The History of itch.io: The Indie Game Marketplace
itch.io occupies a strange and important place in modern game distribution. It’s not the biggest marketplace — Steam dwarfs it on revenue and user count — but it’s the one indie developers reach for first when they want to ship something without asking permission. Founded in 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the site became the default home for game jams, experimental projects, and games too small or weird for the mainstream stores. The history of itch.io is the history of an alternative model that quietly worked.
Key takeaways
- itch.io was founded in 2013 by Leaf Corcoran.
- The platform lets developers set their own revenue split — most opt to give the platform a share, some pay nothing.
- It became the default home for game jams, especially Ludum Dare and the GMTK Game Jam.
- Major indie hits including Celeste, Baba Is You, and Among Us launched or were available on itch.io.
- The site has hosted high-profile charity bundles that raised millions for causes including racial justice and Ukraine relief.
The 2013 origin
Leaf Corcoran launched itch.io in 2013 as a side project. The pitch was that existing indie game marketplaces — at the time, primarily Steam Greenlight and the Humble Store — weren’t actually that hospitable to small developers. Greenlight had a voting bottleneck. Humble was selective about what it carried. There was no genuinely open marketplace where any developer could upload a game and start selling it within minutes.
itch.io filled that gap. The site let any developer create an account, upload a game (executable, web build, or asset pack), set their own price (including “free” or “pay what you want”), and have a product page live in the time it took to fill in a form. No curation gate, no approval queue, no platform fee unless the developer chose to give one.
The revenue model
The defining feature of itch.io’s economics is that the developer sets the platform’s revenue share. The default is 10% to itch.io, 90% to the developer, but the slider lets the developer adjust to anywhere from 0% (the platform takes nothing) to 100% (the platform takes everything, mostly used for charity uploads). Most developers leave the default; some give itch.io more out of appreciation; some give it less.
This is the inverse of every other major game marketplace. Steam takes a flat 30% (with some volume-based reductions). The App Store takes 30% (with reductions for small developers and subscriptions). The Epic Games Store takes 12%, which is considered generous in the industry. itch.io taking a developer-controlled percentage — often genuinely 0% — is structurally unusual and intentional. Corcoran has said in interviews that the choice was about giving developers actual leverage over their own distribution economics.
The game jam infrastructure
One of itch.io’s earliest and most important wedges into the indie scene was its game jam tooling. Game jams — short development sprints where participants build a game in 48 or 72 hours around a theme — had been a fixture of the indie scene for over a decade. itch.io built first-class tools for hosting jams: pages for the jam itself, automated submission collection, voting infrastructure, and aggregated views of all submissions.
By the mid-2010s, itch.io had become the default platform for major jams. Ludum Dare, the GMTK Game Jam (run by YouTuber Mark Brown), and dozens of smaller community jams all centralized their submissions on itch. This created a flywheel: developers came to itch.io for jams, then stayed to publish their longer projects there. The jam infrastructure became one of the platform’s strongest moats.
The indie hits
itch.io has hosted launches and ongoing distribution for many of the most acclaimed indie games of the last decade. Celeste, Maddy Thorson’s platformer, was originally a Ludum Dare game hosted on itch before being expanded into the full Switch and PC release. Baba Is You, Arvi Teikari’s puzzle game, has been distributed on itch alongside its other releases. Among Us, before it went viral years after launch, was available on itch.io.
The platform also hosts a long tail of experimental and avant-garde games that wouldn’t fit on more commercial stores. The Hayseed Knight, A Short Hike, and countless other small projects found their first audience on itch. Tabletop role-playing games and zine-style interactive fiction have a significant presence on the platform that’s distinct from what you’d find on Steam.
The charity bundles
One of itch.io’s most visible cultural moments was the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality in June 2020. The site organized a single bundle containing over 1,700 games donated by their developers, available for a minimum of $5, with all proceeds going to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Community Bail Fund. The bundle raised over $8 million in a few days — a remarkable demonstration of what the platform’s flexibility enabled.
