Nope. My personal philosophy is that if something can run in the browser it should run in the browser. It’s just safer.
Based on this forum post while Itch does have virus and malware scanning,“VirusTotal is not accurate enough in a lot of cases for us to automatically suspend content, so typically content gets put into a review queue where we human review it.”
While I would never knowingly distribute malware, if something sneaky made it into an executable program that I put up for download I would never forgive myself.
HTML5 games are justMUCH SAFER, and it’s better if you don’t have totrust me bro to enjoy the game.
While I agree with everything you said, I still think providing a downloadable version in addition to the one that runs in the browser has a purpose: preservation. If itch.io were to die someday, all the browser-only games will die with it. If people can download them locally, they can survive virtually forever. Not to mention that it also allows you to play them when you don’t have Internet access.
I, for one, love preserving all forms of art, games included. I still have flash games from the 2000s kept safe in multiple hard drives. While it is technically possible to archive HTML5 games, people will rarely do it as the process can get quite involved.
But yeah, in the end it’s your choice, just giving you another PoV :)
