I. Dear Reader,
There was a big attack on itch and steam this week as payment processors essentially forced the platforms to delist NSFW games or lose the ability to collect money. It’s a bad policy in a number of different ways, including but not limited to the fact that it disproportionately affects queer creators. While most of the ire has been directed at the companies (Stripe, Paypal, VISA, etc), itch has come for its share of criticism. Personally, while itch could have communicated better, it’s clear to me they have no real choice here. They are the ones being censored, even as it seems like they’re doing the censoring.
This coincides with some weird stuff out of the UK where a law is forcing websites to verify people’s ages before they give them access to information that might not be suitable for children. It’s a weirdly synchronous attack on freedom of expression — an uncoordinated public-private partnership that threatens the few remaining fun/free spaces on the internet.
Itch is essential infrastructure to the indie RPG scene right now. It’s where the work that isn’t polished — isn’t market-oriented — lives. A lot of people have no love for the site and I get that. It has a lot of problems, including a regularly-malfunctioning payout system. I’m less sympathetic to the people who call it a “hosepipe” or even a “cesspool” — I’ve heard both before.
Game design is an unrewarding art form, all in all. Itch is maybe the last place on the internet to operate at the scale that it does and give you a sliding scale for how much you want to contribute to the site. Circa 2016, on average, people choose to give 8% of their revenue to the website. DrivethruRPG asks for 30% at a minimum. So does Steam.
This statistic comes from the rare talk that the founder of itch has given. This one from 2016 at the XOXO festival. It’s a nice one, honestly, and captures what I love about the site as a space for people to learn and experiment and share their work.
The most comprehensive resource I can see if you’d like to get involved is here at yellat.money and this reddit thread. It’s a list of the companies behind this mess and how to put some pressure on them to reverse their current draconian policies.
But damn, I would like to go back to when we could imagine things getting better and not just not getting worse.
Yours un-censoriously,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
- Indie Game Developer Network (IGDN) has put together a summer series in crowdfunding. It’s a bunch of knowledge sharing sessions where people who have gone through the process are talking shop. There’s five episodes in the series so far.
- You too can support the newsletter on patreon!
- If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.
III. Links of the Week
- I really enjoyed this review of the classic Amber Diceless RPG: “This is a book that was deliberately, consciously radical. It actually uses that specific word to describe itself. But for all its radicalism… it’s still kind of AD&D?”
- Technical Grimoire writes a fantastic (and very critical ) review of The One Ring RPG that tackles one of the challenges of making an IP-based game for fans: fear of adapting the source material. It isn’t simply opining either and has some nice specifics on how the book could’ve taken more creative risks.
- The Deeper in the Game blog had this nice post about the gaming and the real world: “I hate that roleplaying games have gotten better while everything around us has gotten much worse. I want them to be much better than a fantastic respite where we keep a distant horizon of the real, but here we are.”
From the archive:
- Jason Lutes writes on the Indie Game Reading Club blog about his step-by-step process behind a 40 session West Marches game and how it worked out: “It’s a big undertaking, it’s demanding, there’s a lot to juggle. Over time the prep could be exhausting, and I decided to wind things down when all of that started to feel like too much. But it was also among the most fun and rewarding RPG experiences of my life to date, so there’s no way I’m not going to give it another go.” (Issue 107, August 2022)
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
- Make sure to read your contract before this internship 📝 Not being paid are the least of your characters worries in SHIVER Corporate, a horrific workplace TTRPG launching on Backerkit here next week.
- The ultimate TTRPG in a zombie apocalypse. Will you be a survivor, fighting against all odds in a unique and realistic combat system? Or the Apocalypse Master, building the most unique apocalypse that only you can dream of?
- The girls are coming to Gamefound. Play as nineteenth century chambermaids investigating the disappearance of their friend in a haunted alpine hotel. Check out The Girls of the Genziana Hotel!
This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding. Check out the latest bundles below:
- 43 old-school fantasy adventures from Expeditious Retreat Press’ Advanced Adventures series.
- A bundle of Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland, the bright gonzo post-apocalyptic game from Super Savage Systems.
Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!
Indie RPG Newsletter 
Leave a comment