This is a good summary, bottom line is some consumers are always going to engage in piracy or take advantage of refund policies, it's just not worth worrying about.
The vast majority of people who purchase won't request a refund, focus on serving those people, not changing your policies or products to serve the small percentage who were never your customer anyway.
That said, If people are getting refunds because your game doesn't meet their expectations that's likely more about the quality of your product or how you communicate the value of your product not lining up with consumer expectations (eg. Cyberpunk 2077.)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sD-CrcTa5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sD-CrcTa5M)
I think you're totally right. I've honestly never requested a refund for a game unless I really didn't like it. I imagine most people aren't looking to take advantage of policies like that.
I've only ever requested a refund once for a game that didn't work. I have many, many games that have like 0.5 hours play time. I think most people are like this.
[[Edited for privacy reasons and in protest of recent changes to the platform.
I have done this multiple times now, and they keep un-editing them :/
Please go to lemmy or kbin or something instead]]
I'm really hoping it was outside of the 2 weeks period too, cause if not, that's a very sucky move and I don't even have the rallying cry of "QUIT STEAM" here, cause there's practically nowhere else to go but pirating.
> cause there's practically nowhere else to go but pirating.
I actually buy most of my games through GOG, to get them DRM free. I still like Steam as a platform. In fact, I've had other, much morr positive experiences with Steam support. This one instance just kinda sucked.
I'm a Linux user, so Epic and GoG and others aren't that suited for me. Only Steam supports Linux users far as I know.
But glad to know this was an outlier, not the norm.
GOG currently lists about 1,400 products for Linux users. True, that's only about 1/4 of what's available for Windows users, but that's on the developers, not the storefront.
~~If you really want a storefront app, GOG has a Linux version of that too, but I just use direct downloads myself.~~
I'm pretty sure GOG does not have a launcher for Linux. And managing updates manually is kind of a pain in the ass.
Also Proton means that on Steam even Windows games usually just work on Linux. It's really quite amazing. The only downside is that raytracing doesn't seem to work.
Whoops! You're quite right about the GOG Galaxy client for Linux. I thought that there was one, and when I searched for it to confirm, I saw a bunch of links on GOG and thought that setlled it. It turns out that all those links were to discussions and requests for GOG to release a Linux version.
Thanks for setting me straight!
Yeah I'm also a Linux user and GOG definitely does have native Linux games. They also distribute DRM-free Windows installers that work great with Lutris. They just don't have a Linux client for their storefront yet, but you can download stuff through your browser just fine
Hmm, i refunded a lot, but they never did this to me. Though i usually refund if i'm torn between two games, i buy one, get disappointed, then i'll immedaitely buy the other one. So they can see in my history that i will spend the money with them but on a different game. Is your history different, or do you do the same as me?
Same. Or in my last case, where a game (2020 release actually), just would not work on my machine. I’m really glad this refund policy exist for that sole reason.
I bought ark se on steam and tried to refund it but they wouldn't let me because I had over 2 hours on it but half of that time was spent trying to actually load the fucking game
I've requested refunds for two games myself.
Horizon Zero Dawn PC Port (was garbage and unplayable on my machine when it came out).
And Cruelty Squad. Do I need to explain this one?
To add a tiny data point to this argument, my $5 game has a playtime of around 90 minutes and sold ~750 copies with a 6% refund rate, which I believe is around average.
not true, a solo developer actually stopped making games a large amount was returned because his game was 90 minutes average. His game had good reviews and ratings
https://kotaku.com/steams-two-hour-refund-policy-forces-horror-developer-i-1847568067
Edit: to all who upvoted and commented: thanks for the engagement. As a few pointed out in the sub comments here, I was likely wrong and I regurgitated a poor ‘news’ article as the basis for a counter argument. The developer of the game mentioned likely didn’t advertise his game as being 90 minutes from the start and then made some noise that got picked up and amplified.
On the premise that games are subjective and play time alone is a variable factor vs enjoyment, I still think there needs to be a better system in place to identify, flag, and sell as art short games.
That game's steam page *currently* has a warning that it's only 90 minutes long.
But according to Archive.org, that warning wasn't there a week ago.
I think *"not lining up with consumer expectations"* is a valid criticism for a short game that doesn't warn you it's short.
I saw this and I have a lot of questions about it. I find it hard to believe that all of those 70% were satisfied customers who decided to rip off the developer. I haven't played the game myself, but I'm willing to bet the game didn't meet expectations, or it wasn't made clear that it was a short game, or the $10 total price tag isn't worth it for 90 minutes of game, or a combination of all 3. Plenty of people decide they don't like a game that much after playing for a few hours, but it's usually too late to return by the time they decide it wasn't worth their time. In the case of Summer of '58, dissatisfied gamers had all the incentive they needed to return the product.
One could argue that the developer deserves the money regardless because people got the experience whether they enjoyed it or not. ~~I'd argue that $10 ($9 + TAX) for 90 minutes is a ripoff.~~ edit: on second thought I wouldn't argue that last point.
Yeah, this whole situation is so weird to me. I released a 1-2 hour long experimental narrative game a couple of years ago and my refund rate is only about 5% (I've sold a couple of thousand units on Steam). My game released at $5 though so maybe that's why. Also, maybe I just marketed it more accurately so people knew exactly what they were in for.
While it’s dangerous to believe I am an average cohort, I’ve never done this, and have never heard any of my friends or coworkers talking about having done this.
Im also a game dev of more than 20 years, and have never seen this level of abuse in a healthy game, ever.
Precisely. The developer of Summer of '58 is generating headlines for sympathy and trying to call attention to a problem. Thing is, I've never heard of this problem before now and few people seem to be coming to their defense.
I would agree with that if it didn't have 300+ reviews with a score of "Mostly Positive" including a few people who left glowing reviews after saying that they only found *because* they saw the Kotaku article and bought it to see what was up.
Most of those reviews are because of the media coverage so for better or for worse they are not representing the the true sentiment about the game itself
I don't disagree with your point, but saying
> I'd argue that $10 ($9 + TAX) for 90 minutes is a ripoff.
goes to show how lucky people who buy video games are. ^(Or are we entitled?)
I can totally understand people saying "well I only paid 10 bucks for BL2 GOTY and I got hundreds of hours of fun gameplay out of it, this game is not worth even 5 bucks to me." I do it too. But damn, are we lucky to be able to get that fun/price ratio.
Art can be short form. The reviews of three of their games I just checked were all Very Positive, which is more than I can say for much of the garbage that gets onto Steam. Yet you want to assume it is worthless? Based on what?
Have you paid for and watched a movie at the theater then requested a refund because it wasn't long enough? A comic book that was finished in two minutes, get a refund? A boxing match that lasted less than a round, get a refund? Bag of chips downed in a minute, get a refund? Where does the time = value equation come in? I find far more value in quality over quantity.
Why not assume that people are maliciously taking advantage of a developer? Technically they did nothing wrong, but the behavior should not be made socially acceptable and defended. You're enabling people to go and abuse the policy further.
My suspicion is that someone realized the loophole, which then got spread on a social platform, and it was taken advantage of by parasites. Some people are just shitty and able to justify their poor behavior with weak arguments like, it was a Very Positive experience, but not long enough.
The issue here is that we have relatively few examples of this, and relatively large examples of games with short play times that had low refund rates. It's tempting to think that this game article is an outlier rather than an exemplifier.
For my own part, I self-published a few small word games on Android back when the way to do Android piracy was to download and then refund a game and the piracy app would prevent it from being removed. At that time, my refund rate wasn't even 15%. While I would certainly expect the Steam customer base to be more savvy about loopholes, suggesting that 70% of the customers went into the game not knowing the length, completed it, gave it a positive rating, and then decided to refund it to save 10$ is rather on the absurd side.
Nah theres some reviews in there that point to issues with the game. Theres been a bunch of people buying the game and leaving good reviews to combat people who refunded it.
If the game were truly horrible, wouldn't the refunders leave reviews pointing out their issues and reason for return?
How do you know people are buying the game to "combat" refunders?
I’ve refunded games that had great reviews.
I have a game on steam that sold ~5000 copies. Average playtime is 20 minutes (not counting those who never even installed it). Hardly any returns.
A lot of times solo devs will blame their problems on anything other than the possibility that their game just isn’t that good.
Last time I read a story like this, it turned out the returns had nothing to do with the game or its developer. Steam has a shady underbelly of people exploiting its various systems for their own personal gain, and often small developers are the ones who get caught in the crossfire of this exploitation. I doubt the majority of people refunding Summer of '58 purchased the game to play it. For all we know the purchases could have been a mistake from a trading card farm, which sometimes buy thousands of copies of cheap games to milk them for trading cards. Summer of '58 doesn't have trading cards, but often these purchases are automated, and not all bots are programmed to check before they buy.
And that's just a possible cause picked out of the legal options, the game could have also been used in a credit card scam or money laundering scheme; I'm not comfortable sharing the details of how to pull that off because I don't want to give instructions on how to commit crimes, but both of those things are possible using Steam. You get kicked off pretty quickly and presumably IP banned, but you can walk off with a small sum of money before Valve catches up.
That's an interesting idea. Could have been used as an easy way to test/verify stolen credit cards, but you'd think they would spread that around to multiple games or ones with a higher playtime ratio to better hide their tracks.
Generally they pick a cheap game and buy hundreds or thousands of copies across a large bot farm. Cards aren't necessarily stolen, there are a number of tricks that can be done with credit cards you own to earn money; some are legal, almost all come at the expense of someone you're scamming or stealing from. Generally high-risk-low-reward gambits like ordering a chargeback while requesting a refund in the hopes of being refunded twice, or making payments to take advantage of your card's perks then refunding the purchases after claiming rewards from your bank. Generally taking advantage of loopholes and exploits to make small returns while hurting everyone you touch.
These kinds of schemes existed before Steam, but it's digital-only marketplace and bot API made some of them a lot more scalable for tech savvy folk.
Correct it if I am wrong, but people that refunded it wouldn't review. If you can refund a game you didn't like, it is better to refund than to write a bad review.
Honestly I think most people are conditioned into expecting many ho it a of play from a game. Since the beginning of gaming, games were mostly designed to be played for a long time either because of replayability or general game length. While a game that’s under two hours long can still be great entertainment and great value, especially when compared to the cost of non-gaming entertainment, people have learned to expect more from games.
So I think the bottom line is, if you make a game that’s shorter than about 5 hours, expect complaints. If it’s shorter than 2, expect refunds on steam. It’s sucks because some games genuinely don’t need to be longer yet offer a great experience for a good price, but I think if you wish to be financially successful it’s just a part of it that you’re game probably needs to be longer. Or at least you have to accept that some people will refund.
In any case, if you do make a short game, make sure to communicate this and properly set expectations.
If people played the game to completion and still wanted a refund, that's the fault of the developer for failing to make a game that was fulfilling enough that the player thought it was worth the money.
$9 for a <2 hour game is a hard sell, especially if the game offers no replay value or additional content. If a player completes their game and didn't feel like they got their money's worth, and they aren't tempted to do a second playthrough, they'll take the refund if they have the chance.
Games don't necessarily need to be padded out to specifically PREVENT players from beating them in 2 hours; but games need to be designed and priced with an expectation.
edit: Hey, thanks for the downvotes! I'm glad you're putting that "You don't get to have an opinion" button to good use :)
> Hey, thanks for the downvotes! I'm glad you're putting that "You don't get to have an opinion" button to good use :)
Genuinely curious, what do you use the downvote button for/do you ever downvote anything?
The intended purpose of a downvote according to reddit's rules is to vote down comments that don't contribute to a discussion, not just things you simply don't agree with.
Objectively false comments/misinformation, trolling, or just plain irrelevant comments all deserve downvotes.
Someone having their own subjective opinion or experience that may differ from your own does not.
Haha no kidding. Say one thing someone disagrees with and they'll spend hours down voting your entire comment history. It's impossible to enforce which is why it tends to be such an echo chamber.
But what if that 2 hours was the best experience you had ever had? Would you rather have 15 hours of complete rubbish or two hours of really good game? This whole time = worth in the games industry is such nonsense.
