New game pages on Itch.io have doubled in two months, with AI the likely cause

[Rory_39]

The indie platform Itch.io is seeing a surge in new games, but not in players. PC Gamer reports that the number of new game pages created on Itch.io each day rose from around 3,000 on 3 August to regularly more than 6,000 by 30 October, according to a chart Itch shared on Bluesky

Itch noted that downloads and purchases have not doubled, which suggests many of the new pages are not finding an audience. Of 1,769,316 listed games, 131,929, or about 7.5 percent, are tagged as AI generated

Itch did not directly blame AI. When asked why the numbers had jumped, it replied take a guess with crying and robot emojis

Steam is seeing something similar, with demos in its Next Fest event rising from around 4,000 to over 8,000. Valve has acknowledged a problem with AI slop and cloned games, but said it does not want to be a gatekeeper telling developers which tools they can use. AI researcher Mike Cook said banning AI games would probably not change the trend, because enforcement would need a large team or a reliable reporting system

A flood of low effort games makes it harder for good indie developers to be discovered. Itch has always been an open platform, which is part of its charm, but that openness is now being tested. Better filtering and curation seem more realistic than outright bans

How should stores handle the flood of AI generated games? And has it changed how you find indie games?

Itwww.pcgamer.com

[ReacherLynx]

Some developers use AI tools responsibly for small parts of their games. Not everything tagged AI is slop. The problem is mass produced clones, not every use of the technology. Plenty of solo developers use AI for placeholder art. Final games often replace it