Itch.io

itch.io (stylized in all lowercase) is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 700,000 products as of April 2023.https://web.archive.org/web/*/itch.io
Itch.io allows users to host game jams, events where participants have limited time to create a game. Itch.io also allows multiple users to sell their products together in "bundles".
==History==
In 2012, an American hobbyist programmer named Leaf Corcoran created his own programming language, "MoonScript", and started making games in it, but had nowhere to distribute them. Steam, the leading video game distribution platform, had implemented a greenlight system for games based on community voting. Corcoran decided to create a more open marketplace for indie games in MoonScript, inspired by Bandcamp's model. He started coding in January 2013 and the website was launched on March 3https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/q-a-itch-io-interview-with-leaf-corcoran, on his unused domain name itch.io. However, it attracted little attention at first and mostly served as his personal repository. Itch.io started to become noticed through his participation in the game jam Ludum Dare, and so Corcoran added contest-hosting tools to the platform. In early 2014, Itch.io hosted a Flappy Bird–themed Flappy Jam after the popular game was removed from the App Store. It attracted hundreds of submissions and received media coverage. At the end of the year, Corcoran said that he had lost over $8,000 running Itch.io. It had been a one-man operation the whole way.
==Gallery==
Itchio.png|The main page
==References==