The model has been repeated for other causes. The Bundle for Ukraine, launched in March 2022, raised millions for humanitarian relief efforts. Smaller themed bundles regularly raise funds for various causes. The combination of itch.io’s flexible revenue infrastructure, its developer-friendly defaults, and its community’s willingness to participate has made these bundles a recurring feature of the platform.
itch.io vs. Steam
The simplest way to think about itch.io’s relationship to Steam: Steam is where indie games go when they want to make money; itch.io is where indie games go when they want to exist. Many developers ship on both — itch.io for the early-access community, the experimental side projects, and the long tail of weird stuff, with Steam reserved for the polished commercial releases that need the larger discovery surface.
The two platforms aren’t really competing for the same outcomes. Steam optimizes for revenue and discovery at scale. itch.io optimizes for creator control and a marketplace that doesn’t gatekeep. They coexist because most indie developers want both — distribution where their friends and game jam peers are, and distribution where Steam’s algorithm might surface them to a paying audience.
The platform today
In 2026, itch.io is still independently owned and still run by a small team led by Leaf Corcoran. The site has grown substantially since 2013 — millions of games, hundreds of thousands of developers, and a steady stream of bundles, jams, and feature updates. But the core model is essentially unchanged: open uploads, developer-set revenue split, no curation gate.
The platform faces real challenges. Discovery on itch.io is famously difficult — the site doesn’t have Steam’s algorithmic surfacing, and unless your game catches a wave through a jam, a bundle, or external coverage, it can be hard to find an audience. itch.io has been gradually improving its discovery tools, but the open-marketplace tension between “anyone can upload” and “good stuff is easy to find” remains unresolved.
Why itch.io worked
Three reasons: a revenue model that genuinely treated developers as the customer rather than the supplier, early investment in game jam infrastructure that became a long-term acquisition channel, and an indie scene that increasingly valued creator-friendly distribution over commercial scale. For more on the broader landscape itch.io operates in, the itch.io Wikipedia article covers the platform’s history and notable bundles.
The legacy
itch.io is the existence proof that an alternative model can work in game distribution. The site didn’t displace Steam — that was never the goal — but it created a parallel infrastructure where smaller, weirder, more experimental work can find an audience without going through a commercial gate. For indie developers, that’s structurally important even when the revenue is small.
The site’s continued independence is also worth noting. Many indie-friendly platforms (Bandcamp, for one) have ended up acquired by larger companies with different priorities. itch.io has remained independent through more than a decade of growth, which is rare in a tech landscape that defaults to acquisition.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded itch.io?
Leaf Corcoran founded itch.io in 2013 as a side project that grew into a full-time platform. He remains involved in running the company, which has stayed independent of larger industry acquisitions.
How does itch.io’s revenue split work?
Developers set the platform’s revenue share themselves, using a slider on the upload form. The default is 10% to itch.io and 90% to the developer, but it can be set anywhere from 0% (itch.io takes nothing) to 100% (itch.io takes everything, used mostly for charity uploads).
What kinds of games are on itch.io?
Everything from major indie releases (Celeste, Baba Is You, A Short Hike) to game jam submissions, experimental art games, tabletop RPGs, asset packs, and interactive fiction. The open-uploads model means the catalog is extremely diverse.
Is itch.io still independent in 2026?
Yes. itch.io has remained an independently owned company since its 2013 founding and has not been acquired by any larger gaming or tech company. Leaf Corcoran continues to lead the team.
What was the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality?
A June 2020 bundle on itch.io containing over 1,700 games donated by their developers, sold for a minimum of $5 with all proceeds going to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Community Bail Fund. It raised over $8 million in a few days.
The takeaway
itch.io is what game distribution looks like when the platform actually puts creators first. Leaf Corcoran’s 2013 marketplace became the default home for experimental, jam-driven, and creator-controlled indie distribution — and stayed independent while doing it. For a different kind of zero-friction browser game experience, the Chrome Dino game is one tab away. For the long tail of what indie distribution can look like, itch.io is the platform to know.
