"A competitor dev published a negative review (which also affected my sales during the release) while promoting his own game on this same review."
But if your games are actually good and you connect with players and make them feel heard, they'll sing your praises and outweigh the couple bad reviews. That's part of why public reviews can be so useful.
"(and usually developers can't directly reply to them)" So you agree they'd be better if they allowed a more open relationship between developer and player?