extract the exe like a zip file, that's how love packages itself. last i looked at the source myself it had comments in still from the dev

I'm really curious how they do version control.

The Steam version was created by one guy, but the platform ports have a couple different authors. The Google Play and Xbox PC versions, for instance, have divergences.

I wonder how the ports influence the upstream and each other. How do they keep the codebases in sync, while also accounting for platform differences?

yep that works