Ok, fair enough, I'm naive. With "review" tbh, I was mostly thinking "positive comment that would help increase the popularity of the game". Of course reviews can also be negative... but I never saw people really trashing each other for indie games so... I didn't think about it. Anyway, the deciding factor for me when I consider getting a game is its page, which includes the comment section. And from now on I'll just leave a comment, no problem. I'll never leave reviews in the "review" prompt, just ratings. As is, that text box might as well not be there, is the ultimate feedback I'd give to those in charge of this site.
Viewing post in I think we should have a review system.
dw4i2, if I'm not wrong, your reviews also appear on you profile feed for those who follow you.
Also, it's not everyone who gets trashed "for free", only those who suffer some kind of prejudice for some reason. Here on Itch.io I never saw this type of conduct, but on a particular competitor store, it's looks like an war zone. Small indie games from devs who doesn't belong to their private circle doesn't seem to be welcome there.
There's a developer (that's also an Youtuber and is friends with other developers who also harassed me) who trashed one of my most well know games on his channel and incited a lot of hate on me before, I got tons of negative reviews bombing, insults, etc. I wrote about this experience on my blog (in PT-BR, but you can Google Translate the text with the translate tab).
You can check my post here if you wish:
https://alyssonlneto.blogspot.com/2019/09/ninja-brasileiro-no-castelo-do-pagode....
I really love Itch.io for what it is and I hope it keeps supporting all developers as it currently does.
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.