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(1 edit) (+2)

yes they do, but comments also appear to outside users! People who don't have an account here. So... I think comments are better?

What you describe does seem like mob mentality, which is common on the internet... but I'm not sure the review system is what's truly protecting developers here. Ill-intentioned people could still leave a negative rating AND a negative public comment... although that'd require 1 step more and thankfully people are lazy. I'd say one of the reasons there aren't many negative comments around is that... it's harder to get popular? maybe? idk, not an expert at all. I also very much like how friendly is itch.io to small creators and hope it stays this way.

dw4i2, if developers notices people are abusing from the comments on their page, they can either completely remove it, or change to a community based project, which is much better than having negative comments on the store page degrading their work. The Itch Team was really smart to think ahead about these possibilities.

Itch.io is a great place to publish games, but it's not everyone who can make it to the top, so it's more likely to happens with someone who's outstanding somehow, which awakens all sorts of feelings on direct competitors.

These countermeasures can't prevent harassment at all, but it can hinder most attempts and save any developer from massive review bombing consequences in the future.