Developers are widely complaining about payment delays from itch.io
Complaints have appeared on the itch.io forum, Reddit, and social media. Additionally, some developers reported payout issues in a discussion with the Rascal portal.
According to developers, payouts are delayed for varying periods. Some received their money only a few days later than usual, but in certain cases, it took up to a month or even longer. Developers acknowledge that this is not the first time it has happened — itch.io has previously processed payments slower than usual occasionally. However, starting from mid-summer, the situation has worsened.
itch.io has already acknowledged the issue. The store's team identified the organization Collective Shout as an indirect cause of the current delays, as it drew attention to the taboo nature of some adult games on itch.io, which affected the payment systems.
In July, the store was forced under pressure from payment systems to hide NSFW games from search results (later, indexing for at least free games was restored). This alarmed developers, leading many to request payouts simultaneously. However, quickly processing them became impossible due to the specifics of the payout model used by itch.io — part of the requests is processed manually by the store's team, and the surge in demand caused backlogs. Additionally, creators of NSFW games flooded the support team with hundreds of emails, further slowing the process.
Recently, itch.io established a direct line for payout-related inquiries. This is expected to enable the store to respond to issues more quickly and send developers their money.