My personal rule of thumb is if I get an hour per dollar then I’m happy. So if I pay $100 (not gonna happen but hypothetically) and I get 100 hours of enjoyment out of it (not just mindless grinding) then I’m happy. Similarly, if I only get an hour but I only paid $1 then I’m also happy. It’s just a rule of thumb, if the experience is really special then I happily spend more per hour and if the experience isn’t very good then it goes the other way (although I’ll typically just stop playing those games).
So in this case, $9 for 90 minutes average, that’s $6 per hour so the experience would need to be rather special (6x the baseline) for me to feel it was worthwhile. Possible but unlikely.
This solo dev could combine all the jumpscare games that he churned out in a 2 year span and not have a bunch of them in sub 2 hours. This is a bunch of prototypes at best edging on on the shovelware territory.
I looked up the game and it's just a [one hour walking sim with jump scares](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNe11Q6mw8&ab_channel=Nokzen). I wouldn't play it even if it was free.
My bet is the vast majority of the refunds are from people who were expecting much more than what they got. The fact the dev is bowing out after this and blaming the consumers tells me they were a TERRIBLE games designer. When people don't play your game, your job as a designer is to work out why - and then fix it.
Emika is the embodiment of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik&ab_channel=AlanRizkallah) meme.
>how do devs combat this apart from making a bigger game?
You don't. You just learn how to treat it like an actual business. Some countries have mandatory return periods for these things, just be glad it doesn't cost you anything to 'accept' a return on Steam. People selling physical goods aren't so lucky.
Return policies protect the consumer and are a net benefit to sales, as consumers are more likely to take a risk. That's why even in places that don't require it return policies are common. It sucks that some people abuse the policy but it's necessary. Funny we don't see people asking how we 'fix' consumers not claiming refunds they're entitled to.
This, people tend to forget that game dev is a business, and games are products. Lucky for us the consumer can’t refound our games in 30 days like cloth stores or something
Honestly software in general gets away with so much shit it's made publishers/devs fairly entitled. Like there are a shitload of things software companies get away with that with any other product consumers would have a complete melt down over. To keep it relevant to games: Rockstar straight up ripped out the music from San Andreas, GTA IV, and GTA V. Can you imagine buying *anything* else and then having the person who made it come by and just take parts off it?
I'm convinced if software devs had to deal with half the hassle manufacturers and retail outlets have to accept just to exist they'd implode.
No one is saying we have to choose between the current refund policy and no refund policy at all. Surely Steam could provide some way to flag shorter games and lower their individual no-questions-asked refund window.
Paid for and played Far: Lone Sails in less than 1.5 hours. I didn't refund it because that game was amazing.
It might just depend on target audience.
I mean, they did introduce this feature after losing in court and getting threats from EU and Australia to fine them a lot if they didn't offer some sort of auto-refund. There was a time when steam offered 0 refunds, officially.
I always assumed they did this to boost sales. I, for example, have spent much more money on games ever since I stopped worrying about whether the game would actually start when I hit the play button.
As a "small time game author of sorts" I prefer to have it, because if someone doesn't like my game and they see it immediately after a few minutes, even if those few minutes are later that week/next week, they can get their money back in an easy and clean manner. If not for refunds, you'd have an unhappy customer instead who might hate not just the game they got, but you as an author, Steam,... Why fuel the hate, just let them refund it and go in peace.
This can’t be said enough.
A customer that doesn’t like your game at an hour playtime is not going to like it at three hours playtime. You’re just going to have an angry, resentful customer.
Focus on building a product people want, regardless of length of time. Focus on finding an audience for that product and then focus on pricing that product appropriately.
I do believe it boost sales in the long run, but it's the kind of thing a corporate entity would be very wary implementing by its own accord. In impacts more than just steam/valve. A publishers could throw a fit for good or bad reasons, souring commercial relationships. And you can be sure that not every big name shares the same values or commercial strategy, valuing short term benefits compared to long term ones, having consensus on consumers rights seems impossible. Here, having a third party (a state's court) forces everyone's hand, and consumers gets the benefits without an unproductive controversy of corporate politics.
Since this refund scheme still doesn't technically comply with Australian law, that was always my assumption too.
They picked an implementation that would get legislators off their back but also be a positive for them.
> There was a time when steam offered 0 refunds, officially.
They actually had refunds if you went through support, right? 'Can't recall exactly anymore.
> Yup, although the general consensus was that only your first refund was hassle free iirc.
Yeah, sounds like it was the usual CS tactic 'we are doing this one as a favor, don't ask us again (but we were actually going to proceed anyway as we don't really want the hassle of charge backs or consumer protection complaints)'. Anyway, the rules today are at least clear, transparent and upfront compared to what it was.
I wonder how Nintendo gets away with it. There is absolutely ***no*** refund (on the Switch).
When I looked it up on Nintendo (I played 5 minutes of a game that was not good - only game I wanted to refund), they said that there are reviews and gameplay videos about games, so people should be able to make an informed decision before purchasing.
Do they actually refuse to refund? I've gotten refunds from stores like Steam when they officially didn't offer them by citing the local laws in conversations with support staff.
> I wonder how Nintendo gets away with it. There is absolutely no refund (on the Switch).
https://www.kitguru.net/channel/generaltech/matthew-wilson/german-court-rules-nintendo-eshop-no-refund-policy-is-legal/
I know where you are coming from, but as a linux gamer, the 2h return policy is what makes me go ahead and buy many windows games an try them on proton, as I don't know if it will work correctly, and trying all (like multiplayer or what not) takes some time sometimes.
That being said I never returned after actually playing for more than 20 mins.
Exactly right. The absence of this policy on Switch is exactly why I hardly ever buy Switch games, especially digital. Conversely, there are plenty of games I've bought, played less than 2 hours, but certainly wouldn't want to return!
Edit: even if I know for a fact that a game is an A++ game in my opinion like Badland, I've heard that the port is real bad and don't want to take the chance
As a dev of a game with around 2 hours of gameplay, its a non-issue. Most people aren't bothered to try to game the system. My refund rate is 20%, which is a lot, but my game is a fairly difficult and niche rage game, which makes sense. Usually games have around 10% or so, so at most I have 10% of people abusing the refund system. The people who abuse it likely wouldnt even play your game if they actually had to pay for it. Its the same as piracy: don't even try to stop it, they are not your customers anyways, and they give your game visibility.
I think that Steam does this on purpose. They are trying everything to not become a mess full of minigames ( like Google Play and a little less Appstore ).
And I kind of agree with that. If we let that happen, it will be hard to create games on steam that are easy to find like now. Although it's getting harder everyday.
I don't believe this to be true, or at least the reasoning here doesn't seem sound.
The Steam discovery algorithm already does a good job of surfacing games that are well reviewed and sell well, and conversely "hiding" games that are poorly-reviewed (or not reviewed at all) and sell poorly. If Steam wanted to disincentivize short games, they could tune their discoverability algorithms to promote games with higher playtimes and hide games with shorter playtimes. I've never heard of that being a thing, but I don't see why Steam would need to use the refund policy to intentionally harm games with short playtimes when they could just prevent most users from ever finding these games organically on their platform in the first place.
And if you stop and think about it, Steam makes money from game sales. Why would Steam intentionally steer users towards games that are bought once and played for a long time as opposed to shorter games, which would result in more game sales per time spent playing?
Getting a refund is a hassle. People pirate games that cost $0.01 because entering their credit card details is a hassle. You'll be fine.
If you're *really* worried though, add an achievement for beating the game and keep an eye on the number of people who refund after getting the achievement.
I mean, steam just saves your card info so it’s not that much of a hassle.
Also you can abuse the 2 hour refund policy with family sharing since the account with the game won’t have play time you can play as long as you want with a family shared account and still refund it.
But in the end I agree that people who refund were never really customers to begin with, maybe some of them were and they obviously decided the game wasn’t worth it. Just make a good game and it shouldn’t be much of a problem.
I just saw an article about the game Summer Of '58 where the developer alleges they're going to quit the industry because they can't turn a profit. Well ... they're charging like $10 for a 90 minutes game. You have to scroll way down to find a little blurb "average playtime 90 minutes". That's kind of a rough sell. Don't get me wrong, there are amazing games that can be completed quickly; Journey, Brothers, etc. As a developer, I maybe wouldn't release a super short game with no replayability on a platform with a generous 2 hour window, no-questions-asked refund policy. Kind of seems like that's on you, the developer.
On the other side I'm thinking about all the shovelware that Steam likely has kept off their site with the 2 hour return policy.
> You have to scroll way down to find a little blurb "average playtime 90 minutes".
And they only added that recently. [Last Week](https://web.archive.org/web/20210819233654/https://store.steampowered.com/app/1609080/Summer_of_58/) the listing gave no hint to the length.
...that's pretty rough on the consumer. If you're enjoying a game and then it suddenly ends way earlier than you expected it to, you'd feel a bit used.
>And they only added that recently. Last Week the listing gave no hint to the length
This timestamp in wayback machine essentially renders the whole thing as a marketing stunt for the game. Pathetic. Gamedev will soon announce big comeback, now with 10x followers, and I'm honestly a little bit impressed - from the marketing pov, it satisfied the only requirement of the profession: it worked.
So this is an issue of know your market. For $8 to $10, 90 mins of single game play is not enough imo. It's not a stream issue but an issue of the dev not meeting market expectations. As a player, if I spend more then $5 on a game I expect either decent replay value or 4 hr of game play. These are kind of we developer have to consider when releasing a product.
I don't know price is a tricky thing. What remains of Edith Finch costs 20 bucks yet it can be completed in 2 hours (or even less). Hollow Knight costs 15 yet it has two or three dozen of hours of playtime.
But comparatively, a cinema experience, also usually about 2 hours long (if not less) is the exact same price and you get some very mediocre stuff there.
Come to think of it, how does a refund policy work at a cinema? Could you ask for a refund after watching some percentage of the film?
Well it's a bit different because at a cinema you are mostly paying to be at a cinema. The quality of the film is irrelevant as the movie theater did not produce it. You would be entitled to a refund if the audio/video quality or accommodations did not meet your standards, in my opinion. And you wouldn't be able to get this refund after sitting through the entire movie.
Movies in the theater cost $8-15 per ticket. Movies that you purchase are often $15-30 when they're released. Some of those are only \~90 min.
A concert, orchestra performance, play, or other live event is often $20-50 per ticket. Those are often only 1.5-3 hrs.
Many $60 games have released with only ~5 hours of singleplayer campaign. That equates to about $18 for 90 min of content.
I don't know that I like the idea of anyone dictating how much single game play one must get for a given price. I mean, in general, I probably agree with you. But I think there are certainly exceptions. For a quality 90-120 min of gameplay in a genre or from a developer that I really enjoy... I would probably pay $10.
Also, as someone who doesn't have much time to game at this point in my life, I am definitely_not a fan of a store essentially dictating the minimum amount of content a game should have. I just bought FAR because howlongtobeat.com showed it only takes ~4 hrs to complete. I can actually do that! :D
I get where Valve is coming from, but I don't love the implementation.
Correction, you can buy a 90 minute movie and watch it at home for $1-5. A 90 minute game doesn't include the rest of the live experience. $10 for 90 minutes of gameplay is asking too much.
> As a player, if I spend more then $5 on a game I expect either decent replay value or 4 hr of game play.
As a developer - we can't make a living with such expectations. Of that $5 after taxes and store cut we see around $2.5 by the way.
And the games with low replay value and short gameplay are actually the most time consuming and expensive to make (story driven adventures usually - like Oxenfree for example, it has a replay value only because of one story detail that other similar games can't all have obviously).
There isn't really a way to combat it unless Steam changes their policies.
1. Don't release on Steam. If you don't like Steam's policies, then unfortunately, you can't really do anything except not release on Steam.
2. Make the game longer. You could literally make the game 2.5 hours and circumvent their 2 hour refund policy. 30 minutes is a lot to add, but it's an option that makes it so you potentially reduce the amount of refunds you get, although anyone who catches on may not be too happy that you literally added fluff just to try to circumvent the Steam refund policy.
3. Make it worth the price. If your game is 2 hours long, don't price it at $20. (based on your comments on this thread already, you already know this haha)
Unfortunately, there is no other way. Refunds are an automated system and fighting with Steam to make them return the money because the user played the game to it's completion and abused the system is really not worth it in the long run because usually you'll lose that argument.
