itch.io sees daily new game pages double to over 6,000

itch.io has reported that the number of new game pages created on its storefront each day doubled over a two-month stretch, according to pcgamer.com. The indie storefront shared a bar chart of "game events" on Bluesky showing daily new game pages rising from around 3,000 to regularly over 6,000 between August 3 and October 30.

The increase was not matched by demand. itch.io stated that downloads and purchases have not doubled alongside the doubled number of new game pages per day.

The same ratio appeared on Steam, where demos at the most recent Next Fest went from around 4,000 to over 8,000. When asked why the increase happened, itch.io replied "take a guess" with crying-face and robot emojis.

AI-tagged games and calls for a ban

Of the 1,769,316 games listed on itch.io at the time of writing, 131,929 are tagged as AI Generated, about 7.5% of the total. Replies to itch.io's initial post included calls to ban AI-generated games from the store.

AI researcher Mike Cook said banning AI-generated games would be a good move but would not change the chart, as enforcement needs a team of people or a reporting system.

Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 launched on July 24 and proved adept at reverse engineering code, with knock-on effects including faster decompilations, AI slop flooding Steam and developers cancelling public demos over cloning concerns. Anthropic has since updated Claude to limit its ability to directly copy games; the model is now at version 5.5, and Valve has cast doubt on the efficacy of a ban on AI coding tools for games released on Steam.