itch.io has some errors when it comes to downloading game files. It happens in certain cases when a new game is uploaded, Clicking on download, and when the message "Thanks for downloading" appears, the download doesn't work, but where download errors happen the most, it's from external links, when browsers detect that the page of that game isn't completely secure, the external download link is detected as Pop-Up and is automatically blocked, unless you configure it.
There are people who feel cheated by not knowing that the browsers or even the Itch app doesn't work the downloads of some games, they start trying as many as 40 times in a row, and there are games that unfortunately have had the worst attacks of fake downloads of this class:
Sugar Rush Superraceway for example, a Unity fangame of the racing game from Wreck-It Ralph released in April of 2017, was launched starting with external download links from Google Drive, because at the time you couldn't upload file of more than 500 MB for direct download, and how the browser detected the page as "not completely secure" (reason for most downloads blocked as pop-ups), started with a bad foot, so I quickly added the alternative of downloading it on IndieDB links (where most downloads did work well there) for those who couldn't from external links, but not everyone paid attention, and users continued to download in the worst possible way.
Months later, I was remember the time I configured the browser and disable pop-up blocking so that my game download tests would be successful, update install instructions for how to configure browsers to download, and I was updating them and improving them over time, but for better edited and ordered that the instructions are, there were still people who didn't pay attention to it (usually by hurry or not knowing the English), and downloading the game badly.
Until now (October, 1 of 2018), the game came to have 3460 downloads, among which, between 46-54% would estimate that they were fake downloads, it is more, had moments that got to have until between 10 and 20 failed downloads by attempts mainly due to that blocked by their browsers. I have even managed to finally add direct downloads with the ultra-compressed and in v0.9, and not even solve the problem that would worsen more and more in September 30, where he registered up to 102 downloads out of 36 views, and 80-84 of them were fake downloads, and part of them were caused by sitebender, who ended up throwing in the towel with a negative review saying: "I do want to play this, but after a year of trying, I was unable to" I explained the reasons why their downloads didn't work, and it turned out that they were caused by the downloader of the itch app, but before I answered, I went to check it, and in doing so if it worked in the app with the ultra-compressed and in Windows v0.9.
In conclusion, that the games in itch.io are allowed to have fake downloads It isn't just the fault of developers, but also not to configure well browsers, and especially is that we don't all have a good Internet connection, and we can't download games in the same way, That is why it's where there arise the fake and failed downloads.