itch.io

Readiness by lane

Green: itch.io. Thin bar: Gaming Platforms & Consoles peer median.

Priority fixes for itch.io

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Static files cached for 30 days or more

   Observed: A same-site stylesheet or script was cacheable for 1 days, short of the 30-day benchmark.

   Why it matters: Returning visitors and later page views reuse cached files instead of downloading them again.

   What to do: Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

   On Cloudflare: Use Cache Rules to set edge and browser TTLs for static file paths.

   46% of Gaming Platforms & Consoles peers do this. Limit: Read from the homepage response only; other pages or regions may send different headers.

   Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

2. Priority 2 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Strict-Transport-Security header.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   On Cloudflare: Enable HSTS under SSL/TLS > Edge Certificates > HTTP Strict Transport Security and raise max-age gradually.

   30% of Gaming Platforms & Consoles peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 75 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   On Cloudflare: Cloudflare Polish can convert images to WebP.

   43% of Gaming Platforms & Consoles peers do this.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 2 external scripts without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   49% of Gaming Platforms & Consoles peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

What itch.io already does well

Practices fewer than half of Gaming Platforms & Consoles peers use.

• Referrer-Policy setReferrer-Policy present.26% of peers
• X-Content-Type-Options: nosniffnosniff header present.38% of peers
• Structured data presentJSON-LD structured data found.40% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://itch.io/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Google Trust Services, 90-day validity, expiring 2027-01-16

CDN or edge

Cloudflare

DNS operators

Cloudflare

DMARC policy

p=none

Homepage HTML

110 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

75 (svg 2)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Gaming Platforms & Consoles sites

• belot.md56
• meta10s.com56
• peppalearning.com56
• sqex-bridge.jp57
• xn--n9jvd7d3d0ad5cwnpcu694dohxad89g.com57

Gaming Platforms & Consoles readiness benchmark