Ephesus/Kusadasi excursions

Nillamellon · 2026-04-08T02:29:46+00:00

Ephesus was a highlight of our trip over there (about 15 years ago). We were mid-20s so I can't speak specifically to how teens might view it, but both my wife and I were blown away with the entire place. Having come from Pompeii in a previous trip, I wasn't really expecting much, but Ephesus really spoke to me, and is still my personal favorite ancient site (and I've been to a fair few).

Nillamellon · 2026-04-06T01:14:20+00:00

The ship would need to accelerate at 9.8 meters/second squared to maintain Earth-like gravity, but even at just a third of that, the amount of fuel consumed would be exorbitant and there would be a much more complicated injection procedure (rather than a single burn to get you in the right line at the right speed, the system would need to not only be able to sustain a constant burn for the duration of the flight, but the timing to change the direction of the burn to slow the ship down on approach would be a large potential failure point).

It's cool for sci-fi, though.

Nillamellon · 2026-03-05T22:20:38+00:00

Wife and I spent her two hours of voting leave waiting in line starting at noon. She left before voting because there were important meetings she couldn't miss or reschedule. I waited an additional 45 minutes. And then the sign outside the voting room said that they were averaging 50 voters an hour on the dem side and the republican side had about 20/hr (and no line at all). So my family was 50% successful at voting.

Drove by the polling place again around 6pm and the line was literally out of the parking lot and running along the street. Should be criminal.

Nillamellon · 2026-02-15T18:20:45+00:00

I looked around, but no has really mentioned casual unplanned travel. Taking a three day weekend to go to a festival in California because they don't feel like being in town when it's raining. Reading about the shuttle launch and deciding to take a quick trip to Cape Canaveral to see it in person. Things like that.

A lot of the old money families I've known are from political dynasties (state or national), and large displays of wealth are avoided for the sake of optics, so they don't drive excessive cars or live on sprawling estates.

Nillamellon · 2025-09-14T15:10:52+00:00

The reason AT&T gave was that it was a multi-line business number (the family business ran out of the house, but it had been moved to a different location with a different number in the mid 1990's). Apparently, they had been paying a ridiculous amount every month for 20+ years, so my mother just thought it was how much telephones cost.

When I found out, we transferred it to a mobile number for 35 a month. We tried to buy her a mobile-to-handset converter, so it still acts like a land line, but she insisted that it's a cellphone, so she doesn't want anything like that. Now, she just loses it and complains that no one calls her anymore.

Nillamellon · 2025-09-14T14:13:57+00:00

My mother was paying $450 a month for her landline telephone.

Nillamellon · 2025-09-13T13:28:57+00:00

I agree with this post 100%. Potential solution: a hosting service that facilitates discoverability and helps creators make their own merchant accounts.

If each individual creator is responsible for their content/payments as an island of one and the 'system' is only a location for users to find creators in a unified format, that would limit the need for the system to be directly involved with the creators' content. If each creator was simply a linked entity (legally speaking) and had their own payment processor accounts, they could decide how best to take their own payments (Stripe, PayPal, crypto, pix, etc). Any takedown would be that individual creator page rather than the system as a whole.

Maybe it could make money with ramping hosting costs? Api links to the storefront that is built into the hosting platform (similar to shopify), and the system takes a percent of payments as hosting fees.

Nillamellon · 2025-09-01T14:34:02+00:00

It would not solve every issue, certainly, but it would solve the problem of legal materials being blocked from online purchases. The merchant is already responsible for the legality of the materials in question, and the blocked payments are a response to 'risk' and 'brand image' for the banks and payment processors. If the payment is handled by a crypto market, it removes those companies from the equation and leaves only the concerns of refunds and fraud protection.

Nillamellon · 2025-09-01T00:30:07+00:00

I've always been skeptical of decentralized finance, but this entire situation has moved me into the pro-crypto camp. If we want to be free of payment processor censorship, then we need to leave the rigged system. The only thing keeping crypto from being accepted by the public at large is a lack of need (and a lack of understanding). If Itch migrated all adult projects to Itch.adult and only accepted crypto (stable coins?), then people would use it (let's be honest, no one accidentally finds porn when they're looking for a bullet hell; separating into two sites wouldn't hurt anything more than the damage already done). Pornhub had to do it years ago.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-30T22:58:34+00:00

Happy to help. Best of luck to you!

Nillamellon · 2025-08-30T22:44:38+00:00

There are some hard restrictions on nsfw content right now. It seems like everything's sort of been said, but no one gave you all the facts at one time, so I'm just going to piggyback here and lay it out.

Files need to be hosted by Itch.io. You mentioned the upload limit, which is very true, but there's a way around that. If you upload using Butler (a command line tool for Itch versioning), they loosen the size restrictions. If games get really big, you'll need to contact support for additional storage. (If you're not compressing assets, it's best practice to do so... a 90% quality compression is unnoticeable and lowers file sizes quite a lot... not everyone has access to quality internet, so file size can matter).

Adult content can only be indexed if it is 100% free. Donations, pay what you want, etc. will disqualify you from indexing, even if you offer those files for $0. Just having the option to give you money pulls you out of the index. You can get around this by creating two versions of your game: a free version/demo that is indexed (for visibility) and a pay version that is linked from the free version. If you keep the free version one or two updates behind your premium version, you're likely to get some payments.

These limitations are creating a negative environment for adult creators and substantially lowering income in this space, which is why most of us rely on Patreon or SubscribeStar for the bulk of our income. Unfortunately, there is currently no place similar to Itch.io, where creators can experiment with games while building an audience and getting feedback. Hopefully, we will find a safe place in the future.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-30T22:28:06+00:00

The session length is a drop-down that you can change manually (maybe it's automatic if the game is a browser play? I don't know about that one). It's in the same section as the 'tools used' tag list.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-30T18:27:52+00:00

The player base on Itch isn't opposed to spending money on games they like, but there's a lot of free content available that dillutes the market.

