I don't know what to do

Hello everyone,

First of all, I apologize for the absence of devlogs. I've been finishing Chapter 6 of Yuri Demon, a game that will soon be available on Steam, which is why I'm prioritizing it. However, even if I had been fully working on this game, I wouldn't have been able to publish any updates.

Let me explain. For about two months—I'm not sure exactly how long because I haven't checked—I've been having issues with my account. It all started around two months ago when half of the games on my account disappeared from search lists and were put under quarantine. This means that whenever someone wanted to download one of the affected games, itch.io would warn them that the game might be dangerous and contain viruses. Naturally, if you see that warning, you wouldn’t want to download my game, you'd leave my page, and you'd forget about it. This obviously harms my account.

This coincided with a day when someone left a comment on one of my games, reporting a virus threat. I panicked and asked for more information. That person never replied, but I assume they reported my account or that specific game, which started this whole issue (though I’m not sure, it’s just my theory). I thought, "Well, all my games are safe, I know there are no viruses. That person probably got a false alert from Windows Defender or something. Itch.io will review my account, and in a few days, all my games will be back."

Well, it took several support tickets and forum posts on my part before itch.io finally removed the quarantine from all my games. What happens now? Every time I publish a new game update or even just edit the page description—no matter how minor the change—the game immediately goes back into quarantine. And quarantine isn’t just that warning message; it also removes my game from itch.io’s search lists, drastically reducing its visibility.

What does this mean? If all my games are quarantined, I can't grow on itch.io. The nearly 1,000 followers I have, all the sales my games have—it’s all thanks to people discovering my games through itch.io’s search lists, clicking on them, and becoming interested.

Two months after this started, to this day, after multiple support tickets to itch.io with no response, I still have some games in quarantine, and I can’t publish new updates without triggering another quarantine. Each game is now taking an average of a month to be removed from quarantine. I can’t release a new update if it means my game will disappear from searches for over a month.

At this point, I don’t think my account is still under review due to that virus report from two months ago. I believe this is just poor management from itch.io, and I’m definitely not the only one complaining about it. It’s not happening to every account—I checked my other account, "Capky Games 3D," and that one seems fine.

With this, I’m not saying I’ll abandon itch.io or stop updating my games. I will continue releasing updates on my Patreon. However, I understand that most of you don’t follow me there. Plus, you’ve already purchased my games on itch.io. That’s why I want to let you know that the free updates for my games will be available on my Patreon in public posts, so everyone can download them without needing to subscribe. As for paid updates, they will also be available on my Patreon under the tier 2 subscription, which costs $5. If you already paid on itch.io and don’t want to or can’t pay again on Patreon, don’t worry—I won’t abandon you. I will keep publishing my games on itch.io, but only once this frustrating situation is resolved and my games stop being unfairly quarantined.

This could be resolved in a week, a month, or even a year—I don’t know. If I see no improvement, I’ll continue reaching out to itch.io’s support team for help.

I just ask for a little patience—I’m the one being hurt the most by this unfair situation, which I hope will be resolved soon. My games will never be abandoned and will continue to be published here, but it may take an indefinite amount of time.

Update: I just edited the description on my game's page:

Love's Heart - Memory Time

A game with no sexual content and no obscene tags, so to speak. A game that's certainly not 18+, that averages about 5 visits per day and hasn't received any downloads for several days, and that until now was showing up in the search lists. I've modified the game's page to delete an empty line, that's all; I haven't deleted any words. And that's it, the game has disappeared from the search lists. I assume it's quarantined as well. The issue isn't strictly against the NSFW games on my account, it's against ALL the games on my account. As I said, this is a complete injustice that the itch.io platform is doing to me without me having done ANYTHING to deserve it.

Have a great day.