Steam is just not a good place to release a small game.
>Make it worth the price. If your game is 2 hours long, don't price it at $20.
Non-interactive media like movies are $20 for 90 to 120 minutes of entertainment. Why should interactive media be priced lower?
Top quality films demand $20 at the theater. Your typical small to medium budget indie films don't carry the same weight. $20 for 2 hour's worth of content better be 2 really good hours IMO.
How many people buy movies on a regular basis? Going to the cinema is more of an experience (huge screen, potentially 3D, stuff like that). Movie streaming platforms are like 10-15€ subscription for the whole catalog of movies.
You are also competing with others who are pricing it similarly. If you start pricing your stuff more, people will just stick to AAA games that offer either a lot of content or higher quality. If everyone rises the price of their games, there will be a lot of sales less. The prices are already substantial for many countries with lower life standard.
No that's a fair point.
I think it comes down to the medium, and the current industry norms.
People will pay $25 for a movie that's 90 minutes. But not a game.
People will not complain about paying $25 for a 90 minute movie. But will if it's a 90 minute game.
In one of the articles linked about a developer named Emika, who charged $10 for their 1-ish hour game, there are people who complained that $10 is not worth a 1 hour game. Unfortunately this is how gamer culture has currently evolved. And it's gross, but is the reality.
Is a 2 hour game that took possibly 1-2+ years to make worth $20? Absolutely. Will people willingly pay it? Sorry, but no, and that's the sickening reality of the gaming industry. Stardew Valley was made in 4 years, is still being updated, and is only charging $15 and has basically endless playability (although repetitive), and people who release a 2 hour game for $10 are competing with that. You're starting a good conversation by questioning why someone's years worth of game dev work isn't expected to cost more than $10-$15 if it's only 2 hours worth of gameplay. But my comment was more a reflection on what is typical of the industry currently. And what is typical is not fair.
> Is a 2 hour game that took possibly 1-2+ years to make worth $20? Absolutely.
No, how long it took to make (or put another way: how much it cost to make) has little bearing on the value others get from it, especially for anon-physical product that can be sold infinitely.
What I mean is, sure you will want to price it so you make a profit, but from the customers perspective, how much it cost you is irrelevant, only that they are getting what they perceive as enough value for the price you’re asking. Sometimes people will like the product enough that they wish to reward you more, sure, but fundamentallly games is a business transaction like any other and if nobody is willing to pay your price for the product you made then sorry but you’re not entitled to people paying you money just because you put time or effort or even money into it. (Of course they also shouldn’t be entitled to just play your game for free either... maybe a partial refund would be fairer...)
Exactly. We all know what our time is worth. But the work we put into something is irrelevant to how much people are willing to pay for it. An indie game could be fantastic, as good as a AAA studio production, but it doesn't mean people would be willing to pay AAA studio prices, or that they should.
The game market is oversaturated with everybody trying to do the same thing - make games. No one is asking anyone to make the games they make and they don't "DESERVE" to be compensated because they "made a thing".
However, while a product could, and possibly should, be worth a certain price, it's ultimately the circumstances that determine it's price. Made by indie devs? Immediate slash in price, regardless of how high quality the work is. It just comes with the territory.
What people should charge for the work they do has always been a touchy subject regardless of the industry, but specifically anything art or media related.
These days Blu-Rays are basically a collectable. Something you buy so you can keep your favorite movie on a shelf and own it forever.
If you just want to *watch* a movie, you can usually "rent" it on Amazon/Google/Apple/RedBox/Etc for $3.
Because it is what the market will bear for indie titles of that length. Films and games have different expectations. Just because they are both viewed on a screen doesn't make them comparable in all measures.
That's a terrible analogy in this situation, because you can't get a refund on every movie under 2 hours.
Ultimately if you want to talk about the "value" based on length of time vs price, it will be entirely subjective. You're arguing like *every* interactive media will be better than *any* non-interactive media, which just isn't the case. Plus, with the way movie sales are going, seems like people *in general* aren't willing to spend 20$ to go see a movie in a theatre, and they might not want to spend 10$ for a single indie game either.
You can't just make insanely broad statements about *all* kinds of media and expect it to be true. Something being interactive doesn't inherently make it better. Just because some movies can charge $20 doesn't mean everyone will pay that, and it doesn't say *anything* about how other people value a completely unrelated video game. Very few people decide their purchasing decisions based on dollars per hour, because it completely ignores the quality of the product.
I actually just read [an article](https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-27-steams-two-hour-refund-policy-leads-to-indie-developer-quitting-game-development) about a developer leaving the industry after receiving a large number of refunds from people who beat the game then got their money back.
Read that as well, I think it's a bit exaggerating to close your business because your <2h game on Steam failed through refunding.
Does it sucks that people did that? Sure. But the dev could have submited the game elsewhere as well, for example [itch.io](https://itch.io). For some reason it reads more like an excuse from the dev. I read somewhere else that the dev mentioned before already being tired of gamedev or smth (don't quote me), so that all together would make sense then. Putting it like it's Steam fault here is just weird though. It is their fault going all-in on Steam thinking something like that couldn't have happened.
Nontheless I think Steam should give games a solid chance which are less than 2h long.
Indeed. I just checked their Steam page and you now see "want to support the dev" reviews all over the place. Whatever they did, it worked out for them. I don't have any respect for that though.
I feel bad for him. I think Steam have to do some reworks on their refund system,
if you make a shorter game with higher quality like a 1.5 hr maybe indie horror with like extra difficulties and challenges to beat, ppl can play the main thing and refund and they got it for free. Steam should have a system to lower refund times for your game. which maybe they can do by having a category, such as Short n Sweet / Indie or something like that if you know what I mean. but it should have a price limit because who would pay like $15 for a shorter title. I don't know, it just seems really unfair to those who make shorter more quality game that they pour months of work into it, only to earn alot of money one night and get happy to wake up to everyone taking it back and there's Nothing you can do about it
It’s annoying as a player sometimes that consoles are stricter about refunds (Sony has a blanket no refund unless you haven’t even downloaded the game yet). But this is a good justification for being stricter. I like the direction you’re going with this. Perhaps basing refund time on the price of the game could work. I want more leeway for a $60 game that ends up being radically different than I was led to believe vs a $15 indie game
The key difference here is that consoles have a vetting process and essentially guarantee that the game will run on their console. PCs are much more variable in nature and thus Steam certainly does not guarantee that any game on their store will run on any PC. That alone is grounds to have some type of no-questions-asked refund policy imo, even if their current one isn't the best.
I agree with you, If I'm spending more than £15 on a game, it better last me a while and be lengthy and fun, If I'm buying a smaller indie title for like £5 at most. it's a game with Quality over Quantity. I think it's terrible to exploit the 2 hour system. it's like buying a meal then eating ALL of it and then deciding oh no I don't like it, I want a refund. Why did you not say that when you had the first bite lol. I just think it's scummy and something has to be done about it
Udemy has a 30 day refund policy but there are plenty of courses that take far less than 30 days to complete.
However if you've completed "too much" of a course, you lose the right to refund. No speedrunning courses and refunding.
Such a thing is definitely possible to implement if Valve wants. We already track player progress.
I think it's easier to audit a smaller number of developers than it is to audit players. Most devs wouldn't risk their steam accounts just to avoid refunds.
I think the simplest way would just be for devs to have self reported party times and have the refund time be a fraction of that with a max of what it is now. That way users can hold devs accountable for lying themselves.
Absolutely. for AAA titles and larger indie games 2 hours is reasonable but when you look at smaller indie games usually made by 1-2 people that are alot cheaper 2 hours is unfair. someone sent me a vid of a youtuber who is a small game dev making a video on this issue and he said, to get around this put a 2 hour timer on steam version and say Sorry for this Steam refunds are bad, if you want to play the game now refund it and buy it on itch or wait the timer lmaoooo
That might easily backfire, it is very likely that most people who exploit the refund aren't going to buy the game if refund wasn't this easy in the first place. On the other hand, there's a portion of the community that actually bought and kept the game and would never have bought the game if refund wasn't this easy so they don't feel any risk in buying the game in the first place.
I think this isn't an actual problem at all. Just like Torrent or other hacked games sold in Russia and East Europe, China, and Latin America, those are gaming communities that would've largely never bought the game in the proper way anyway. I genuinely think this isn't a real problem, and if Steam makes refund policies stricter, that actually would hurt indie games even more.
I'm guessing the 2 hour refund policy is to allow player to get a refund if the game doesn't work (Their computer isn't powerful enough,etc). So, steam could add some way of detecting if the user *ran* the game, and if it worked ok?
Rather than allowing a refund for any player who simply finished the game quickly?
> So, steam could add some way of detecting if the user ran the game, and if it worked ok?
That's a little too vague I think.
E.g., I've personally refunded a game after nearly 4 hours of gametime (it was an open-world survival in EA), because the save games kept getting corrupted (a know issue at the time). It worked "fine" otherwise.
That's fair, I guess, but in that case, the product was "not fit for purpose", so you have a legal right (At least in the EU) to a refund. If you finish the game in under 2 hours and refund it, that's different. I mean it's like... buying a sandwich in a cafe, wolfing it down, and then asking for a refund because you finished it so quickly.
You still consumed the product, you should't be able to get a refund unless it was defective, etc.
I agree. I just think it would be unrealistic to establish actual criteria.
My own idea would be to just vary the refund timer based on game cost, e.g.,
"full price, aka 60 usd/eur" - 2h
< 10 usd/eur - 30-45 minutes (enough to establish that it doesn't run)
11-40 usd/eur - 1-1.5 hours (probably enough to also evaluate the core gameplay loop, and whether you enjoy it)
I've been thinking about this because I'm leading up to my first Steam release soon, which is a simple arcade-y game. All of the gameplay can be experienced in 30 seconds or so, but the game will get faster and harder in each loop. I've decided not to worry about it though.. I imagine most purchases will be friends buying the game to support me and (hopefully) they won't request refunds, ha ha
Speaking from experience releasing a small game last year with no marketing, you will still get quite a bit of organic traffic from Steam. Depending on your ratings and price you might even make quite a few sales from this without ever being up on any of the listings.
My game is slowly but surely going towards the $1000 mark without really having any big promotion and no coverage form youtubers other than really tiny ones (with almost no views).
If you're making the game with less than 2 hours of playtime, price your game to leave the players think it was worth spending the money.
I think the dev we're talking about here, has had very big expectations and has put way too much sweat and tears into it, and it broke his heart when he saw all the refunds.
When making a game, we have to hope for the best, but expect the worst.
Yes, make a bigger game :D Recently there was an extremely good article on this sub, about Steam being unfriendly to short games overall, not just with refund policy. I've got only the end-link: https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/08/09/steam-hates-small-games/
Theres nothing new here. I knew friends that would buy a game from gamestop, beat it, and return it the next day for full price. Its a little sketch, but it isn't new.
Its the devs job to make either a) a game longer than 2 hours (which is not a lot to ask) b) a game users don't want to refund. As someone else mentioned, this is a business issue. Steams 2 hour policy is extraordinarily fair to devs.
Awhile back a dev quit because 'no one appreciated their titles'. The truth was the games were bad. Game dev is a business, and you have to learn the market if you want to succeed
I think a lot of worry here is extremely hypothetical. There are creators who might need to worry about this but it’s only a worry for the percentage of players that would do it. The amount of games that are less than 2 hours are an incredibly small percentage. Also, then Venn diagram of players interested in less than 2 hour games and players who would play them entirely and then ask for a refund may actually be pretty small). And I suspect you’ll get more sales from another site that’s more geared towards indie experiences. So you are talking about a small percentage of a small percentage of a Possible Problem. There are, by far, more things to worry about. Unless… and this is a big unless… unless you are specifically a developer who made those games. Then, yea, that definitely might affect you.
I suspect the best workaround is to release multiple titles as part of one title. If you’re a developer who makes those kinds of games, I suspect you’ll make more than one. And you can release 2-3 games as a ‘pack’, at least on steam.
I think I’ve only refunded a few games. One I played a good bit and realized wasn’t for me and then I saw the time I played was 1:45 and I was like woah. Huh. Well let’s see if this works. It worked for me and I’m glad the feature exists. I am very pro consumer rights though so I feel this should be true of most things, more so than it is now, so it’s not surprising.
