Ban Transparency

I was banned from participating in itch.io game jams by itch.io moderators after submitting my game to the GMTK Game Jam 2021. As my game is a constant experience of multiple game jam entries, so the game constantly changes on different game design challenges, and as the GMTK Game Jam did not contain a lot of rules about, and I was following the Joined Together theme, I thought it would be possible to submit as well. I thought wrong, it was a painful step. A flurry of disparaging comments from the GMTK community and many complaints/reports/flags.

I appealed with several emails to the itch.io administration which, despite being slow, reverted my ban after a few months. Unfortunately they erased all my game jam participation data such as ratings and comments, which was a bit frustrating.

Now I think that experimental games with multiple entries in game jams are not well accepted in the current idie dev paradigm, which is a great misfortune. There is also a standard type of game jam game that is more accepted, which I’ve tried to overcome with game design here.

Attached are the emails exchanged with the itch.io administration. I disclose promoting transparency so that other developers are aware of their own performance here at itch.io, especially when proposing certain “combobreaks”.