Where do you guys publish and to you deal with updated?

First of all, let me clarify that I'm talking about commercials AND non-commercial games. Let's start with the first aspect of my quest: where do you publish? Steam? Itch.io? I know there are many sites to publish indie games, but I'm curious in your pick. Is it only one place? Or you try to publish it everywhere.

Which brings me to the next question: how to you deal with updates of your game? Steam has the big advantage of pushing updates automatically to players, which would be the primary reason I would use steam. If there's not some auto-update for players, how do you deal with updates? Upload the updated version and expect people to download and transfer their save files?

I use itch, GameJolt and rpgmaker.net. To update your game it's as easy as uploading a new build. Pretty straightforward.

I currently use only Steam and itch.io, exactly because of the updates. Itch.io updates automatically for those who use their client, but you can also download the game as a zip file, in which case it won't be updated automatically.

Both of them are very quick to update, because on your side they only upload what you changed and on the player's side it also only download the changes as needed. Most of the time the updates on my game are under 100KB because of that.

I released my game on multiple mirrors: Gamejolt, IndieDB, Microsoft Store and itch.io. Almost all of them have a sizable audience.

Most of the mirrors have a client, so all I need to do is to upload the update. Microsoft Store is a bit weird since my game needed to receive permission through a form and being check by a Microsoft employee to see that the game works within the Desktop Bridge. But after that, I submitted the app to the store. You will need to send every update to the game for certification, though, but the updates are simply downloading the files that have changed. On itch.io, I can use their upload tool. That generates patches for those who download the game via their client. Gamejolt's client downloads the game entirely (which in my case, I have a separate download for the client). For the rest of the cases, I have an installer (which also installs any dependencies I need to). I used to make a patcher, but since I switched to a different packaging system, I have to make a new patching system.

Ohh, I wasn't aware that itch.io has a client. So similarly to steam, once you push the updated version, it will automatically update the game of everyone who uses the client right?

And here I thought Steam was the only viable way to publish a game and periodically update. Silly me.

Yes. Although it's optional.

I use Itch and Gamejolt, In terms of Updating...I haven't found anything yet.

I use my own website/webhost for any and all games and their updates. If my own projects ever becomes good enough to publish I will try to get it on Steam, however.

So far I've used gamejolt and my own wordpress page. I have'nt had a game yet that I feel would be good to upload to the other sites, and especially steam (+ afaik they changed their setup now which now makes you need to pay some amount per game upload)

For updates, I just upload the updates and put a notice on the game page and in my social network accounts so that players can get it.

I also upload two versions of the update, one full install version and one that only contains the changed files from the previous version so that people who regularly update will have smaller downloads.

Save files normally remain safe during update since the update files dont have save files in them so the save files in the users comp won't be overridden.

I use itch mainly and RPGMaker.net. When I update I just pit a disclaimer to download the newest version. Because I use enigma box to encrypt, there's a separate folder I pack up with the .exe for saves. Updating is just replacing the .exe file. That way, hopefully, the save files don't get overridden.

I'm not really into all this stuff any more so my planned games that I'm working on now I plan to release on rpgmaker.net and here and if they seem to be enjoyed I would then after that focus on putting them anywhere else on the internet that would have them for free.

But these are non-commercial games of course.

When I was younger I made a demo for a VX game and posted it on every known free community site related to rpg maker as was possible, I remember there were many. Some of those are still up but some are no longer around, but at the time it was worth it as at least one person from most of those sites contacted me and gave me a bit of useful feedback.

Still though, if you think it's worth doing so, you could do the same without too much effort. Just need an account on all those sites and the formatting for posts or submission may be different, but it shouldn't be too hard to manage. I just don't do that at the moment because I plan to keep them restricted to just here and rpgmaker.net for now.

As for how to find them, just search for list of rpg maker communities into google and a lot of ones in your language should come up.

Here is a thread sharing all the ones I knew at the time and a few I didn't know about. Like I said there were more back then that are no longer around though.
https://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/20426/

As far as I know though, it's RPG Maker Web (This offical site/forum), rpgmaker.net and itch.io the main three ones people with RPG Maker hobbies would look at and get you some views. Maybe Reddit. I think a free game on Steam gets a more views than all of them by the sound of it, but because of an expensive price free I'm just not interested in that with free games, at least for now.

I think there are some RPG Maker MV games for Android on Google Play as well, but how or what needs to be done for that I've no idea.

Youtube used to be really good at it too, but nowadays it doesn't have the same feature that would recommend to you a ton of RPG Maker videos by everyone who makes them, like it use to. Still though, if you have a complete or near complete game, youtube is good for making trailers and if you have twitter or facebook those two sites are good for posting game images too, I think. I just know there are quite a few RPG Maker users out there that do do this.