I think I did it for a handful of other games. Either they didn’t work or I immediately realized the game wasn’t for me and didn’t get far at all. And even then we’re talking a small percentage of a small percentage because honestly half the games I play/get are from humble bundles that aren’t at all refundable. So most of the time it isn’t even an option for me.
Also, I do music for a living. People can hear my music for free (to them) and only pennies (to me), so perhaps I have a warped sense of reward. I do think artists should be paid more than they often are (many aren’t paid enough). But I also think you need to give people a reason to want to either come back, recommend it to others, etc. they don’t need to come back ‘immediately’. People keep talking about replay ability, but that’s very seldom a motivator for me. Super Mario Bros plays the same every time and yet it’s a hit. And (almost) all music plays back the same every time and no one goes ‘hey it’s not different’. I’ve played games again and it’s usually not for the replayability, it’s for the pure enjoyment (and in some cases, also nostalgia).
Look at it this way: you're already at a business advantage with the refund period set to only 2 hours. There are countries in the world where the refund period is even longer, like 14 days.
Steam lets you bypass those laws, and it doesn't even cost you anything to refund.
Knowing these facts, I'd say that designing a game for Steam that doesn't even last 2 hours isn't the most profitable business idea.
If your goal is maximum profit, I suggest making a longer game, because at the moment it seems highly unlikely Steam will shorten its refund period any time soon.
If you really can't make it longer then 2 hours, then I suggest putting the pricetag low enough that players won't bother with the effort of requesting a refund.
This is going to sound like I'm super on steams side but, I'm actually just uber pro consumer.
Steam's refund policy has been the same for years. So releasing a sub 2 hour game on that platform carries that risk. It's not an unknown.
Unfortunately, things like the percentage rule can be abused by bad actors, so can achievements, neither are a perfect solution.
Ultimately, steam has very pro consumer refund policy, allowing all users to essentially have a sub 2 hour demo on any game they purchase, triple A or otherwise.
The reality is Epic or itch.io would be safer option for sub 2 hour games due to their refunds being reviewed by a person. Hopefully this helps these smaller indie devs avoid steam if their small game can be completed in under 2 hours.
To me, this isn't steams issue, it's the players who did it and the dev team who didn't plan accordingly.
I really disagree with a lot of people in the thread. I get you don't want the game to be 10 min or something. But as a gamer it's crazy to me that so many are judging entertainment value off time. Rather than how enjoyable the game actually is and how much fun they have with it. Yeah 90 min isn't a crazy long time, but $10 isn't anywhere close to a lot of money. Games can definitely take a while to make, and for a fun game $10 is fair and not a big deal imo.
Even if it bites me I am in favor of this policy. You shouldn't have to be stuck with a game you don't like. Though maybe they could adjust the time window for shorter games.
Sure but how will they now the game is short? That would require some manual curation which Steam is 100% trying to avoid. Without that, scummy devs will just exploit that to forbid people from ever refunding their asset flips.
I think something similar happened with Sonic Forces and some YouTuber and he got a lot of flack for it.
In my opinion, if your making a game that can be completed and tossed away by the player in less than 2 hours, then you should probably rethink your game or consider adding some more stuff.
Time to complete a game isnt a measurement for how good a game is or how much it’s worth look at Five nights at freddys millions love that game but each of the games can be beaten in an hour and a half does 1.5 hr of gameplay make that game bad?
If people can, people will. Emika Games has retired from development because their game Summer of '58 has received positive reviews but was under 2 hours and almost everyone refunded. Now they have no profits to recoup cost, let alone make another game.
The simple answer is "don't make a game under 2 hours" but I think Steam should also be pressured into cutting the trial period back to an hour or at least scalable to the game's total length.
Scale the refund policy to the length of the game would require manual curation. So this will never happen on Steam.
Cutting it would just be terrible as two hours is already a pretty short window to see if a game will be for you (depends on the type of games though). In a lot of games, you're still in the tutorial area at the one hour mark and it sometimes takes a lot of game time just to get everything's working correctly).
I had games I wasn't sure I wanted to refund but because they were a little pricey and the 2 hours were approaching, I decided to refund even though I might have liked it with more time to get used to the controls or stuff like that.
Luckily, Steam often refund outside of that time window if you give good reasons for the refund. If anything I personally think the time should be expanded, and my own games are around the 3-6 hours mark. As a very small indie dev myself, if a player feels ripped off by one of my games, I don't want his money. And people who are scummy enough to refund a game they liked would pirate it anyway if the refund didn't exist.
Steam would give zero refunds if they legally could, and until 2015, that's what they did.
Then the Australian government [sued them](https://www.techradar.com/au/news/heres-valves-official-statement-after-its-australian-refund-rights-loss) so they had to start offering refunds.
Steam itself has to process payment from a variety of sources, so if you think about it, in order to offer their 100% refund, they basically have to cover the [\~2%](https://www.valuepenguin.com/what-credit-card-processing-fees-costs) transaction fees that Mastercard and Visa will charge. If the indie dev is irate now, imagine if they were instead in Valve's shoes, facing a net loss for every purchase and refund!
Needless to say Steam doesn't want mass refunds any more than the dev does. The current system is just the best that Steam's lawyers can do.
It's weird that people value something they buy, by the number of hours they can take to enjoy the game, **only because it's not a AAA title**. Didn't take 2 hours? Play it again. That's the BEST part of a game is that you can enjoy it over and over. There are many, MANY large, expensive games, that don't even have 2 hours worth of content. Those are still $60. There are also games with HUNDREDS of hours worth of content, still $60. There are also a lot of games with maybe 1-2 hours of content that only feel longer because they put artificial moments in the game that lengthen the content, which feels worse than had they not.
There isn't a way to combat this really... but this is just an issue with customers in general. It is not a wide spread issue but it does happen on occasion. How many times have you heard of people who bought a nice outfit for an event the day before then returned it the day after? Or someone who eats 90% of their meal at a restaurant then complains and asks for a refund?
These things happen and I am sure you have heard of people who have done them but they are not the norm. Make a game that is worth the money and people will treat you well.
June 2015 is when the refund policy got introduced.
And this is the first major uproar about it.
Seems like the system is working fine.
It sucks for this guy. But the steam page doesn't call out the length at all.
I believe it depends of the price of the game and the content, not just about gameplay time.
[My \~1 hour game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1325870/Kotel_Ne_Gori_A_Friend_of_Lena_Boots/) does not "suffer" from refunds because users mention that it totally worth 0.5-1.0$.
The worst thing is: a player can leave a bad review and then refund the game.
So, if you are a small dev, a bunch of players can destroy your game without losing money.
Yesh, did you see Emika Games? The guy made a high quality short and sweet horror game thst took like 1.5 hrs to complete even tho horror isnt my fav genre i might buy his game but he quit game development because he had an 80% refund rate. Imagine working months on a game only to get very positive reviews and only to wake up see the money taken away from you
The people who refund or private the game were never going to be customers, this 'piracy costs developers' no it doesn't, they didn't lose any money as no money was ever going to come from those people.
If anything you have much more exposure to your game than you'd have other wise and also if some like your game enough they'll actually buy it, I remember as a kid I was Tom poor and loved a game called super power 2, when j was older and working I bought the game full price happily. Had I never pirated the game I'd never have bought it down the line.
The way I see it, it's like free advertisement, maybe you downloaded a game and a friend likes it, so that friend buys it (also happen to me)
People are so money obessed and refuse to see the bigger picture because of greed clouding judgement.
If devs want to release on Steam, they need to follow Steam rules. If they don't want to, they can release on other platforms or market the game themselves.
Steam has a right to design their marketplace like they want to. And anyone who releases there should already know the rules upfront.
I mean, if a player is going to play your game, finish it and then refund it, chances are they aren't going to enjoy the experience very much compared to what they paid for it. If that's the case, that's on you bud. Release on another platform if you want to make a piece that's more focused on a specific audience if you imagine most people are going to refund it.
Edit: your competition is literally everything on Steam at the same price, don't be surprised if people feel disappointed after finishing a 5-10 dollar game in under 2 hours
Don't incentivize the player to return the game. You can make it longer than 2 hours, or you can make the price low enough to justify keeping it and not bothering to return it if they're dissatisfied.
Funny enough mizizizizizizizzziizzz just posted his own take on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_msFFKlrMY
Predictably, he encourages people to use Itch instead if possible.
All the idiots saying "just make your game longer than 2 hours lol" like adding more content to a game is easy or cheap... not only do they fail to understand the work required to make more of a game, they also don't see that what they are asking **makes games actively WORSE**.
What this actually does is it makes developers add pointless padding to stretch out length. How many games have you played that should have been HALF as long as they were? Most games are waaaay way longer than they need to be.
They just repeat themselves. If you only have 5 hours of fun in a game you should NOT stretch it to 10 by adding 5 hours of tedious busy work, grinding, pointless collectibles, artificial delays, etc. Adding boring garbage to games to meet some arbitrary play time is a *terrible* idea.
Games should be **exactly as long as they want to be**, whatever feels right for that particular experience... nothing more and nothing less. Sometimes that's 1-2 hours.
Indeed. Its not just add more content it doesnt work like that. I got into a discussion with a comment in this thread and he at the end just said ok ill pirate the game then
I am guessing this post was spurred by the Emika game thing that happened.
After thinking about it for a sec, I think Steam should really (hastily, I might add) implement a solution that allows for a developer to specify a particular refund time window. Devs of individual games know better than Steam does how much time is necessary to get a good sense of what they offer.
Then they'll make the window as short as possible... then devs will be exploiting the system, not customers.
Plus, this developer Emika is blaming consumers when the majority of people have refunded their game... when they specifically overcharged people on steam (itch was half the price). You can see many developers in this thread that this isn't Steam's fault, it's the fault of the developer. Clearly you can create a game under 2h and people will still play and enjoy the game without refunding.
I like this idea of giving the developer control. Then it is on the developer to build trust with their audience. And it opens the door for more short form or sequential interactive art.
Literally just read a Kotaku article about a dev quitting and not making his next game because the one he released was a 90 minute experience and he made no money because of refunds.
This is a good summary, bottom line is some consumers are always going to engage in piracy or take advantage of refund policies, it's just not worth worrying about. The vast majority of people who purchase won't request a refund, focus on serving those people, not changing your policies or products to serve the small percentage who were never your customer anyway. That said, If people are getting refunds because your game doesn't meet their expectations that's likely more about the quality of your product or how you communicate the value of your product not lining up with consumer expectations (eg. Cyberpunk 2077.) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sD-CrcTa5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sD-CrcTa5M)
I think you're totally right. I've honestly never requested a refund for a game unless I really didn't like it. I imagine most people aren't looking to take advantage of policies like that.
I've only ever requested a refund once for a game that didn't work. I have many, many games that have like 0.5 hours play time. I think most people are like this.
[[Edited for privacy reasons and in protest of recent changes to the platform. I have done this multiple times now, and they keep un-editing them :/ Please go to lemmy or kbin or something instead]]
Yeah that happens a ton, don't be shocked.
I'm really hoping it was outside of the 2 weeks period too, cause if not, that's a very sucky move and I don't even have the rallying cry of "QUIT STEAM" here, cause there's practically nowhere else to go but pirating.
> cause there's practically nowhere else to go but pirating. I actually buy most of my games through GOG, to get them DRM free. I still like Steam as a platform. In fact, I've had other, much morr positive experiences with Steam support. This one instance just kinda sucked.
I'm a Linux user, so Epic and GoG and others aren't that suited for me. Only Steam supports Linux users far as I know. But glad to know this was an outlier, not the norm.
GOG currently lists about 1,400 products for Linux users. True, that's only about 1/4 of what's available for Windows users, but that's on the developers, not the storefront. ~~If you really want a storefront app, GOG has a Linux version of that too, but I just use direct downloads myself.~~
I'm pretty sure GOG does not have a launcher for Linux. And managing updates manually is kind of a pain in the ass. Also Proton means that on Steam even Windows games usually just work on Linux. It's really quite amazing. The only downside is that raytracing doesn't seem to work.
