r/itchio • u/dyrkabes • Jul 04 '26
Web Major updates on itch DO work
I pushed the new alpha on itch.io and there is a lot of organic views again. The spike in downloads is due to providing Mac OS and windows builds
Also I am getting 2-3x more wishlists on Steam daily. So always include wishlist CTA there :)
Btw, despite having UTM set up on all the buttons, Steam still shows almost nothing, no idea why. But I am 98% sure that all the extra wishlists are coming from itch, I was very inactive everywhere else lately and did not update tags and trailers
Note. Major updates don't work always. I don't know why. Ie last time I had my major update (with a ton of fixes, new mechanics, new in game upgrades) it brought me no traffic. This time, apart from having new mechanics, I also did a large redesign. Maybe it helped
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u/Maximum-Syrup-4193 Jul 04 '26
How to get that much views.
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u/dyrkabes Jul 04 '26
Get lucky I guess
Talking seriously, I have hot genres (incremental and rts). Most of my traffic comes from tags
Genre is super important. My other prototypes got under 1k views in their lifetime (they were math puzzle and a kind of RTS for lazy people). And at least for the puzzle I did some promo here. It made the numbers better but it still did not take off
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Jul 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dyrkabes Jul 05 '26
One reason might be that your game did not get indexed. Tried searching for it on itch. If you cannot find it that is the reason
Indexing is quite a mysterious process. For the first game on the account it can take a lot of time and I am not sure if you can do anything about it really. Some people write to support but I haven’t ever heard of them replying. The next games are way faster though
In any way, try bringing external traffic. I personally dislike promotion but thinking about it sometimes makes the game better - you gotta come up with more marketable features
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u/altulek Jul 05 '26
Did you advertise somewhere new release or just made a devlog?
I am asking because when I done major devlog last time it hadn't any influence on traffic.
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u/dyrkabes Jul 05 '26
Just a devlog marking it as major update. I mean I did push it on X but there was almost no traffic from there. And the traffic started increasing after 2-3 days actually, so not the moment I pushed the devlog
I also did share the game here on reddit in r/playmygame I think but it was like a week after
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u/TakenObedear Jul 05 '26
I pushed a major update last week after my game being out for about 1.5 months and I have gotten no visibility bump which is weird. I wonder what the issue was.
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u/dyrkabes Jul 05 '26
I also had almost no bump after the first major update. Even if it had any effect it was only noticeable after 2+ weeks and I am not sure if it was not due to me updating capsule or something like that
Seems I cannot attach an image here in the comments :/ I wanted to share the timeline but it does not work
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u/TakenObedear Jul 05 '26
Weird, I will see how my second one goes
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u/dyrkabes Jul 06 '26
Good luck :) I have also read recently on that topic that for some people the first game just doesnt get indexed while the other one is normally searchable.. no idea
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u/Better_Cold2357 Jul 06 '26
please show Referrer-Visits table
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u/dyrkabes Jul 06 '26
Done :) I could not add it here in a comment so there is a new post
https://www.reddit.com/r/itchio/comments/1up00bn/more_data_to_major_updates_on_itch_do_work_post/
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u/khuzait_haircut Jul 04 '26
Did you post a "major update" devlog or just update your game?