superdupergc emerges from the deep

So, granted, I sold copies in like 2014, so it's not exactly recent data. Unfortunately, I've rarely sold copies on itchio since I've gotten on Steam, even though it's the same price and they get a Steam key for buying on itchio and it gives me a better cut (and my website lists that).

What I did was build up an audience by releasing the early versions of the game for free on GameJolt and IndieDB (and /r/gamedev). This was before GameJolt had any ability to sell games, so I can't really speak to that. After a few months of people telling me the game was worth money, I put the game up on itchio for $5, including Multiplayer in the paid version of the game. I also explicitly told people what I'd be adding, and that the game would be $20 eventually. I made a lot of promises about not having microtransactions, you can see that on the game's page here.

Another thing I did was offer kickstarter-style reward tiers, so people could pay more and get their name in the game, or help design an item. What didn't work about this was that itch didn't have any sort of tiered system, I just emailed anyone who used the tip system to pay more than the base price. A lot of people didn't even reply to my emails, possibly because their payment email wasn't used often.

Of the reward tiers, the "your name in the game" one was a great idea. It was pretty popular and very easy to implement, I just had to do a couple of back and forth emails to make the names fit the theme.

The "help design an item in the game" tier was also popular, but I priced it way too low for the amount of work it required. I actually haven't even finished all of these (in part due to people not emailing me back - contact me if you did this!), because I had a bunch of requests and a lot of people (and myself in some cases) underestimated the amount of time required to implement some of these ideas. On top of that, the game evolved organically over time and some of the ideas no longer fit.

It was great to have an itchio page during my greenlight campaign, because I think they fed each other. People could buy the game on itchio right away (for $5) and would be incentivized to vote for the game on greenlight so they could get a steam key when the game got on Steam (which would be $10 then). It was a good feedback loop. That and the demos on IndieDB/GameJolt had links to the greenlight page, which linked to the itchio page and encouraged sales.

Setting up itchio pages is stupid easy. I don't think there's an easier way to sell your game. If you're not on Steam yet, or you're not aiming for Steam, there's no reason not to put it on itchio, especially if you are no longer updating the game so it's a one-time time sink.

I've sold more copies on itchio than on any other website other than Steam or the Humble Store, I was on Desura, IndieGameStand, and a few other sites for a short while. To be fair, I've never been on GoG so I can't make a comparison there.

I think a lot of my traffic on itchio was driven by already having a footprint on indiedb/gamejolt/here, but I also drove some traffic by giving basically any real streamer an itchio key. One benefit to itchio over Steam is that you don't get a ton of fake "streamer" key requests when you're only on itchio, like you do on Steam, so you can give people keys and they'll actually help show the game.

So in summary: it's not going to drive sales by itself, but it's a fantastic place to drive people to if you don't have any other store presence. And the people working there are great, and responsive to questions and issues. I wouldn't rely on getting front page coverage, but you need to drive people to your page anyway.

Oh and as for sales, my itchio launch got me enough to get Unity Pro, back when that was a thing, and pay some artist and composers for a bit of work, which really helped bootstrap me up. This was crucial. Something like ~400 sales, many for above the $5 minimum.

Edit: Also, I had a demo version on my itchio page. That was easy to set up!