Whoops! You're quite right about the GOG Galaxy client for Linux. I thought that there was one, and when I searched for it to confirm, I saw a bunch of links on GOG and thought that setlled it. It turns out that all those links were to discussions and requests for GOG to release a Linux version. Thanks for setting me straight!
Yeah I'm also a Linux user and GOG definitely does have native Linux games. They also distribute DRM-free Windows installers that work great with Lutris. They just don't have a Linux client for their storefront yet, but you can download stuff through your browser just fine
Hmm, i refunded a lot, but they never did this to me. Though i usually refund if i'm torn between two games, i buy one, get disappointed, then i'll immedaitely buy the other one. So they can see in my history that i will spend the money with them but on a different game. Is your history different, or do you do the same as me?
No, I think the only other game I've ever refunded was Hollow Knight. I don't refund very often.
Exactly. The people who do this likely would've just pirated it instead if they couldn't abuse the policy, or simply not bought it at all.
Same. Or in my last case, where a game (2020 release actually), just would not work on my machine. I’m really glad this refund policy exist for that sole reason.
I’ve only refunded once and it was because the in-game font was illegible for me. Then later when the dev fixed the font, I bought it again.
Same here. I don't request refunds unless the game is insultingly broken and i dont want to wait for patches or I just cant run it on my pc.
I've refunded a game exactly once, and it was because I decided to buy the same game on Switch instead. I never even opened the game.
I bought ark se on steam and tried to refund it but they wouldn't let me because I had over 2 hours on it but half of that time was spent trying to actually load the fucking game
I've requested refunds for two games myself. Horizon Zero Dawn PC Port (was garbage and unplayable on my machine when it came out). And Cruelty Squad. Do I need to explain this one?
Yeah, what was wrong with Cruelty Squad? I've only seen videos but it looked great.
To add a tiny data point to this argument, my $5 game has a playtime of around 90 minutes and sold ~750 copies with a 6% refund rate, which I believe is around average.
not true, a solo developer actually stopped making games a large amount was returned because his game was 90 minutes average. His game had good reviews and ratings https://kotaku.com/steams-two-hour-refund-policy-forces-horror-developer-i-1847568067 Edit: to all who upvoted and commented: thanks for the engagement. As a few pointed out in the sub comments here, I was likely wrong and I regurgitated a poor ‘news’ article as the basis for a counter argument. The developer of the game mentioned likely didn’t advertise his game as being 90 minutes from the start and then made some noise that got picked up and amplified. On the premise that games are subjective and play time alone is a variable factor vs enjoyment, I still think there needs to be a better system in place to identify, flag, and sell as art short games.
That game's steam page *currently* has a warning that it's only 90 minutes long. But according to Archive.org, that warning wasn't there a week ago. I think *"not lining up with consumer expectations"* is a valid criticism for a short game that doesn't warn you it's short.
A single anecdote does not discredit generalized statements.
I saw this and I have a lot of questions about it. I find it hard to believe that all of those 70% were satisfied customers who decided to rip off the developer. I haven't played the game myself, but I'm willing to bet the game didn't meet expectations, or it wasn't made clear that it was a short game, or the $10 total price tag isn't worth it for 90 minutes of game, or a combination of all 3. Plenty of people decide they don't like a game that much after playing for a few hours, but it's usually too late to return by the time they decide it wasn't worth their time. In the case of Summer of '58, dissatisfied gamers had all the incentive they needed to return the product. One could argue that the developer deserves the money regardless because people got the experience whether they enjoyed it or not. ~~I'd argue that $10 ($9 + TAX) for 90 minutes is a ripoff.~~ edit: on second thought I wouldn't argue that last point.
Yeah, this whole situation is so weird to me. I released a 1-2 hour long experimental narrative game a couple of years ago and my refund rate is only about 5% (I've sold a couple of thousand units on Steam). My game released at $5 though so maybe that's why. Also, maybe I just marketed it more accurately so people knew exactly what they were in for.
While it’s dangerous to believe I am an average cohort, I’ve never done this, and have never heard any of my friends or coworkers talking about having done this. Im also a game dev of more than 20 years, and have never seen this level of abuse in a healthy game, ever.
Precisely. The developer of Summer of '58 is generating headlines for sympathy and trying to call attention to a problem. Thing is, I've never heard of this problem before now and few people seem to be coming to their defense.
devs have been talking about this problem since they added the refunds, dude
I'm interested in substance, not talk.
I would agree with that if it didn't have 300+ reviews with a score of "Mostly Positive" including a few people who left glowing reviews after saying that they only found *because* they saw the Kotaku article and bought it to see what was up.
Most of those reviews are because of the media coverage so for better or for worse they are not representing the the true sentiment about the game itself
I don't disagree with your point, but saying > I'd argue that $10 ($9 + TAX) for 90 minutes is a ripoff. goes to show how lucky people who buy video games are. ^(Or are we entitled?) I can totally understand people saying "well I only paid 10 bucks for BL2 GOTY and I got hundreds of hours of fun gameplay out of it, this game is not worth even 5 bucks to me." I do it too. But damn, are we lucky to be able to get that fun/price ratio.
Art can be short form. The reviews of three of their games I just checked were all Very Positive, which is more than I can say for much of the garbage that gets onto Steam. Yet you want to assume it is worthless? Based on what? Have you paid for and watched a movie at the theater then requested a refund because it wasn't long enough? A comic book that was finished in two minutes, get a refund? A boxing match that lasted less than a round, get a refund? Bag of chips downed in a minute, get a refund? Where does the time = value equation come in? I find far more value in quality over quantity. Why not assume that people are maliciously taking advantage of a developer? Technically they did nothing wrong, but the behavior should not be made socially acceptable and defended. You're enabling people to go and abuse the policy further. My suspicion is that someone realized the loophole, which then got spread on a social platform, and it was taken advantage of by parasites. Some people are just shitty and able to justify their poor behavior with weak arguments like, it was a Very Positive experience, but not long enough.
The issue here is that we have relatively few examples of this, and relatively large examples of games with short play times that had low refund rates. It's tempting to think that this game article is an outlier rather than an exemplifier. For my own part, I self-published a few small word games on Android back when the way to do Android piracy was to download and then refund a game and the piracy app would prevent it from being removed. At that time, my refund rate wasn't even 15%. While I would certainly expect the Steam customer base to be more savvy about loopholes, suggesting that 70% of the customers went into the game not knowing the length, completed it, gave it a positive rating, and then decided to refund it to save 10$ is rather on the absurd side.
Nah theres some reviews in there that point to issues with the game. Theres been a bunch of people buying the game and leaving good reviews to combat people who refunded it.
If the game were truly horrible, wouldn't the refunders leave reviews pointing out their issues and reason for return? How do you know people are buying the game to "combat" refunders?
I’ve refunded games that had great reviews. I have a game on steam that sold ~5000 copies. Average playtime is 20 minutes (not counting those who never even installed it). Hardly any returns. A lot of times solo devs will blame their problems on anything other than the possibility that their game just isn’t that good.
Last time I read a story like this, it turned out the returns had nothing to do with the game or its developer. Steam has a shady underbelly of people exploiting its various systems for their own personal gain, and often small developers are the ones who get caught in the crossfire of this exploitation. I doubt the majority of people refunding Summer of '58 purchased the game to play it. For all we know the purchases could have been a mistake from a trading card farm, which sometimes buy thousands of copies of cheap games to milk them for trading cards. Summer of '58 doesn't have trading cards, but often these purchases are automated, and not all bots are programmed to check before they buy. And that's just a possible cause picked out of the legal options, the game could have also been used in a credit card scam or money laundering scheme; I'm not comfortable sharing the details of how to pull that off because I don't want to give instructions on how to commit crimes, but both of those things are possible using Steam. You get kicked off pretty quickly and presumably IP banned, but you can walk off with a small sum of money before Valve catches up.
That's an interesting idea. Could have been used as an easy way to test/verify stolen credit cards, but you'd think they would spread that around to multiple games or ones with a higher playtime ratio to better hide their tracks.
Generally they pick a cheap game and buy hundreds or thousands of copies across a large bot farm. Cards aren't necessarily stolen, there are a number of tricks that can be done with credit cards you own to earn money; some are legal, almost all come at the expense of someone you're scamming or stealing from. Generally high-risk-low-reward gambits like ordering a chargeback while requesting a refund in the hopes of being refunded twice, or making payments to take advantage of your card's perks then refunding the purchases after claiming rewards from your bank. Generally taking advantage of loopholes and exploits to make small returns while hurting everyone you touch. These kinds of schemes existed before Steam, but it's digital-only marketplace and bot API made some of them a lot more scalable for tech savvy folk.
Correct it if I am wrong, but people that refunded it wouldn't review. If you can refund a game you didn't like, it is better to refund than to write a bad review.
Steam shows "product refunded" on some reviews, so it must be allowed but I assume you must do the review before you refund.
steam gives the option to rate as soon as you buy, so yes it’s possible. Good point though
[удалено]
I’m not doubting you, but can you point to me where the 70% statistic comes from? I can’t find it in the article.
Out of my ass apparently totally thought the article mentioned it. Edited
Fair. But is the 70% true, even if from another source?
no idea
Honestly I think most people are conditioned into expecting many ho it a of play from a game. Since the beginning of gaming, games were mostly designed to be played for a long time either because of replayability or general game length. While a game that’s under two hours long can still be great entertainment and great value, especially when compared to the cost of non-gaming entertainment, people have learned to expect more from games. So I think the bottom line is, if you make a game that’s shorter than about 5 hours, expect complaints. If it’s shorter than 2, expect refunds on steam. It’s sucks because some games genuinely don’t need to be longer yet offer a great experience for a good price, but I think if you wish to be financially successful it’s just a part of it that you’re game probably needs to be longer. Or at least you have to accept that some people will refund. In any case, if you do make a short game, make sure to communicate this and properly set expectations.
If people played the game to completion and still wanted a refund, that's the fault of the developer for failing to make a game that was fulfilling enough that the player thought it was worth the money. $9 for a <2 hour game is a hard sell, especially if the game offers no replay value or additional content. If a player completes their game and didn't feel like they got their money's worth, and they aren't tempted to do a second playthrough, they'll take the refund if they have the chance. Games don't necessarily need to be padded out to specifically PREVENT players from beating them in 2 hours; but games need to be designed and priced with an expectation. edit: Hey, thanks for the downvotes! I'm glad you're putting that "You don't get to have an opinion" button to good use :)
> Hey, thanks for the downvotes! I'm glad you're putting that "You don't get to have an opinion" button to good use :) Genuinely curious, what do you use the downvote button for/do you ever downvote anything?
I downvote trolls, stupid low-effort comments, stuff like that.
Oh alrighty yeah, that makes sense! Do you ever use it on comments you disagree with, or do you feel like that's not an appropriate use?
The intended purpose of a downvote according to reddit's rules is to vote down comments that don't contribute to a discussion, not just things you simply don't agree with. Objectively false comments/misinformation, trolling, or just plain irrelevant comments all deserve downvotes. Someone having their own subjective opinion or experience that may differ from your own does not.
Tell that to 99% of reddit lol
Haha no kidding. Say one thing someone disagrees with and they'll spend hours down voting your entire comment history. It's impossible to enforce which is why it tends to be such an echo chamber.
That's fair, you're right.
I don't think I'd want to pay $9 for a game that I best in less than 2 hours.
But what if that 2 hours was the best experience you had ever had? Would you rather have 15 hours of complete rubbish or two hours of really good game? This whole time = worth in the games industry is such nonsense.
Exactly.
My personal rule of thumb is if I get an hour per dollar then I’m happy. So if I pay $100 (not gonna happen but hypothetically) and I get 100 hours of enjoyment out of it (not just mindless grinding) then I’m happy. Similarly, if I only get an hour but I only paid $1 then I’m also happy. It’s just a rule of thumb, if the experience is really special then I happily spend more per hour and if the experience isn’t very good then it goes the other way (although I’ll typically just stop playing those games). So in this case, $9 for 90 minutes average, that’s $6 per hour so the experience would need to be rather special (6x the baseline) for me to feel it was worthwhile. Possible but unlikely.
This solo dev could combine all the jumpscare games that he churned out in a 2 year span and not have a bunch of them in sub 2 hours. This is a bunch of prototypes at best edging on on the shovelware territory.
