Who gets to sell a game on a platform?
Itch.io’s 2025 payment dispute shows why discovery, sales and access need separate accounts when libraries follow small RPG publishers.
On 24 July 2025, itch.io announced that it had removed adult NSFW content from its browse and search indexes while responding to payment-processor pressure. Its explanation connected a decision about visibility to the platform’s ability to process payments for creators. The platform’s announcement
The event gives RPG-zine history a concrete infrastructure problem. A creator can write a publication and maintain its page while other organisations influence whether readers encounter it or can pay for it through the route they expect to use.
The cited statements are itch.io’s account of its own actions. They do not establish how many RPG zines were affected, and the July 2025 announcement should not be treated as an unchanged description of availability in October 2026.
Visibility, sale and access are separate states
The announcement’s FAQ distinguished deindexing from access to previously acquired files. A later 31 July update announced reindexing of free adult NSFW content and described continuing discussions about paid content. The sequence matters because an account that stops at the first announcement loses the subsequent change.
For a librarian, these distinctions affect the question to ask. A title absent from search may still have a reachable page. A reachable page may have different purchasing conditions. A purchase record may give access to files even when the public discovery route has changed.
Those are possibilities to verify for the actual title. They should not be collapsed into a general statement that the game has vanished. The acquisition note can record the route checked, the date and the observed condition, so a later staff member knows what the description means.
The same precision protects against an opposite mistake. A saved link does not prove that a future reader will be able to obtain the same file. A collection relying on that route needs a plan for checking it and for preserving authorised holdings within its own arrangements.
The payment system participates in publishing
Star and Ruhleder’s analysis of infrastructure examines the relation between technical arrangements and organised practice. A payment service can seem like background machinery until its requirements change what a publisher can offer through a platform.
The 2025 announcements make that relation visible. They identify dependencies beyond the creator and the marketplace’s own editorial choices. The resulting publication environment includes financial intermediaries whose decisions can affect the route between a maker and a reader.
Aaron Trammell’s analysis of analogue games and the digital economy similarly directs attention to the digital work and systems surrounding apparently physical games. A printed zine can depend on online discovery, promotion, payment and coordination even though the object itself contains no electronics.
That helps explain why collecting only the finished booklet may leave part of its publishing history undocumented. Where the collection’s scope includes production and circulation, a dated creator statement or platform announcement can explain changes that the physical object cannot record by itself.
Collection development should have its own reasons
A marketplace’s search results are a useful discovery source. They are also a selected view shaped by the platform’s categories, policies and technical arrangements. A library should be able to explain its selection through its own collection purpose rather than treating visibility on one platform as an endorsement.
The same applies to absence. A missing search result may justify checking another authorised route. It does not establish low demand, poor quality or the creator’s withdrawal from publishing. Those claims require evidence of their own.
I would retain a small number of relevant creator and publisher routes alongside platform browsing. This is particularly useful where a collection has a defined interest in work whose availability has changed. The method need not attempt to monitor the whole field to avoid relying on a single index.
When a creator offers another legitimate purchase route, the library can assess it through ordinary acquisition procedures. If no suitable route is available, record the obstacle precisely. “Unable to purchase through the institution’s approved methods” identifies a different problem from “publication no longer exists.”
Preserve the event without acquiring more than the remit allows
An academic collection studying game publishing may want a dated account of the policy change and selected creators’ public responses. Those records can support research into how visibility and trade are organised. Their inclusion should follow a stated collection scope and the relevant permissions or institutional basis.
A public library may have a narrower immediate concern: whether readers can obtain a title already recommended. Staff can update the recommendation with a verified route or explain the present limitation without turning a routine enquiry into an unsupported account of the creator’s circumstances.
Neither context requires speculation about unpublished sales or personal income. A platform event may plausibly affect a creator’s business, but the extent of that effect needs evidence. The fact of a policy change and its documented mechanism are already substantial subjects for analysis.
Creator contact should therefore be purposeful. Ask about an edition or purchase route when that information is needed. A small publisher should not be expected to produce a research report about their finances merely because an institution wants a complete story of a platform dispute.
Keep dates attached to the account
A useful collection record can say what was discoverable, purchasable or downloadable at a particular time and through which route. If the condition changes, the record can be updated while preserving the earlier observation where it matters to the research.
The July 2025 sequence shows why that modest discipline matters. The platform’s own account changed within days. A library that retains the sequence can explain the event more accurately than one that preserves a dramatic first headline as a permanent condition.
RPG zines travel through systems that their makers do not entirely control. Following those systems gives the collection a fuller account of publication, while keeping the creator’s work distinct from the changing conditions under which it can be found and sold.
