It’s more of a space for indie games without having the barrier of dealing with Steam and all that set up.

Like if I wanted to make a game about pooping in my neighbor’s yard, I can just upload the game to itch and have it ready for people to play. (Or sell it too).

With Steam, you have a significantly bigger set up. There so many more things to configure, things that a indie dev may not be ready to answer yet. Not to mention, it opens up the door to reviews and criticism from the “general gaming public”.

It’s common for most indie devs to use itch.io to test run their game ideas with a small crowd before launching it on Steam.