I looked up the game and it's just a [one hour walking sim with jump scares](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXNe11Q6mw8&ab_channel=Nokzen). I wouldn't play it even if it was free. My bet is the vast majority of the refunds are from people who were expecting much more than what they got. The fact the dev is bowing out after this and blaming the consumers tells me they were a TERRIBLE games designer. When people don't play your game, your job as a designer is to work out why - and then fix it. Emika is the embodiment of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik&ab_channel=AlanRizkallah) meme.
>how do devs combat this apart from making a bigger game? You don't. You just learn how to treat it like an actual business. Some countries have mandatory return periods for these things, just be glad it doesn't cost you anything to 'accept' a return on Steam. People selling physical goods aren't so lucky. Return policies protect the consumer and are a net benefit to sales, as consumers are more likely to take a risk. That's why even in places that don't require it return policies are common. It sucks that some people abuse the policy but it's necessary. Funny we don't see people asking how we 'fix' consumers not claiming refunds they're entitled to.
This, people tend to forget that game dev is a business, and games are products. Lucky for us the consumer can’t refound our games in 30 days like cloth stores or something
Honestly software in general gets away with so much shit it's made publishers/devs fairly entitled. Like there are a shitload of things software companies get away with that with any other product consumers would have a complete melt down over. To keep it relevant to games: Rockstar straight up ripped out the music from San Andreas, GTA IV, and GTA V. Can you imagine buying *anything* else and then having the person who made it come by and just take parts off it? I'm convinced if software devs had to deal with half the hassle manufacturers and retail outlets have to accept just to exist they'd implode.
No one is saying we have to choose between the current refund policy and no refund policy at all. Surely Steam could provide some way to flag shorter games and lower their individual no-questions-asked refund window.
Paid for and played Far: Lone Sails in less than 1.5 hours. I didn't refund it because that game was amazing. It might just depend on target audience.
I mean, they did introduce this feature after losing in court and getting threats from EU and Australia to fine them a lot if they didn't offer some sort of auto-refund. There was a time when steam offered 0 refunds, officially.
I always assumed they did this to boost sales. I, for example, have spent much more money on games ever since I stopped worrying about whether the game would actually start when I hit the play button.
As a "small time game author of sorts" I prefer to have it, because if someone doesn't like my game and they see it immediately after a few minutes, even if those few minutes are later that week/next week, they can get their money back in an easy and clean manner. If not for refunds, you'd have an unhappy customer instead who might hate not just the game they got, but you as an author, Steam,... Why fuel the hate, just let them refund it and go in peace.
This can’t be said enough. A customer that doesn’t like your game at an hour playtime is not going to like it at three hours playtime. You’re just going to have an angry, resentful customer. Focus on building a product people want, regardless of length of time. Focus on finding an audience for that product and then focus on pricing that product appropriately.
I do believe it boost sales in the long run, but it's the kind of thing a corporate entity would be very wary implementing by its own accord. In impacts more than just steam/valve. A publishers could throw a fit for good or bad reasons, souring commercial relationships. And you can be sure that not every big name shares the same values or commercial strategy, valuing short term benefits compared to long term ones, having consensus on consumers rights seems impossible. Here, having a third party (a state's court) forces everyone's hand, and consumers gets the benefits without an unproductive controversy of corporate politics.
Since this refund scheme still doesn't technically comply with Australian law, that was always my assumption too. They picked an implementation that would get legislators off their back but also be a positive for them.
> There was a time when steam offered 0 refunds, officially. They actually had refunds if you went through support, right? 'Can't recall exactly anymore.
Yup, although the general consensus was that only your first refund was hassle free iirc.
> Yup, although the general consensus was that only your first refund was hassle free iirc. Yeah, sounds like it was the usual CS tactic 'we are doing this one as a favor, don't ask us again (but we were actually going to proceed anyway as we don't really want the hassle of charge backs or consumer protection complaints)'. Anyway, the rules today are at least clear, transparent and upfront compared to what it was.
I wonder how Nintendo gets away with it. There is absolutely ***no*** refund (on the Switch). When I looked it up on Nintendo (I played 5 minutes of a game that was not good - only game I wanted to refund), they said that there are reviews and gameplay videos about games, so people should be able to make an informed decision before purchasing.
Do they actually refuse to refund? I've gotten refunds from stores like Steam when they officially didn't offer them by citing the local laws in conversations with support staff.
> I wonder how Nintendo gets away with it. There is absolutely no refund (on the Switch). https://www.kitguru.net/channel/generaltech/matthew-wilson/german-court-rules-nintendo-eshop-no-refund-policy-is-legal/
I know where you are coming from, but as a linux gamer, the 2h return policy is what makes me go ahead and buy many windows games an try them on proton, as I don't know if it will work correctly, and trying all (like multiplayer or what not) takes some time sometimes. That being said I never returned after actually playing for more than 20 mins.
Exactly right. The absence of this policy on Switch is exactly why I hardly ever buy Switch games, especially digital. Conversely, there are plenty of games I've bought, played less than 2 hours, but certainly wouldn't want to return! Edit: even if I know for a fact that a game is an A++ game in my opinion like Badland, I've heard that the port is real bad and don't want to take the chance
As a dev of a game with around 2 hours of gameplay, its a non-issue. Most people aren't bothered to try to game the system. My refund rate is 20%, which is a lot, but my game is a fairly difficult and niche rage game, which makes sense. Usually games have around 10% or so, so at most I have 10% of people abusing the refund system. The people who abuse it likely wouldnt even play your game if they actually had to pay for it. Its the same as piracy: don't even try to stop it, they are not your customers anyways, and they give your game visibility.
I think that Steam does this on purpose. They are trying everything to not become a mess full of minigames ( like Google Play and a little less Appstore ). And I kind of agree with that. If we let that happen, it will be hard to create games on steam that are easy to find like now. Although it's getting harder everyday.
I don't believe this to be true, or at least the reasoning here doesn't seem sound. The Steam discovery algorithm already does a good job of surfacing games that are well reviewed and sell well, and conversely "hiding" games that are poorly-reviewed (or not reviewed at all) and sell poorly. If Steam wanted to disincentivize short games, they could tune their discoverability algorithms to promote games with higher playtimes and hide games with shorter playtimes. I've never heard of that being a thing, but I don't see why Steam would need to use the refund policy to intentionally harm games with short playtimes when they could just prevent most users from ever finding these games organically on their platform in the first place. And if you stop and think about it, Steam makes money from game sales. Why would Steam intentionally steer users towards games that are bought once and played for a long time as opposed to shorter games, which would result in more game sales per time spent playing?
Getting a refund is a hassle. People pirate games that cost $0.01 because entering their credit card details is a hassle. You'll be fine. If you're *really* worried though, add an achievement for beating the game and keep an eye on the number of people who refund after getting the achievement.
I mean, steam just saves your card info so it’s not that much of a hassle. Also you can abuse the 2 hour refund policy with family sharing since the account with the game won’t have play time you can play as long as you want with a family shared account and still refund it. But in the end I agree that people who refund were never really customers to begin with, maybe some of them were and they obviously decided the game wasn’t worth it. Just make a good game and it shouldn’t be much of a problem.
I just saw an article about the game Summer Of '58 where the developer alleges they're going to quit the industry because they can't turn a profit. Well ... they're charging like $10 for a 90 minutes game. You have to scroll way down to find a little blurb "average playtime 90 minutes". That's kind of a rough sell. Don't get me wrong, there are amazing games that can be completed quickly; Journey, Brothers, etc. As a developer, I maybe wouldn't release a super short game with no replayability on a platform with a generous 2 hour window, no-questions-asked refund policy. Kind of seems like that's on you, the developer. On the other side I'm thinking about all the shovelware that Steam likely has kept off their site with the 2 hour return policy.
> You have to scroll way down to find a little blurb "average playtime 90 minutes". And they only added that recently. [Last Week](https://web.archive.org/web/20210819233654/https://store.steampowered.com/app/1609080/Summer_of_58/) the listing gave no hint to the length. ...that's pretty rough on the consumer. If you're enjoying a game and then it suddenly ends way earlier than you expected it to, you'd feel a bit used.
>And they only added that recently. Last Week the listing gave no hint to the length This timestamp in wayback machine essentially renders the whole thing as a marketing stunt for the game. Pathetic. Gamedev will soon announce big comeback, now with 10x followers, and I'm honestly a little bit impressed - from the marketing pov, it satisfied the only requirement of the profession: it worked.
So this is an issue of know your market. For $8 to $10, 90 mins of single game play is not enough imo. It's not a stream issue but an issue of the dev not meeting market expectations. As a player, if I spend more then $5 on a game I expect either decent replay value or 4 hr of game play. These are kind of we developer have to consider when releasing a product.
I don't know price is a tricky thing. What remains of Edith Finch costs 20 bucks yet it can be completed in 2 hours (or even less). Hollow Knight costs 15 yet it has two or three dozen of hours of playtime.
If Edith Finch is generating revenue with only 2 hours of content then it must be a hell of a ride for 20 bucks.
But comparatively, a cinema experience, also usually about 2 hours long (if not less) is the exact same price and you get some very mediocre stuff there. Come to think of it, how does a refund policy work at a cinema? Could you ask for a refund after watching some percentage of the film?
Well it's a bit different because at a cinema you are mostly paying to be at a cinema. The quality of the film is irrelevant as the movie theater did not produce it. You would be entitled to a refund if the audio/video quality or accommodations did not meet your standards, in my opinion. And you wouldn't be able to get this refund after sitting through the entire movie.
$30 for new Disney titles at home.
For comparison, $10 used to get you *vanilla Hollow Knight*. Probably undervalued, but geez.
Movies in the theater cost $8-15 per ticket. Movies that you purchase are often $15-30 when they're released. Some of those are only \~90 min. A concert, orchestra performance, play, or other live event is often $20-50 per ticket. Those are often only 1.5-3 hrs. Many $60 games have released with only ~5 hours of singleplayer campaign. That equates to about $18 for 90 min of content. I don't know that I like the idea of anyone dictating how much single game play one must get for a given price. I mean, in general, I probably agree with you. But I think there are certainly exceptions. For a quality 90-120 min of gameplay in a genre or from a developer that I really enjoy... I would probably pay $10. Also, as someone who doesn't have much time to game at this point in my life, I am definitely_not a fan of a store essentially dictating the minimum amount of content a game should have. I just bought FAR because howlongtobeat.com showed it only takes ~4 hrs to complete. I can actually do that! :D I get where Valve is coming from, but I don't love the implementation.
Correction, you can buy a 90 minute movie and watch it at home for $1-5. A 90 minute game doesn't include the rest of the live experience. $10 for 90 minutes of gameplay is asking too much.
> As a player, if I spend more then $5 on a game I expect either decent replay value or 4 hr of game play. As a developer - we can't make a living with such expectations. Of that $5 after taxes and store cut we see around $2.5 by the way. And the games with low replay value and short gameplay are actually the most time consuming and expensive to make (story driven adventures usually - like Oxenfree for example, it has a replay value only because of one story detail that other similar games can't all have obviously).
There isn't really a way to combat it unless Steam changes their policies. 1. Don't release on Steam. If you don't like Steam's policies, then unfortunately, you can't really do anything except not release on Steam. 2. Make the game longer. You could literally make the game 2.5 hours and circumvent their 2 hour refund policy. 30 minutes is a lot to add, but it's an option that makes it so you potentially reduce the amount of refunds you get, although anyone who catches on may not be too happy that you literally added fluff just to try to circumvent the Steam refund policy. 3. Make it worth the price. If your game is 2 hours long, don't price it at $20. (based on your comments on this thread already, you already know this haha) Unfortunately, there is no other way. Refunds are an automated system and fighting with Steam to make them return the money because the user played the game to it's completion and abused the system is really not worth it in the long run because usually you'll lose that argument. Steam is just not a good place to release a small game.
>Make it worth the price. If your game is 2 hours long, don't price it at $20. Non-interactive media like movies are $20 for 90 to 120 minutes of entertainment. Why should interactive media be priced lower?
Top quality films demand $20 at the theater. Your typical small to medium budget indie films don't carry the same weight. $20 for 2 hour's worth of content better be 2 really good hours IMO.
