I need to pay for the servers hosting the various parts of itch.io. What are the operating costs involved in running itch.io? Bandwidth is a bit harder to estimate because files are served from a variety of places, but around 10TB a month. There's approximately 500GB of content uploaded. How much data is currently stored on those servers, and how much data volume is being transferred each month? I try to serve most free games out of a download cache to save on bandwidth costs, though. If the second server runs out of bandwidth then I'll temporarily start up another for the remainder of the month.Īll files are stored on a third party service - Google Cloud Storage. Image processing and cached file downloads come from another server. The website and database runs on a single server. There are currently two (and sometimes three). How many servers are used to run itch.io? I hope to get more help in the near future. I've already hired some part-time help for game promotion and content curation. I feel like there's a lot more itch.io could do given more resources. I definitely would like to expand the operation. I haven't taken a proper vacation in quite some time. I've essentially signed myself up to be within reach of a computer at all times. It can be quite stressful running everything myself. Is itch.io a one-man operation? How do you manage the entire workload by yourself? Do you have any plans for expansion or hiring a team to manage the day-to-day operations of itch.io? I don't reveal any specific numbers for an individual game, but some of the top earners on itch.io include VA-11 HALL-A, Sky Rogue, Depression Quest, Paper Sorcerer, Eden River HD and The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight. Which games have sold the most copies/made the most money on itch.io? Itch.io has paid about 170,000 dollars to game developers (I count all dollars as equal here, even though quite a few currencies are supported). How much revenue in sales has itch.io generated so far? In your opinion, which games on itch.io deserve more attention?Įcho of the Wilds, Ghost in the Machine, and Space Goddess of Everything. There are currently 6666 (no joke!) published active games (the database actually says quite a bit more, but I don't count unpublished games, or games that have no content in them). When I started building the site I had an extra domain sitting around so I used it. I bought the domain itch.io a year or so before I actually had the idea for the site. I figured why not apply the same idea to indie games. I thought that it was a really cool model, and a lot of the music I was listening to at the time was coming from there. How did you come up with the idea for itch.io?īandcamp, a site for musicians to self publish and sell their music, was on my mind. I launched the first version March 3rd, 2013. I started coding it in January 18th, 2013. Lastly, there's a sweet self-service game jam hosting system. It also hosts a decently sized library of free and web games. It's an open indie game marketplace focusing on a super low friction process for developers to start selling their games. I've also been very interested in game development, I have many unfinished games and nine completed Ludum Dares.Ĭan you describe what itch.io is and what its purpose is? I've been primarily building websites for quite a long time now. Leaf Corcoran, Founder: Hello, My name is Leaf Corcoran. In the interview below, Leaf talks about his original vision for itch.io and what it has since become, how the website and store is operated and how much it costs to run each month, and he also picks out a few games that he thinks deserve more attention. That is, from itch.io's founder, Leaf Corcoran. So it seemed right to find out a little more about the store from the horse's mouth. It also supports game jam hosting, regularly features free games, and allows users to create their own collections of games on the store.Įveryone at Warp Door visits itch.io regularly, some of us every day, in order to find the weird and unusual games that we aim to share on that website. It's easy-to-use, pays creators the money earned from their game sales directly and without taking a cut, and allows them to customize their own game pages. Over the past year and a half, a small digital store called itch.io has grown in popularity among small game developers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |