diff --git a/itch_dl/api.py b/itch_dl/api.py
index f416a63..f59cc2c 100644
--- a/itch_dl/api.py
+++ b/itch_dl/api.py
@@ -28,7 +28,19 @@ class ItchApiClient:
         self.requests.mount("https://", adapter)
         self.requests.mount("http://", adapter)
 
-    def get(self, endpoint: str, append_api_key: bool = True, **kwargs) -> requests.Response:
+    def get(
+            self,
+            endpoint: str,
+            append_api_key: bool = True,
+            guess_encoding: bool = False,
+            **kwargs
+    ) -> requests.Response:
+        """Wrapper around `requests.get`.
+
+        :param endpoint: Path to fetch on the specified base URL.
+        :param append_api_key: Send an authenticated API request.
+        :param guess_encoding: Let requests guess the response encoding.
+        """
         if append_api_key:
             params = kwargs.get('data') or {}
 
@@ -42,4 +54,11 @@ class ItchApiClient:
         else:
             url = self.base_url + endpoint
 
-        return self.requests.get(url, **kwargs)
+        r = self.requests.get(url, **kwargs)
+
+        # Itch always returns UTF-8 pages and API responses. Force
+        # UTF-8 everywhere, except for binary file downloads.
+        if not guess_encoding:
+            r.encoding = 'utf-8'
+
+        return r
diff --git a/itch_dl/downloader.py b/itch_dl/downloader.py
index 3923852..b2e9f5f 100644
--- a/itch_dl/downloader.py
+++ b/itch_dl/downloader.py
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@ class GameDownloader:
         file to the provided path and returns the final URL that was downloaded."""
         try:
             # No timeouts, chunked uploads, default retry strategy, should be all good?
-            with self.client.get(url, data=credentials, stream=True) as r:
+            with self.client.get(url, data=credentials, stream=True, guess_encoding=True) as r:
                 r.raise_for_status()
 
                 if download_path is not None:  # ...and it will be for external downloads.
@@ -320,8 +320,8 @@ class GameDownloader:
             except Exception as e:
                 errors.append(f"Cover art download failed (this is not fatal): {e}")
 
-        with open(paths['site'], 'w') as f:
-            f.write(site.prettify())
+        with open(paths['site'], 'wb') as f:
+            f.write(site.prettify(encoding='utf-8'))
 
         with open(paths['metadata'], 'w') as f:
             json.dump(metadata, f, indent=4)