The popular digital storefront for independent developers, itch.io, shared alarming statistics: the number of new project pages created daily has doubled over the past two months alone. The main reason for this surge was a wave of low-quality projects created using generative artificial intelligence.
Proliferation of generated content
As platform representatives note, due to the rapid spread of generative AI, digital storefronts are being flooded with repetitive and hastily made games. This poses a serious threat to talented indie creators who invest a lot of effort and time into the handcrafted development of original projects, only to get lost in the endless stream of low-grade content.
Main challenges for the indie industry
- A rapid doubling of daily publications on itch.io over the last two months.
- Decreased visibility of original, handcrafted games on digital storefronts.
- The need to introduce stricter moderation and content sorting algorithms in online stores.
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