If you have noticed this Itch.io game has over thousand reviews on Steam and is on the front page of steam as a trending title. It's obviously a good game but I'm curious how did it break through?
Hm, interesting case actually. Was this an itch game before? It's page shows only comments from after it was released on Steam, but it was updated just recently.
https://evan12811.itch.io/cave-crawler
However, there is no reply anywhere from the author or additional info about the author and I don't see any hint of profiting off of it in any way or announcement of more content or so. Haven't played it myself, though.
I find this pretty odd, if you go through the effort of publishing on Steam. Doesn't it cost some money to publish there?
steam has a review filter, you can see the number of reviews on who got the game through keys. All the reviews are given keys, the person paid $100 to get the game on steam, then paid people to review his game though fake review websites. Then removed the game in itch.io for reasons we don't know, maybe to hide the fact that it maybe malware. Steam/Valve does not chech games for malware that is only through a computer, the person who made Cave Crawler has the traits of a scammer.
It's certainly an interesting theory but reviews are in two categories: "Steam purchasers" and "other" and a lot of completely free games seem to have all their reviews, positive and negative in "other". I'm not sure downloading a free game from Steam counts as a purchase unless you actually pay for something?