itch.io is, in most ways, a great digital storefront. While it’s mostly associated with videogames, basically any kind of file can be sold there. It has become a popular place to sell ebooks, comics, music, and TTRPGs¹. Unlike almost every other online storefront I can think of, I’ve never heard any horror stories about itch.io² removing NSFW content in order to appease payment processors. Even if the site has received some criticism recently in relation to the speed with which they facilitate the formation of charity bundles, that doesn’t change the fact that itch.io has been used to raise a lot of money for various left-leaning causes.

I’ve had a lot of success with bundles on itch.io. I lucked into the Be A Better Cyberpunk bundle, which earned me roughly $2,300. I’ve been in every iteration of the Queer Games Bundle. I organized the Transgender Artists Bundle, which was a big success, and The Queer Erotica Bundle, which was a more modest success. The Transgender Artists Bundle II, unfortunately, only made $154.12 [for everyone], I think because bundles became oversaturated on itch.io for a while. I’ve also been in a handful of charity bundles, such as TTRPGs for Trans Rights – West Virginia and Indie Bundle for Abortion Funds.

Even with all of this good, there’s something that’s been bothering me, and many other creators, about itch.io for a long time. There’s no way to split revenue between collaborators on a project; payouts can only go to one person, and that person has to manually split the money. If a project is making a lot of money, this can be completely impractical for tax reasons. And obviously, this is massively inconvenient and stress-inducing, because no honest creative wants to be responsible for another person’s money.

Just yesterday I was thinking about this problem. I’m currently working on a solo comicbook, but I began to think about what the follow-up might be. I thought it could be interesting to do something with a few collaborators, but then I began to think about the logistics.

I could release this collaborative comic on DriveThruComics, a website that does allow revenue splits, that unfortunately is less popular than itch.io in the comics sphere. And I could release the comic on my personal itch.io page. Perhaps I could take a very small percentage on DriveThruComics, and keep all the itch.io money . . . but that would be inequitable, because including the comic in itch.io bundles would make me earn vastly more money than my collaborators either way.

There have been many projects that I wanted to do with other people, that I unfortunately never did. I’ve thought about putting together an erotica compilation, and I’ve thought about making albums with other musicians. I’ve wanted many times to contribute art and music to videogames, but unfortunately there’s no way I could do that without being underpaid if there’s no revenue split involved.

I once co-wrote a novel with someone. We did the kludge-y thing that a lot of people on itch.io do, which is split the novel in half and sell both halves together in a bundle. It’s not a perfect solution, because splitting a book in half for no reason is dumb on the face of it, and also the person who gets to sell the first half is going to make more money in the long term. But on itch.io, that’s the only real option.

itch.io was created in 2013. I’m sure splitting revenue between multiple creators was always something Leaf Corcoran, the creator of the site, had in mind. But we know that, at least as far back as 2016, he’s been aware that people wanted it added as a feature to the site. The topic of revenue splits has also been popular in the Ideas & Feedback section of the itch.io forums; there are at least three big dedicated threads on the topic, two of which I’ve commented in myself.

The only response I’ve heard from itch.io in relation to this came from an employee named Amos Wenger³, internet handle fasterthanlime, in a github thread. He said the following:

This has been mentioned internally recently, so it’s still on our radar, but we’re not able to give an ETA at this time.

That was in 2019, five years ago, and there’s still no public roadmap about when revenue splits might be added to itch.io. I’ve heard a lot of speculation about possible legal problems, but surely if itch.io can facilitate bundles, and DriveThruRPG can allow revenue splits, this problem is far from insurmountable.

This has been an immense source of frustration for me, and many other people, who sell their art on itch.io. And it’s about time they did something about it.

Circling back to the problems with itch.io having speed problems with bundles, itch.io also frequently takes a long time to process payouts, often over ten days. I can remember times when I had to put in extra hours doing rideshare work because I couldn’t depend on itch.io giving me a timely payout for me to use on my utility bills. All payouts on itch.io are manually reviewed, but it seems that this department or division within itch.io is understaffed.

Anecdotally, itch.io hasn’t really changed since I first uploaded a project onto the site in 2020. It’s possible they added dark mode, and I can remember a small handful of UI changes. I’m sure that there’s a lot of regular under-the-hood maintenance that needs to happen with any storefront of this side. But, I can’t think of the last time, or any time, itch.io released a new feature that benefitted me in a big way, that changed the way I was able to use their store.

itch.io is in a weird place; the site wants to have a small, indie, non-corpo feel, but creators need more than a small operation can feasibly provide. I hope that, in the future, itch.io can expand, and introduce new features, without losing its identity and soul.

1. Everything except video files, basically. ↩︎
2. I’m deliberately not capitalizing itch.io because that’s how they stylize their logo; it’s not an act of disrespect. ↩︎
3. Amos Wenger no longer works for itch.io. ↩︎