„Their heart is in the right place” Vintage Story's itch.io payment delay issue is more common than you might think

Earlier this month, the developers behind Vintage Story, a popular game that began as a standalone Minecraft mod, but is now its own popular survival game, shared on social media that they had not received payment from itch.io in three months. Itch.io is an online storefront used by many independent developers to promote and sell their games. You may have heard about the recent censorship controversy where hundreds of games were quietly delisted overnight thanks to pressure from payment processors. After publishing a story about Vintage Story’s situation, it got shared on Reddit, and I decided to reach out to some commenters to see what their story was. Not every creator on itch.io has the same visibility as the Vintage Story team, but many seem to have had a similar experience.

Vintage Story is not the only team that has had issues with itch.io sending payments for months

Before getting too far into this story, I want to say something about itch.io, something that I have heard echoed from the sources for this article. This is a great site. It’s a powerful alternative to Steam, which takes a much larger cut of a developer’s sales. Many independent teams have found success on itch and have little to no problems with it. No one believes that these actions are malicious in any way, suggesting it’s more likely that this smaller team is simply overwhelmed and that their heart is in the right place. I wish I could have spoken to the team at itch directly, but at the time of publishing, they have yet to respond to my emails, which could be another sign of them being overwhelmed.

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After learning more about how other development teams have had payments withheld, I was directed to talk to a user on the site who goes by happycodingzx. In our initial conversation over email, they explained that: “What happened with me was that I didn’t get paid for more than six months and had little to no communication from itch.” On itch, happycodingzx is known for, by their own description, “…[coding] games on a rather obscure little British computer called the ZX Spectrum, which has a small but loyal community…” This is exactly the kind of thing that can find a home on itch, but might not on other storefronts like Steam.

When selling a game on itch, there are two financial paths to take. You can either set up direct deposit, meaning that every sale goes directly to you. Or, you can have itch hold onto the revenue until you send in a request. That second option is where the problems seem to be coming up for people. It requires a little more involvement from each side. The developer needs to send a request, and then the team at itch needs to receive and process it.

Back in June, happycodingzx started reaching out to other creators to see if there was any kind of collective action they could take to help them get what they are owed, or at least try to figure out what the issue was. This resulted in a forum post on itch, which received responses from at least a dozen other creators who were experiencing similar problems with their requested payments. Some of them talk about waiting for six months with little or no communication from itch. At the time of writing, every user in that thread has now received their payments, which at least proves that this form of communication was successful.

An admin for the forums, lyn-marie excelsia, responded to many comments, trying to explain the situation. One comment says: “We are not ignoring any users intentionally, we just have a small team and limited bandwidth…” Explaining further in another comment: “…the delays are just due to a high volume of requests. We pay out hundreds of payouts per day, but we receive a huge volume of them per day as well.” Another issue also appears to have been tax information changes in the new year, which complicated the whole process.

The issues users had in this forum post have been solved, but that doesn’t mean that others haven’t had the same issue. Vintage Story’s team posted about their issue well after this forum post was marked as resolved, and if a larger presence on the platform is having issues, it’s likely only the tip of the iceberg. These delays might eventually get fully solved, but clearly some developers still have to deal with it. At the time of writing, several weeks after their initial announcement, Vintage Story still has purchasing disabled on their itch.io page.

I asked happycodingzx about how this experience impacted their relationship and view of itch. Despite the issues, they are not abandoning the site, “In general, I still think their heart is in the right place, so I’ll stick with them for now. I think they realised they can’t take things like this for granted. I think both people and organisations should be held accountable for their actions, but not permanently ghosted, especially if they put things right.” Ultimately, happycodingzx has decided to change their payment method, which means they now get a payout every time a transaction occurs, effectively removing any backlog of payments. If anyone else is experiencing issues requesting payments for months, this is a good option to avoid these problems in the future.

This is not an article to try to tear down itch or slander them. But clearly this is an issue that shouldn’t go unnoticed. Some creators may not rely on the income, or they may have other reliable sources, but when six months can go by unanswered, that can make the prospect of publishing a game on itch less accessible to small creators.

If you play indie games on PC, you should check out itch.io. If you play any kind of games on PC, you should check out itch.io. Not only is it generally a great place to buy games and more directly support the developers, it also is home to plenty of games you may not find on other platforms. Vintage Story is a great example of this, as it has yet to come to Steam. Itch.io can be a great place for games, I just hope that this payment delay issue can get sorted out soon. Even if that just means more transparency about how quickly itch’s staff can complete payment requests.

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