Indie platform itch.io has seen an abnormal increase in the number of new game pages, without a corresponding increase in downloads or purchases. Over the past two months, the daily volume of posts has doubled, and the main reason for this phenomenon is believed to be artificial intelligence content generation.
Indie platform itch.io has seen an abnormal increase in the number of new game pages, without a corresponding increase in downloads or purchases. Over the past two months, the daily volume of posts has doubled, and the main reason for this phenomenon is believed to be artificial intelligence content generation.
This was reported by PC Gamer with a link to a post on the itch.io account on the Bluesky social network.
According to the published graph, the number of pages created daily increased from about 3,000 to over 6,000 between August and October. When asked by users about the reasons for this jump, the official itch.io account limited itself to hints, adding emojis with tears and a robot. When asked directly whether this was an AI scam, the marketplace representatives responded with an emoji with bags under their eyes.
The number of game pages being created per day has doubled in the past 2 months
— itch.io (@itch.io) November 1, 2026 at 5:51 am
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The rapid surge in game content generation coincided with the release of new versions of large language models, in particular Anthropic’s Claude Opus, which significantly simplified code writing and reverse engineering. As a result, developers and enthusiasts began to mass-produce stamped projects. Currently, of the more than 1.77 million games presented on itch.io, more than 131,000 (about 7,5%) have the official “AI Generated” label.
Itch.io’s rules state that using automated systems to mass-produce pages is considered spam. The platform requires authors to honestly disclose the use of generative AI and reserves the right to exclude such projects from search and recommendations or block them entirely.
Recall that more than a third of indie games presented at the October Steam Next Fest festival were created using generative artificial intelligence tools. Compared to the June event, the share of such projects almost doubled, which outraged players.
Previously, dev.ua talked to Ukrainian game development specialists about the use of AI in development, whether the situation is really so catastrophic, and what Valve needs to do to avoid hate in the future.
