- Nicole Carpenter
Indie games platform itch.io announced a new initiative on Wednesday: Creator Day. It’s a day-long time period where creators on the platform — games developers, musicians, artists, and writers — will receive 100% of the profit from stuff sold through the site.
Image: Snoozy Kazoo/Graffiti Game
Itch.io’s open revenue sharing plan, which was kicked up in 2015, is already an anomaly in the industry with its 10% fee, let alone the zero percent option. Creator Day feels like an extension of that, a day where developers can drum up hype for their games from players who want to give extra support.
All sellers will be automatically opted into the program — no changes necessary. For some, that won’t mean much: Creators already had the option to set their revenue sharing to zero percent, but revenue sharing at 10% is the default option, though it’s configurable upwards from there, too.
“We’re supported by our awesome community every day and we wanted to set a day where we could return the favor,” Spencer Hayes, itch.io’s director of business and content, told Polygon. “It’s been hard out there for a lot of folks and we figured we’d help out how we can.”
Itch.iois now available on the Epic Games Store, too — a deal that puts the platform on another platform, but Epic Games doesn’t get a cut of itch.io’s sales. Elsewhere in the industry, Valve takes 30% of revenue on Steam, as do Sony and Microsoft. Microsoft, last week, confirmed during the Apple vs. Epic anti-trust trial that it sell its consoles at a loss — and the 30% revenue cut is to make up for that, Epic argued during the trial. (This is the same trial where Apple lawyers unfairly referred to some of itch.io’s content as “unspeakable games.”)
However, Microsoft takes only 12% on the Windows store — the same number that Epic Games takes on the Epic Games Store.
In 2020, Apple, too, cut its commission to 15% for developers that make up to $1 million a year.
Nicole Carpenter / POLYGON
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