ve graphed the share of exterior versus inner purchases over time:

About 80% of all purchases come from exterior websites. It appears to be like just like the
common fee of inner purchases is trending barely up. I’m hoping to
enhance the inner buy fee much more by releasing new options for
sport discovery.

There are a couple of completely different locations a cost could be made on itch.io. The most
frequent is the sport web page, however purchases additionally occur on
widgets, bundle
pages, cellular sport
pages
, and the popup API.

Here’s a graph of the distribution of buy initiator areas:

The sport web page facilitates 83% of all purchases. Some of the opposite areas
haven’t been round as lengthy (bundles, cellular), so they’re at an obstacle.

The cellular sport web page is simply the responsive model of the common sport
web page. Anyone on a cellular system is put into that bucket.

Internal purchases

So what pages on itch.io are individuals really discovering video games and shopping for them
from? Here are the pages of itch.io that contribute to all the inner
purchases:

38% of inner purchases are from the profile web page. To me, the profile
web page is probably going an oblique exterior buy. Most probably the client was
linked from a exterior website to a profile, the place they noticed what they wished and
purchased it. I’ll have to enhance this monitoring sooner or later to take into
account extra than simply the previous web page earlier than buy.

The browse web page is second, making up 24% of inner
purchases. I’m curious if the homepage, at third with 16%, will ever be capable of
beat the browse web page. The homepage is curated, so the share of gross sales
generated by it’s straight associated to our skill to curate content material for it.

External purchases

External purchases are referred to as exterior as a result of they originate from one other
web site. I’ve graphed the highest web sites that refer purchases on itch.io:

If you’re a developer advertising your sport then I like to recommend contemplating all of
these websites as potential locations to discover a new viewers.

Twitter is the most well-liked supply of purchases on itch.io, accounting for
about 13% of all exterior referrals. Itch.io has a really lively Twitter
account, posting many video games per day. On high of
that, many sport builders are continuously selling their work on Twitter. I
extremely suggest specializing in Twitter when attempting to construct your viewers to self
market your sport. Feel free to shout at @itchio
and we’ll retweet in case you’re sharing one thing attention-grabbing.

Google is the second highest supply for producing purchases. Sadly I don’t
have entry to the search queries that led to the purchases as a result of the site visitors
comes from HTTPS. It’s almost certainly these purchases are coming from title
searches, versus looking one thing generic like “games.” Itch.io makes
sport pages simply crawlable by Google, so that they carry out properly in search outcomes.

Reddit is the third highest supply of purchases. Here is the distribution of
purchases coming from Reddit damaged aside by subreddit.

/r/GameOffers/ dominates the listing by a
large margin. If you’re internet hosting a promotion in your sport then you must
positively think about posting there, simply ensure that to examine with the principles.
Itch.io video games even get their very own icon there.

Itch.io helps quite a lot of methods to distribute your sport, from downloads to
internet embeds utilizing Unity, Flash, Java and HTML. Here’s a breakdown of the sport varieties:

This graph represents the first sport sort. It’s potential to have a Flash or
HTML sport with downloads, however that’s not represented right here. Slightly over half
of all video games on itch.io are downloadable solely. The different half are
browser-embedded video games.

I used to be curious if the sport varieties being uploaded had been altering over time I so
graphed the share of every sort for all video games created per 30 days:

There haven’t been any vital modifications within the distribution over the previous
few months. I’m curious what is going to occur to Unity since Chrome just lately blocked
the Unity plugin by
default. The newest
model of Unity exports to HTML so we’ll probably see the Unity share switch
to HTML over the approaching months.

When importing a sport you may decide what style it’s. Here’s the style
distribution throughout all video games on itch.io:

Action is the most well-liked style, adopted by different. The relative
reputation of genres is identical because it was 9 months in the past. I made the
remark that since different is the second most frequent style it most likely
is sensible to spend a while enhancing the choices. I nonetheless haven’t had a
probability to do this but, however strategies are welcome!

Here’s the distribution of platforms downloadable video games can be found for. No
surprises right here, Windows is first, OSX is second, and Linux is third. The
Windows/OSX hole did shut barely although.

Payouts

Itch.io helps two methods of paying sellers: direct and payout. In direct
mode a vendor is paid instantly on every buy. The payouts system, which
was added January 2015, teams purchases collectively so a vendor can request a
single cost for all their gross sales. It was added to facilitate issues like
bundles and assist with dealing with VAT.

26% % of sellers have adopted the payouts system. 53% of latest purchases
are paid by way of a payout. This implies that lively sellers have a tendency to decide on the
payout system. This quantity may be barely skewed since all multi-developer
bundles should
undergo the payout system, however these solely accounted for a couple of % of all
the purchases over the previous few months.

Thanks

That’s it for this submit, thanks for taking the time to learn by way of it. Itch.io
is a serious a part of my life and I hope the info offered is as attention-grabbing to
you as it’s me. If you’ve got some other concepts for evaluation be at liberty to get in
contact.

If you’re taken with extra updates like these please contemplating following me
on Twitter: @moonscript

Special because of Justin Ok for serving to edit this submit.