RFD_IT_Publishing: A Tool Built to Be Absorbed

The Original Vision

A small Python CLI that pushes game builds to itch.io through butler, itch.io’s upload tool, with a per-game YAML config describing where each build goes.

What Changed

All the games it published lived in RFDGameStudio, so keeping the publisher in its own repository only added coordination. On 13 September 2026 it moved into the studio.

The Harvest

The move worked because of a design choice made early: the publisher never depended on the code calling it. That let it enter RFDGameStudio as a self-contained package (packages/itch_publisher) with its full commit history intact. The studio talks to it through a single “published” hook, and one git subtree split command can turn it back into its own repository.

GitHub: RFD_IT_Publishing (read-only) · Now lives in: RFDGameStudio