I didn't see such complaints often yet.

There are sites where I have had real troubles finding the download links, and more than once I got some adware instead of what I wanted to download ... but this site is pretty clean compared.

Orange hues work with blue, but they stick out quite a bit. Well, I guess that is just what you want. But finding an orange link is no easier than finding a blue link. And actually, in the early days of the www, all links were blue, so I'd rather recognize a blue text to be linky than an orange one ...

Who is on the Internet but can't figure out how to click links? I mean, come on. Something fishy is up there.

The complaint is valid and comes up every now and then. Realise that a few people who bother to complain about it, means there's a silent majority who can't figure it out and give up.

Maybe a different link colour will work, but there are other methods like adding a border around the download list. This is a UX question and is better left for professionals rather than bikeshedders.

There's another related complaint that sometimes clicking the links will open up a media player rather than download. This can be fixed on the server by setting .htaccess accordingly: http://www.htaccess-guide.com/ensuring-media-files-are-downloaded-instea...

So one obnoxious person posting a rude comment means more people who come to this site can't click links than people who can? And your evidence for this is the conspicious lack of actual evidence for it? Right.

Links are literally the most basic and common user interface element of the web. But I suppose "bikeshedders" are to blame for that.

Well it's not just one person; take a look at these:

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/download-super-newbie-question

http://opengameart.org/content/epic-fantasy-music

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/how-to-download-sound-files-on-this-site

http://opengameart.org/content/windmill

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/download-music

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/help-with-downloading-the-files-0

http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/download-help

I believe we should make things easy and foolproof when we can and it doesn't detract from anything else, because why not? And in this case we can: by improving the styling, whether it's link colours as OP suggested or some other method.

The reference to "bikeshedders" was made in haste but what I meant to say is, debating what colours to use is the kind of trivial matter that attracts more noise than signal, so it's better to just get a single competent designer to come up with a solution and implement it.

I do agree with complaint about download links being unobvious, because at first I though preview images are the content and in some cases they are. In other cases preview images contain non-free material, author used just to illustrate the usage.

Also, thare are some edge cases, where some people, for promotional purposes, submit incomplete sprite/animation into public domain, requesting payment for the complete one (which will be under some no-free EULA). I guess if somebody completes such sprite/animation, they may get overly offensive, sending cease-and-desist letters or even suing.

Examples:

http://opengameart.org/content/male-warrior-sprite-animations

http://opengameart.org/content/margery-limited

http://opengameart.org/content/bridge-bleeds-game-art

Here we have a problem - the artist has uploaded a preview image, which contains some non-free content:

http://opengameart.org/content/fallen#comment-37381

somebody may mistakenly use it and get into troubles. Should previews be under the same license as submissions?