Not vibing with this



itch.io has unfortunately, much like Steam, long had an issue with genAI content being uploaded in droves, drowning out perfectly good games made by human hands. The apparent standard method against this, voluntary genAI disclosure, has been itch's primary tool to combat this wave of low-quality slop, but hasn't worked out too well; itch revealed a few days ago that 'the number of game pages being created per-day has doubled in the past two months'. Now, in attempts to further combat this, beyond just game assets requiring a genAI disclosure to upload as they have for two years, itch will be expanding the mandatory disclosure to tabletop games, books, comics, and soundtracks, as well as adding a 'no AI' filter directly into the search function.

itch noted in this announcement that its previous moderation of genAI use in projects had been "critically lacking", presumably referring to the unfathomable exponential increase in games being uploaded in the past few months by people who don't give a fuck about creating anything themselves and happily contribute to the death of the planet. itch went on to post "Just deleted a couple terabytes of ai slop" which, I mean, sure, cool! And, look, as many, many people in itch's replies have pointed out, this is not the same as outright banning AI.



Unfortunately, my question at that point becomes: how? itch is not Steam, not a storefront backed by a gigantic corporation with support staff and quality assurance (which, you know, hasn't helped Steam much either). itch is one full-time employee with several contractors and volunteers. If there is a site-wide ban on genAI, people who use genAI will just start lying and sneaking it into their projects anyway. So, then, users just report the offenders, surely? This then requires a manual verification system, which, as is suggested by the sheer amount of games being uploaded every day, is just not feasible, let alone for a team as small as itch. And, frankly, I don't have a better solution here! This is fucked! What itch is doing is, currently, kinda the best it can right now?

itch is a beautiful thing that allows for people who just want to start making games, making art, making music, making books, to have a free space to share it with the world, and gain eyes on their work as well as necessary feedback to improve. It's less of a store and more of a forum for creators and self-published games to interact, guide one another to new, niche, cool shit. Hell, I made a visual novel and posted it on there, becoming another one of those millions of people for whom itch is a valuable platform for first creations. To have this vital space on a path to ruin as a result of the same vile tech that is also on the verge of pushing the global economy over a cliff due to its creators being caught in their multi-year lies is not a future I hope for itch. This is a step in the right direction, and one I genuinely hope pans out well for it in the long run.

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