How to Publish your Games on Itch.io (and Why You Should)
Today, we'll talk about how to publish your game on itch.io, an independent storefront for digital games, and why you should consider it.
There are many ways to publish a video game: you can do it through Steam, CrazyGames, Poki, the Google Play Store, and so on. Another popular option for publishing indie games is itch.io. Today, we'll talk about how to publish your game on itch.io, how to do it for your GDevelop game, and why you should use itch.io as a game developer.
How to Publish Your Game on Itch.io
The general instructions on how to publish your game in itch.io can be found on the their own website (you can find the link here).
It is a fairly simple process: you need to upload a .zip (or another playable format depending on your target platform) file of your game, and off you go. You can customize the listing page to your liking, adding screenshots and even GIFs showing gameplay!
But the real secret is knowing how to export your game so that it's playable or downloadable through itch.io. And that depends on your game engine. Now, let's see how to do that in GDevelop.
Exporting Your GDevelop Game For Itch.io
Thankfully, it's very easy to export your GDevelop game for itch.io. There is a step-by-step guide on our wiki (which you can find here).
You can even make games on the go! GDevelop has Android and iOS apps for iPhone and iPad. So you never have to stop making your dream game a reality.
However, you can also simply watch the video below, where our very own HelperWesley goes over each step required to upload a game to itch.io.
So, exporting and uploading to itch.io is easy. But why should you do it?
Why Upload Your Game to Itch.io
I'll borrow the following from the wiki entry I mentioned above:
- It is completely free
- Easy to prepare the content for upload
- Easy to update the uploaded files
- A Devlog can be shared
- You can set up a Community Forum or Allow Comments only or none
- No quality requirements, anything can be shared
- SEO friendly, anything you upload can be easily found in Search Engines.
- You can share downloadable games for Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and also HTML5 games played in the browser.
- You can make money without starting your own business and pay taxes. itch.io can collect the money, deal with refund requests and pay the required taxes on your behalf and you can request a payout any time.
- In case you do want to start your own business, itch.io can take care of the transaction for you and transfer each purchase directly to you, but then you need to take care of Refunds and Taxes
- You can set a fixed price for your content, share it freely or accept a donation. You can also set an unique option where payment is necessary but the amount is decided by the user himself.
- Revenue share is also flexible which makes itch.io the most unique, you can decide how much revenue share you want to pay to itch.io and yes you can set this value to 0 if you want and pay nothing yet itch.io still happy to host your content for free and hope if you are successful you are going to consider to pay something to them.
- No annoying Ads on Browser games
- You can now also connect itch.io with Patreon and offer access to content to those who support you through Patreon.
Alternatives to Itch.io
There are alternatives to itch.io, and here are some of them. You can also use the one-click export option within GDevelop to publish your game on gd.games.
You can also publish your game on Poki, Newgrounds, Steam, Liluo and Crazygames. You can see how to publish in all of these storefronts by checking out our dedicated page on publishing.