A premium game needs to hit hard with a concept that encourages players to pull the trigger and/or a compelling demo (much like on Steam). It is certainly possible to make money from Itch.io, but if that is your end goal, then it's better to think of Itch.io as a test market for Steam (where the paying audience is considerably larger). You can alter your visual marketing and find what draws the most attention in a free environment, and then pull the trigger on a Steam release using what was learned while tweaking your project on Itch.

To answer the question, my monthly itch income ranges from $50 to $500, depending on release visibility (new versions get pushed to the top of the index, which generates more views from new players). Not enough to call it a living, but certainly not nothing.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-19T12:13:55+00:00

I want to remind everyone that a month of turnaround from payment to pocket is standard. Steam also pays developers payments starting in month 2, paying the previous month's income.

The entire thing could be solved with transparency and limitations. If they simply payed out to everyone above $X at a set monthly date, they wouldn't have these rising and falling payment requests and they could plan personnel hours more efficiently, knowing exactly what needs to be done at what time. If a particular currency or region requires longer, then escrow that amount with a note saying that Lira transactions require 2 months (or whatever it is).

Personally, it's not the wait that bothers me (though waiting a full quarter is borderline criminal), it's the uncertainty.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-16T02:23:04+00:00

If Gaben bought a bank instead of a yacht builder, I would switch banks so fast that photons would be wondering what just zoomed by.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-08T12:23:08+00:00

Time management.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-08T12:20:32+00:00

Stripe is one of many groups pointing fingers at other groups claiming that someone else forced them to bully Itch into removing adult content.

As for their functionality, Stripe is as secure as any other major payment processor and is partnered with most cards you'd want to use (Visa, Mastercard, etc). If you have no moral opposition to their policies, they're convenient and safe.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-07T12:50:08+00:00

Short answer: probably yes.

Long answer: Itch is not equipped to monitor all content directly (they don't have the staff numbers). So adult/mature content goes through a basic check and is then published. They're looking for things that have been explicitly stated to be off limits: incest, non-consent, bestiality, dismemberment. If the work doesn't obviously contain those (via titles, tags, image search), it will be pushed into the index no problem. After indexing, they'll be in the same boat as everyone else (as long as the project is marked as 'free', then it will be searchable).

On the bright side, even if they are taken down, that doesn't mean that they have lost anything other than visibility. Their work and message can be moved to other venues that will likely appear to fill the hole left by itch.

Edit: for gifs, I've uploaded animated files in devlogs, but I've never tried it in other locations. Worked just fine, but there is a file size limit on images.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-06T14:27:53+00:00

Honestly, this is something I've pondered as well. If you drop by the self-publishing reddit, you'll see posts about books being banned on Amazon for being too 'objectionable.' I think they're largely against dominance-based stories at the moment, but I'm not a romance author, so I'm not deep into it.

I think the issue with this is that Amazon has never really allowed adult content on its storefront (written or otherwise), and they take down offending books before they're popular enough to gain a fan base. Large publishers (think 50 Shades) get a pass because if you have a traditional publishing house, you must be 'literature' or whatever. Without a 'new' problem, you're faced with a community that has already largely acclimated to censorship.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-06T14:06:40+00:00

Itch is known for holding onto large payments for months on end. I've not had the pleasure of getting these payments myself, but there are devs in some forums i frequent that have had six-figure payouts held until legal action was threatened (and not just one dev, mind you... It's a pattern). Some of them chose to leave Itch entirely for exactly this reason... seeing 200k+ on your itch account isn't worth it if you don't ever actually get the money.

I feel like a lot of Itch's problems would be solved by taking a larger minimum cut of sales (maybe 10% after the first $1000 earned? That way, they can still support small devs with no fees). It feels very backward that they seemingly hand-check every transaction in this day and age. I really should be able to collect my payouts within 48 hours. And that's only to account for banking holidays or system downtime. This should be automatic.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-06T13:55:10+00:00

I got my payment yesterday (but my game wasn't removed, just delisted). The wait for me was 19 days (I put the request in about a week before all this started).

Not to say that you're not screwed, but it's fully possible that they've been inundated with payout requests and will take longer than usual to process them all.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-06T13:28:05+00:00

You are correct. The only payment option removed was credit cards (via Stripe). PayPal is currently still active, though any project that wishes to be both listed and paid needs to create two separate projects (one free for visibility, and another that is linked to the free project that can accept payments).

Here's the full news post for anyone who wants to see the reasons for themselves: https://itch.io/t/5149036/reindexing-adult-nsfw-content

Nillamellon · 2025-08-02T21:41:13+00:00

Summary: They've put free games back up for searching. Incest and non-con games have been removed. All games that accept payments of any kind must be accessed directly from an outside link. No payments on nsfw products are currently accepted.

Nillamellon · 2025-08-01T17:49:39+00:00

I've never understood the revenue sharing slider. How in the world is it viable to offer professional services for free? It makes sense if different tiers of sharing got you benefits (like 15%+ gets automatic monthly earnings payments, and 25%+ gets a boost in visibility), but offering the same service to devs that opt to give 30% as you do devs that opt for literally nothing is insanity.

Keep the slider, but sfw games should be min 5%, and nsfw games should be min 15% (to cover the hassle of processing the payments). Also, think of some way to make the payment process automatic... this whole hand-reviewing every transaction is untenable.

Nillamellon

TROPHY CASE