itch.io AI Game Policies in 2026: A Disclosure Guide for Indie Devs

Why itch.io's AI rules matter more than Steam's right now

itch.io has quietly become the most important storefront for AI-assisted indie games. It's where jam games, prototypes, and experimental projects ship first, and it's where a lot of developers test whether an AI-heavy workflow is viable before committing to a Steam page. So when itch.io updated its content rules, it changed the practical floor for AI disclosure across the indie ecosystem.

The current policy, in place since 2024 and unchanged in substance through 2026, is this: you must disclose if your project uses generative AI to produce assets, and you must mark the specific asset categories on the project submission form. You don't need to disclose assistive tools — code completion, spellcheck, a denoiser in Blender. The distinction is between tools that generate finished content and tools that help you make content yourself.

That sounds clean. In practice it isn't, and most of the confusion I see from developers comes from three places: the AI/assistive line, the difference between itch.io's rules and Steam's, and what happens when you update a project after launch. This piece walks through all three.

The disclosure form, decoded

When you create or edit a project on itch.io, you'll see an "AI disclosure" section asking whether the project uses generative AI. If you say yes, you get checkboxes for asset categories: graphics, sound, text, code, and a few others. You're not asked to name the model, the prompt, or the percentage of the game that's AI-made.

That last part matters. itch.io is not asking for provenance. It's asking for a category-level flag so players can filter. Treat it as a labeling system, not an audit.

A few rules of thumb I've seen hold up across hundreds of projects:

• If you generated a texture with Adobe Photoshop's Firefly and then painted over 80% of it, it's still AI-generated graphics. Disclose it.
• If you used Krita with a plugin to clean up line art you drew yourself, that's assistive. Don't tick the box.
• If you used Tripo3D to generate a prop mesh, then retopologized and retextured it by hand, it's still AI-generated 3D. Disclose it.
• If you used Copilot to autocomplete a shader function, that's code assistance. itch.io's policy doesn't require you to flag it, and in practice almost nobody does.

Where itch.io diverges from Steam

Steam's AI policy, in effect since January 2024 and refined through 2025, splits disclosure into two buckets: pre-generated (assets made with AI before release) and live-generated (AI running at runtime, e.g. an LLM-driven NPC). Steam requires you to describe your AI use in a public disclosure on the store page, and for live-generated content, you have to confirm you have guardrails in place.

itch.io does neither. There's no public disclosure text field, no live-generated category, and no guardrail requirement. The checkbox is the whole thing.

This creates a real trap: developers who ship on both platforms sometimes copy their Steam disclosure into their itch.io page and end up over-disclosing, or worse, assume itch.io's lighter treatment means they can skip the checkbox entirely. Both are mistakes. The itch.io form is mandatory when applicable, but it's also minimal — don't invent requirements that aren't there.

The other divergence is enforcement. Steam has pulled games over undisclosed AI content (the January 2024 case around a game using AI-generated art without disclosure is the one most cited, though Valve has never confirmed specifics). itch.io's enforcement is softer — reports from the community suggest takedowns are rare and usually triggered by player complaints rather than automated scanning. That doesn't make disclosure optional. It makes it a trust issue rather than a compliance issue.

Practical advice for shipping an AI-assisted game on itch.io

1. Decide disclosure before you start the page, not after. The checkbox affects how your project appears in itch.io's browse filters. Retrofitting it after a launch push means your early traffic saw the wrong listing.
2. Keep a one-page asset log. For each AI-generated asset category, note the tool, the date, and roughly what fraction of the category it covers. This isn't required by itch.io, but it takes ten minutes and saves you if a player or jam organizer asks.
3. Don't lump assistive tools into the disclosure. If you used Blender's AI denoiser or a code assistant, leave the box unticked. Over-disclosing dilutes the signal and makes the checkbox less useful for players who actually want to filter AI content.
4. Update the disclosure when you update the game. If you ship a patch that adds AI-generated voice lines via ElevenLabs or a similar tool, revisit the form. The policy applies to the current build, not just the launch build.
5. If you're running live AI at runtime, say so in the description. itch.io doesn't require it, but players increasingly expect it, and Steam players who cross over will look for it. A one-line note in the description costs nothing.
6. Game jams are the edge case. Most jam organizers now defer to itch.io's policy, but a few add their own AI rules. Read the jam page before you submit — the jam rule overrides the platform default.

What to expect through 2026 and into 2027

itch.io has shown no appetite for tightening its AI policy into a Steam-style disclosure regime. The platform's identity is built on low friction for small creators, and adding public disclosure fields or live-AI guardrail requirements would cut against that. I'd expect the checkbox to stay roughly as it is.

The pressure will come from elsewhere. Jam organizers, publishers scouting on itch.io, and the growing cohort of players who filter out AI content are all building their own norms on top of the platform's minimum. The developers who do well in that environment won't be the ones who game the checkbox — they'll be the ones who can answer "what did you make and what did the machine make?" in one sentence. That's a documentation habit, not a compliance one. Start it before your next upload.