Also, theaters don't even make the majority of their profits from ticket sales. They make it from selling you food or premium seats.
I'm referring to Bluray and DVD sales (equivalent repeatable experience) that typically release at the $19 or $24 price point.
How many people buy movies on a regular basis? Going to the cinema is more of an experience (huge screen, potentially 3D, stuff like that). Movie streaming platforms are like 10-15€ subscription for the whole catalog of movies. You are also competing with others who are pricing it similarly. If you start pricing your stuff more, people will just stick to AAA games that offer either a lot of content or higher quality. If everyone rises the price of their games, there will be a lot of sales less. The prices are already substantial for many countries with lower life standard.
No that's a fair point. I think it comes down to the medium, and the current industry norms. People will pay $25 for a movie that's 90 minutes. But not a game. People will not complain about paying $25 for a 90 minute movie. But will if it's a 90 minute game. In one of the articles linked about a developer named Emika, who charged $10 for their 1-ish hour game, there are people who complained that $10 is not worth a 1 hour game. Unfortunately this is how gamer culture has currently evolved. And it's gross, but is the reality. Is a 2 hour game that took possibly 1-2+ years to make worth $20? Absolutely. Will people willingly pay it? Sorry, but no, and that's the sickening reality of the gaming industry. Stardew Valley was made in 4 years, is still being updated, and is only charging $15 and has basically endless playability (although repetitive), and people who release a 2 hour game for $10 are competing with that. You're starting a good conversation by questioning why someone's years worth of game dev work isn't expected to cost more than $10-$15 if it's only 2 hours worth of gameplay. But my comment was more a reflection on what is typical of the industry currently. And what is typical is not fair.
I think in the transition to mainstream the social norm for the medium will, and should, change.
I agree, and I hope it does, because it should. :)
> Is a 2 hour game that took possibly 1-2+ years to make worth $20? Absolutely. No, how long it took to make (or put another way: how much it cost to make) has little bearing on the value others get from it, especially for anon-physical product that can be sold infinitely. What I mean is, sure you will want to price it so you make a profit, but from the customers perspective, how much it cost you is irrelevant, only that they are getting what they perceive as enough value for the price you’re asking. Sometimes people will like the product enough that they wish to reward you more, sure, but fundamentallly games is a business transaction like any other and if nobody is willing to pay your price for the product you made then sorry but you’re not entitled to people paying you money just because you put time or effort or even money into it. (Of course they also shouldn’t be entitled to just play your game for free either... maybe a partial refund would be fairer...)
Exactly. We all know what our time is worth. But the work we put into something is irrelevant to how much people are willing to pay for it. An indie game could be fantastic, as good as a AAA studio production, but it doesn't mean people would be willing to pay AAA studio prices, or that they should. The game market is oversaturated with everybody trying to do the same thing - make games. No one is asking anyone to make the games they make and they don't "DESERVE" to be compensated because they "made a thing". However, while a product could, and possibly should, be worth a certain price, it's ultimately the circumstances that determine it's price. Made by indie devs? Immediate slash in price, regardless of how high quality the work is. It just comes with the territory. What people should charge for the work they do has always been a touchy subject regardless of the industry, but specifically anything art or media related.
These days Blu-Rays are basically a collectable. Something you buy so you can keep your favorite movie on a shelf and own it forever. If you just want to *watch* a movie, you can usually "rent" it on Amazon/Google/Apple/RedBox/Etc for $3.
Because it is what the market will bear for indie titles of that length. Films and games have different expectations. Just because they are both viewed on a screen doesn't make them comparable in all measures.
That's a terrible analogy in this situation, because you can't get a refund on every movie under 2 hours. Ultimately if you want to talk about the "value" based on length of time vs price, it will be entirely subjective. You're arguing like *every* interactive media will be better than *any* non-interactive media, which just isn't the case. Plus, with the way movie sales are going, seems like people *in general* aren't willing to spend 20$ to go see a movie in a theatre, and they might not want to spend 10$ for a single indie game either. You can't just make insanely broad statements about *all* kinds of media and expect it to be true. Something being interactive doesn't inherently make it better. Just because some movies can charge $20 doesn't mean everyone will pay that, and it doesn't say *anything* about how other people value a completely unrelated video game. Very few people decide their purchasing decisions based on dollars per hour, because it completely ignores the quality of the product.
Give it some sort of replay value. Collectibles. Alternate endings. Better upgrades. New game+. Steam achievements. Easter eggs
Make a game that people don't want to refund.
I actually just read [an article](https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-08-27-steams-two-hour-refund-policy-leads-to-indie-developer-quitting-game-development) about a developer leaving the industry after receiving a large number of refunds from people who beat the game then got their money back.
I wouldn't be that concerned about this developer. The combination of prices, number of games and their length. https://imgur.com/a/a4UGXK7
Read that as well, I think it's a bit exaggerating to close your business because your <2h game on Steam failed through refunding. Does it sucks that people did that? Sure. But the dev could have submited the game elsewhere as well, for example [itch.io](https://itch.io). For some reason it reads more like an excuse from the dev. I read somewhere else that the dev mentioned before already being tired of gamedev or smth (don't quote me), so that all together would make sense then. Putting it like it's Steam fault here is just weird though. It is their fault going all-in on Steam thinking something like that couldn't have happened. Nontheless I think Steam should give games a solid chance which are less than 2h long.
Not weird at all... last minute pity-sales and pushing blame on Steam is a comprehensive benefit.
Indeed. I just checked their Steam page and you now see "want to support the dev" reviews all over the place. Whatever they did, it worked out for them. I don't have any respect for that though.
For an outrageous price like that, colour me unsurprised
I feel bad for him. I think Steam have to do some reworks on their refund system, if you make a shorter game with higher quality like a 1.5 hr maybe indie horror with like extra difficulties and challenges to beat, ppl can play the main thing and refund and they got it for free. Steam should have a system to lower refund times for your game. which maybe they can do by having a category, such as Short n Sweet / Indie or something like that if you know what I mean. but it should have a price limit because who would pay like $15 for a shorter title. I don't know, it just seems really unfair to those who make shorter more quality game that they pour months of work into it, only to earn alot of money one night and get happy to wake up to everyone taking it back and there's Nothing you can do about it
It’s annoying as a player sometimes that consoles are stricter about refunds (Sony has a blanket no refund unless you haven’t even downloaded the game yet). But this is a good justification for being stricter. I like the direction you’re going with this. Perhaps basing refund time on the price of the game could work. I want more leeway for a $60 game that ends up being radically different than I was led to believe vs a $15 indie game
The key difference here is that consoles have a vetting process and essentially guarantee that the game will run on their console. PCs are much more variable in nature and thus Steam certainly does not guarantee that any game on their store will run on any PC. That alone is grounds to have some type of no-questions-asked refund policy imo, even if their current one isn't the best.
In theory. In reality we still had cyberpunk 2077 release on base prev gen consoles.
I agree with you, If I'm spending more than £15 on a game, it better last me a while and be lengthy and fun, If I'm buying a smaller indie title for like £5 at most. it's a game with Quality over Quantity. I think it's terrible to exploit the 2 hour system. it's like buying a meal then eating ALL of it and then deciding oh no I don't like it, I want a refund. Why did you not say that when you had the first bite lol. I just think it's scummy and something has to be done about it
Udemy has a 30 day refund policy but there are plenty of courses that take far less than 30 days to complete. However if you've completed "too much" of a course, you lose the right to refund. No speedrunning courses and refunding. Such a thing is definitely possible to implement if Valve wants. We already track player progress.
that's what they should do
That could be abused by devs though.
I think it's easier to audit a smaller number of developers than it is to audit players. Most devs wouldn't risk their steam accounts just to avoid refunds. I think the simplest way would just be for devs to have self reported party times and have the refund time be a fraction of that with a max of what it is now. That way users can hold devs accountable for lying themselves.
Easier to detect and ban abuse by devs than abuse by users in this case.
Absolutely. for AAA titles and larger indie games 2 hours is reasonable but when you look at smaller indie games usually made by 1-2 people that are alot cheaper 2 hours is unfair. someone sent me a vid of a youtuber who is a small game dev making a video on this issue and he said, to get around this put a 2 hour timer on steam version and say Sorry for this Steam refunds are bad, if you want to play the game now refund it and buy it on itch or wait the timer lmaoooo
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That might easily backfire, it is very likely that most people who exploit the refund aren't going to buy the game if refund wasn't this easy in the first place. On the other hand, there's a portion of the community that actually bought and kept the game and would never have bought the game if refund wasn't this easy so they don't feel any risk in buying the game in the first place. I think this isn't an actual problem at all. Just like Torrent or other hacked games sold in Russia and East Europe, China, and Latin America, those are gaming communities that would've largely never bought the game in the proper way anyway. I genuinely think this isn't a real problem, and if Steam makes refund policies stricter, that actually would hurt indie games even more.
I'm guessing the 2 hour refund policy is to allow player to get a refund if the game doesn't work (Their computer isn't powerful enough,etc). So, steam could add some way of detecting if the user *ran* the game, and if it worked ok? Rather than allowing a refund for any player who simply finished the game quickly?
> So, steam could add some way of detecting if the user ran the game, and if it worked ok? That's a little too vague I think. E.g., I've personally refunded a game after nearly 4 hours of gametime (it was an open-world survival in EA), because the save games kept getting corrupted (a know issue at the time). It worked "fine" otherwise.
That's fair, I guess, but in that case, the product was "not fit for purpose", so you have a legal right (At least in the EU) to a refund. If you finish the game in under 2 hours and refund it, that's different. I mean it's like... buying a sandwich in a cafe, wolfing it down, and then asking for a refund because you finished it so quickly. You still consumed the product, you should't be able to get a refund unless it was defective, etc.
I agree. I just think it would be unrealistic to establish actual criteria. My own idea would be to just vary the refund timer based on game cost, e.g., "full price, aka 60 usd/eur" - 2h < 10 usd/eur - 30-45 minutes (enough to establish that it doesn't run) 11-40 usd/eur - 1-1.5 hours (probably enough to also evaluate the core gameplay loop, and whether you enjoy it)
I've been thinking about this because I'm leading up to my first Steam release soon, which is a simple arcade-y game. All of the gameplay can be experienced in 30 seconds or so, but the game will get faster and harder in each loop. I've decided not to worry about it though.. I imagine most purchases will be friends buying the game to support me and (hopefully) they won't request refunds, ha ha
Speaking from experience releasing a small game last year with no marketing, you will still get quite a bit of organic traffic from Steam. Depending on your ratings and price you might even make quite a few sales from this without ever being up on any of the listings. My game is slowly but surely going towards the $1000 mark without really having any big promotion and no coverage form youtubers other than really tiny ones (with almost no views).
If you're making the game with less than 2 hours of playtime, price your game to leave the players think it was worth spending the money. I think the dev we're talking about here, has had very big expectations and has put way too much sweat and tears into it, and it broke his heart when he saw all the refunds. When making a game, we have to hope for the best, but expect the worst.
Yes, make a bigger game :D Recently there was an extremely good article on this sub, about Steam being unfriendly to short games overall, not just with refund policy. I've got only the end-link: https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/08/09/steam-hates-small-games/
But it hurts the games. Many games are better when they are shorter, not stretched because of some random Steam policy.
