A quick glance at Steam or itch.io shows how gaming storefronts are flooded with new games as more developers use generative AI, making it harder than ever for indie devs with hand-crafted games to stand out. A recent social media post by itch.io revealed some new data highlighting just how bad the situation has become. As a gaming website and storefront, itch.io is positioned to be a very indie-friendly platform where almost anyone can sell or distribute the games they are working on.
It's full of student-made and game jam projects, but many higher-profile indies are also available through itch.io and often given away in charity bundles. Because itch.io is already a very accessible and useful platform for indie developers, the new data it's shared is all the more concerning. Late on Oct. 31, itch.io took to Bluesky to reveal that the number of game pages being created each day has doubled since Aug. 2026.
According to the graph shared, the number of pages created per day was around 3,000 back then; now, that number is over 6,000 as of Oct. 30. Other replies from itch.io indicate that AI projects make up the majority of these new pages too. If one were to try to take a more optimistic look at this data, they could argue that having more games listed on itch.io will cause exponentially more games to be sold or downloaded.
That's not what's happening. While no graph for this data point was shared, itch.io confirmed in another reply that "The number of downloads and purchases has not doubled" since Aug. 2026. If you're planning to distribute a game through itch.io in the near future, this is all very concerning.
An influx of new releases, many of which are likely created with generative AI, flood the very platforms indie developers desperately need visibility on and don't bring any sort of audience growth with them. Steam is equally crammed, with many Steam Next Fest demos also being drowned out or stolen by AI-made competition. Unless platforms like itch.io or Steam really put their foot down and closely monitor and restrict the release of generative AI-made content on their platforms (itch.io already asks developers to disclose AI usage), this will continue to be a problem plaguing the video game industry.
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