The Itch Market Brief, sample issue

The week itch turned over

Issue #0 · Week of November 1 to 7, 2026 · From daily chart tracking nobody else publishes

A quick word on what this is. Itch doesn't publish sales or download numbers for other people's games, and this brief never pretends otherwise. What follows is chart data: where games sat on itch's public charts, day by day, read as plainly as we can read it.

Two charts, two completely different speeds

The main Top Games chart is sticky. Of the 72 games on it when we started tracking on November 1, 41 were still there on November 7. Across the week, 110 different games took a turn in those 72 slots.

New & Popular is the opposite. Only 2 of its 36 games from November 1 were still on it on November 7. Ninety-three different games passed through 36 slots in one week. Getting on New & Popular is an event. Staying on Top Games is a career.

What the top of itch looks like right now

Visual novels aren't a niche on itch, they're the main chart: 39 of the 72 Top Games on November 7 are visual novels, and 3 of the current top 5 are visual novels, including the current number 1. Simulation is a distant second with 9 slots. No other genre holds more than 4.

Most of the chart is free. Only 15 of the 72 Top Games show a price. On New & Popular it's 10 of 36. The audience the charts reward mostly isn't paying at the door.

The breakout signal worth watching

Twenty games sat on both charts at once on November 7. That overlap is the pattern to watch: a game new and popular enough for the fast chart while also holding a main chart slot is the closest thing itch has to a public breakout indicator. Three names did it at the very top this week, holding top 5 slots on both charts at once. Future issues will track how often the overlap names turn into long main chart stays. For scale: the median game in our first week charted for 4 days, 37 games charted on all 7 days, and 27 appeared for a single day and were gone.

What this means if you make games for itch

1. Treat New & Popular as a launch window measured in days, not a placement. Almost nobody stays. Whatever a launch is supposed to do, it has to do it that week.
2. The main chart rewards staying power in exactly the genres itch's audience already shows up for. That isn't an argument to chase visual novels if you don't make them. It is the size of the room you're launching into if you do.
3. Free is the chart's default. A priced game competes for attention against a chart that's four-fifths free, so the page has to earn the exception fast.

Next week

Tracking continues daily. Issue #1 adds the first real week-over-week movers, in bands, plus whether this week's overlap names held.