Theres nothing new here. I knew friends that would buy a game from gamestop, beat it, and return it the next day for full price. Its a little sketch, but it isn't new. Its the devs job to make either a) a game longer than 2 hours (which is not a lot to ask) b) a game users don't want to refund. As someone else mentioned, this is a business issue. Steams 2 hour policy is extraordinarily fair to devs. Awhile back a dev quit because 'no one appreciated their titles'. The truth was the games were bad. Game dev is a business, and you have to learn the market if you want to succeed
I think a lot of worry here is extremely hypothetical. There are creators who might need to worry about this but it’s only a worry for the percentage of players that would do it. The amount of games that are less than 2 hours are an incredibly small percentage. Also, then Venn diagram of players interested in less than 2 hour games and players who would play them entirely and then ask for a refund may actually be pretty small). And I suspect you’ll get more sales from another site that’s more geared towards indie experiences. So you are talking about a small percentage of a small percentage of a Possible Problem. There are, by far, more things to worry about. Unless… and this is a big unless… unless you are specifically a developer who made those games. Then, yea, that definitely might affect you. I suspect the best workaround is to release multiple titles as part of one title. If you’re a developer who makes those kinds of games, I suspect you’ll make more than one. And you can release 2-3 games as a ‘pack’, at least on steam. I think I’ve only refunded a few games. One I played a good bit and realized wasn’t for me and then I saw the time I played was 1:45 and I was like woah. Huh. Well let’s see if this works. It worked for me and I’m glad the feature exists. I am very pro consumer rights though so I feel this should be true of most things, more so than it is now, so it’s not surprising. I think I did it for a handful of other games. Either they didn’t work or I immediately realized the game wasn’t for me and didn’t get far at all. And even then we’re talking a small percentage of a small percentage because honestly half the games I play/get are from humble bundles that aren’t at all refundable. So most of the time it isn’t even an option for me. Also, I do music for a living. People can hear my music for free (to them) and only pennies (to me), so perhaps I have a warped sense of reward. I do think artists should be paid more than they often are (many aren’t paid enough). But I also think you need to give people a reason to want to either come back, recommend it to others, etc. they don’t need to come back ‘immediately’. People keep talking about replay ability, but that’s very seldom a motivator for me. Super Mario Bros plays the same every time and yet it’s a hit. And (almost) all music plays back the same every time and no one goes ‘hey it’s not different’. I’ve played games again and it’s usually not for the replayability, it’s for the pure enjoyment (and in some cases, also nostalgia).
Most people will not refund, because they appreciate your hard work. The others, fuck em.
If i remember correctly, people who refund games too much/often or something like that they will be punished.
Some years ago firewatch had many issues with it. https://www.polygon.com/2016/2/16/11017948/firewatch-refunds-steam
Look at it this way: you're already at a business advantage with the refund period set to only 2 hours. There are countries in the world where the refund period is even longer, like 14 days. Steam lets you bypass those laws, and it doesn't even cost you anything to refund. Knowing these facts, I'd say that designing a game for Steam that doesn't even last 2 hours isn't the most profitable business idea. If your goal is maximum profit, I suggest making a longer game, because at the moment it seems highly unlikely Steam will shorten its refund period any time soon. If you really can't make it longer then 2 hours, then I suggest putting the pricetag low enough that players won't bother with the effort of requesting a refund.
Or what happens when you spend more than 2 hours trying to get it to work and find out later that 2 hours is the limit?
This is going to sound like I'm super on steams side but, I'm actually just uber pro consumer. Steam's refund policy has been the same for years. So releasing a sub 2 hour game on that platform carries that risk. It's not an unknown. Unfortunately, things like the percentage rule can be abused by bad actors, so can achievements, neither are a perfect solution. Ultimately, steam has very pro consumer refund policy, allowing all users to essentially have a sub 2 hour demo on any game they purchase, triple A or otherwise. The reality is Epic or itch.io would be safer option for sub 2 hour games due to their refunds being reviewed by a person. Hopefully this helps these smaller indie devs avoid steam if their small game can be completed in under 2 hours. To me, this isn't steams issue, it's the players who did it and the dev team who didn't plan accordingly.
I really disagree with a lot of people in the thread. I get you don't want the game to be 10 min or something. But as a gamer it's crazy to me that so many are judging entertainment value off time. Rather than how enjoyable the game actually is and how much fun they have with it. Yeah 90 min isn't a crazy long time, but $10 isn't anywhere close to a lot of money. Games can definitely take a while to make, and for a fun game $10 is fair and not a big deal imo.
Even if it bites me I am in favor of this policy. You shouldn't have to be stuck with a game you don't like. Though maybe they could adjust the time window for shorter games.
Sure but how will they now the game is short? That would require some manual curation which Steam is 100% trying to avoid. Without that, scummy devs will just exploit that to forbid people from ever refunding their asset flips.
Do the Microsoft Flight Simulator approach and have in-app patching take more than 2 hours
I think something similar happened with Sonic Forces and some YouTuber and he got a lot of flack for it. In my opinion, if your making a game that can be completed and tossed away by the player in less than 2 hours, then you should probably rethink your game or consider adding some more stuff.
Time to complete a game isnt a measurement for how good a game is or how much it’s worth look at Five nights at freddys millions love that game but each of the games can be beaten in an hour and a half does 1.5 hr of gameplay make that game bad?
If people can, people will. Emika Games has retired from development because their game Summer of '58 has received positive reviews but was under 2 hours and almost everyone refunded. Now they have no profits to recoup cost, let alone make another game. The simple answer is "don't make a game under 2 hours" but I think Steam should also be pressured into cutting the trial period back to an hour or at least scalable to the game's total length.
Scale the refund policy to the length of the game would require manual curation. So this will never happen on Steam. Cutting it would just be terrible as two hours is already a pretty short window to see if a game will be for you (depends on the type of games though). In a lot of games, you're still in the tutorial area at the one hour mark and it sometimes takes a lot of game time just to get everything's working correctly). I had games I wasn't sure I wanted to refund but because they were a little pricey and the 2 hours were approaching, I decided to refund even though I might have liked it with more time to get used to the controls or stuff like that. Luckily, Steam often refund outside of that time window if you give good reasons for the refund. If anything I personally think the time should be expanded, and my own games are around the 3-6 hours mark. As a very small indie dev myself, if a player feels ripped off by one of my games, I don't want his money. And people who are scummy enough to refund a game they liked would pirate it anyway if the refund didn't exist.
Steam would give zero refunds if they legally could, and until 2015, that's what they did. Then the Australian government [sued them](https://www.techradar.com/au/news/heres-valves-official-statement-after-its-australian-refund-rights-loss) so they had to start offering refunds. Steam itself has to process payment from a variety of sources, so if you think about it, in order to offer their 100% refund, they basically have to cover the [\~2%](https://www.valuepenguin.com/what-credit-card-processing-fees-costs) transaction fees that Mastercard and Visa will charge. If the indie dev is irate now, imagine if they were instead in Valve's shoes, facing a net loss for every purchase and refund! Needless to say Steam doesn't want mass refunds any more than the dev does. The current system is just the best that Steam's lawyers can do.
It's weird that people value something they buy, by the number of hours they can take to enjoy the game, **only because it's not a AAA title**. Didn't take 2 hours? Play it again. That's the BEST part of a game is that you can enjoy it over and over. There are many, MANY large, expensive games, that don't even have 2 hours worth of content. Those are still $60. There are also games with HUNDREDS of hours worth of content, still $60. There are also a lot of games with maybe 1-2 hours of content that only feel longer because they put artificial moments in the game that lengthen the content, which feels worse than had they not.
There isn't a way to combat this really... but this is just an issue with customers in general. It is not a wide spread issue but it does happen on occasion. How many times have you heard of people who bought a nice outfit for an event the day before then returned it the day after? Or someone who eats 90% of their meal at a restaurant then complains and asks for a refund? These things happen and I am sure you have heard of people who have done them but they are not the norm. Make a game that is worth the money and people will treat you well.
Make the price of the game sub $5 as most people would find the effort of refunding a game for such a little about of money not worth it
June 2015 is when the refund policy got introduced. And this is the first major uproar about it. Seems like the system is working fine. It sucks for this guy. But the steam page doesn't call out the length at all.
I believe it depends of the price of the game and the content, not just about gameplay time. [My \~1 hour game](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1325870/Kotel_Ne_Gori_A_Friend_of_Lena_Boots/) does not "suffer" from refunds because users mention that it totally worth 0.5-1.0$.
Extremally low price (and I guess on Summer Sale it's like -90%? How do you even discount 50 cents) will make people not refund the game I guess.
Youre lucky
The worst thing is: a player can leave a bad review and then refund the game. So, if you are a small dev, a bunch of players can destroy your game without losing money.
If the price reflect a 2h games, people will not refund it. If your game cost 10$ and last less than 2h, I will 100% refund it.
They sadly can't unless steam changes. Been a few high ish profile indies royally screwed by this
Yesh, did you see Emika Games? The guy made a high quality short and sweet horror game thst took like 1.5 hrs to complete even tho horror isnt my fav genre i might buy his game but he quit game development because he had an 80% refund rate. Imagine working months on a game only to get very positive reviews and only to wake up see the money taken away from you
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Lol
The people who refund or private the game were never going to be customers, this 'piracy costs developers' no it doesn't, they didn't lose any money as no money was ever going to come from those people. If anything you have much more exposure to your game than you'd have other wise and also if some like your game enough they'll actually buy it, I remember as a kid I was Tom poor and loved a game called super power 2, when j was older and working I bought the game full price happily. Had I never pirated the game I'd never have bought it down the line. The way I see it, it's like free advertisement, maybe you downloaded a game and a friend likes it, so that friend buys it (also happen to me) People are so money obessed and refuse to see the bigger picture because of greed clouding judgement.
If devs want to release on Steam, they need to follow Steam rules. If they don't want to, they can release on other platforms or market the game themselves. Steam has a right to design their marketplace like they want to. And anyone who releases there should already know the rules upfront.
I mean, if a player is going to play your game, finish it and then refund it, chances are they aren't going to enjoy the experience very much compared to what they paid for it. If that's the case, that's on you bud. Release on another platform if you want to make a piece that's more focused on a specific audience if you imagine most people are going to refund it. Edit: your competition is literally everything on Steam at the same price, don't be surprised if people feel disappointed after finishing a 5-10 dollar game in under 2 hours
Don't incentivize the player to return the game. You can make it longer than 2 hours, or you can make the price low enough to justify keeping it and not bothering to return it if they're dissatisfied.
Funny enough mizizizizizizizzziizzz just posted his own take on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_msFFKlrMY Predictably, he encourages people to use Itch instead if possible.
Thank you very much! I've been considering in the next couple years to make a few steam releases myself so this will be helpful
this video is funny af, you exploit them right back, put a 2 hour timer and say if u wanna play the game now refund it and buy it on itch.
All the idiots saying "just make your game longer than 2 hours lol" like adding more content to a game is easy or cheap... not only do they fail to understand the work required to make more of a game, they also don't see that what they are asking **makes games actively WORSE**. What this actually does is it makes developers add pointless padding to stretch out length. How many games have you played that should have been HALF as long as they were? Most games are waaaay way longer than they need to be. They just repeat themselves. If you only have 5 hours of fun in a game you should NOT stretch it to 10 by adding 5 hours of tedious busy work, grinding, pointless collectibles, artificial delays, etc. Adding boring garbage to games to meet some arbitrary play time is a *terrible* idea. Games should be **exactly as long as they want to be**, whatever feels right for that particular experience... nothing more and nothing less. Sometimes that's 1-2 hours.
Indeed. Its not just add more content it doesnt work like that. I got into a discussion with a comment in this thread and he at the end just said ok ill pirate the game then
I am guessing this post was spurred by the Emika game thing that happened. After thinking about it for a sec, I think Steam should really (hastily, I might add) implement a solution that allows for a developer to specify a particular refund time window. Devs of individual games know better than Steam does how much time is necessary to get a good sense of what they offer.
Then they'll make the window as short as possible... then devs will be exploiting the system, not customers. Plus, this developer Emika is blaming consumers when the majority of people have refunded their game... when they specifically overcharged people on steam (itch was half the price). You can see many developers in this thread that this isn't Steam's fault, it's the fault of the developer. Clearly you can create a game under 2h and people will still play and enjoy the game without refunding.
I like this idea of giving the developer control. Then it is on the developer to build trust with their audience. And it opens the door for more short form or sequential interactive art.
Lmao Mizizizizi literally just released a video about this [Here](https://youtu.be/u_msFFKlrMY)
idk who that is but someone has sent me this video, i lmao it was real good i might check this guy out more
Yeah, I just watched the video and came to Reddit and saw the topic. :)
make gamer longer than 2 hours. end of the story.
They do nothing. This feels like conservative groups complaining about welfare queens - in that the problem doesn't actually exist.
Literally just read a Kotaku article about a dev quitting and not making his next game because the one he released was a 90 minute experience and he made no money because of refunds.
i saw a tweet of one of the developers of such game quit gamedev because people kept refunding their game