Can you publish a submitted game on Itchio

Game Development
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If your game has been submitted, is it possible to self-publish on Itcho or any other platforms? Is it against the rules to do so?

I submitted my game and am waiting for the content to be reviewed, but I was also hoping to share it elsewhere in the meantime.

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Once you’ve signed a publishing contract:

So once the contract is signed, you would not publish the game somewhere other than through Hosted Games. You could put it on itchio in the meantime, but I’m not sure what benefit you’d get from doing that. Perhaps just putting up a chapter or two might gain some interest but I wouldn’t think putting up the whole game would be very useful at this stage.

(You should email Hosted Games to check, though.)

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Thanks for answering my question @HarrisPS. Yes, you are correct. I wanted to share it on different platforms to arose interest(just a few chapters of course). But I assume that certain platforms like Twine would be completely out of the picture. I don’t think CoG would want the same product in another game engine.

Say, if I wanted to make a novel version of the same IF, would that be okay? I originally came from RoyalRoad and have been planning to write another novel over there for a while. I miss those writathons lol

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Getting additional visibility from itch is very difficult as there is a lot of competition for visibility. itch also only promotes games which are already popular, so unless you can get a lot of views to your itch page by yourself, itch isn’t going to help you get more.

For reference, these were my itch stats after one month. I needed about 3000 views from the forums to get me another 1000 views from itch. But I had a massive burst of initial traffic from my new WIP thread to get me there.

Unless you can get a thousand or so clicks to your itch demo within the first week (without help from itch), getting up the New and Popular section can be a challenge.

A traditional novel is not considered a competing format, and you own the copyright to the game, so that’s fine. You’re probably also free to copy/paste text from your IF into the novel, since the text is your property.

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Oh wow. It’s a good thing i made this post then. .itch is pretty tough huh.

Where do you think one could go to promote their games? Apart from the forums. I get wonderful feedback from the forums. But as in social media.

Do authors like yourselves usually pay for advertising?

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I think some authors went around a few online communities to promote their games, after identifying some communities which they thought would be interested in the game/genre. I haven’t done it, however.

Just make sure that you’re active and replying to comments on the announcement thread when you get one.

I don’t recommend paying for advertising. IF is pretty niche, so paid advertising isn’t likely to get your money back. Whatever you do, don’t pay for advertising.

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I’d recommend revisiting the HG publishing process page here as it covers some of what’s come up in this thread.

I wouldn’t recommend paying for advertising. I’ve only heard less-than-great things about the returns on it.

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IMO as a fan of IF when I am looking for new stories, the first place I normally go to is reddit.

In particular the Hosted Games reddit, so that’s probably a good place to advertise your game.

EDIT: A lot of wips have Tumblr’s aswell, I think fans like to know more about the author and the process of making a game. (hopefully that helps a little)

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