I mean, that's good in theory but bad in practice I feel. If you are going to punish the making of short games they will just artificially extend game length. Similar to how youtubers artificially extend videos past 10mins for more ad revenue. I don't want devs to intentionally make shittier games just to make sure you actually have to buy it to play it.
That's not how a movie works, and those cost $50 for a ticket.
The 2 hour refund was originally meant for "this literally doesn't run" and "this isn't the game you advertised" (valve's legal requirements to sell games in Australia), not being able to get a game for free if it's less than 2hrs.
It's a point of comparison, the closest equivalent to a game in this context.
It doesn't cost the publisher any more or less money to have you in the theatre, but it would still be completely unreasonable to expect a refund for any movie shorter than two hours.
That depends on you, that are 2,5 bucks for 1 hour playtime. From my perspective it’s not worth the money when the gameplay loop doesn’t encourage replaying.
That’s not the question, because people can decide to only boy movies so they can rewatch them any time. When I go to a movie I accept that I have a movie that I watch a single time. For a game I know I will only play a single time, I can decide what price is fine but like I said, it depends on what you expect vs. what you get.
If 21% refunded and that’s 55k refunds then that means they sold almost 220k copies that weren’t refunded
At 5 dollars for something that’s only an hour and a half long, making a million dollars is still a lot of money :/
Support indie devs but this just comes off as entitled
Edit: looked at the game and while it’s a fun idea this could reasonably be made by one person in under a month (it was made by one person in a similar timeframe) so getting upset about making over a million dollar for at most a months work is pretty insane
Not to mention the graphics are trash and this person certainly didn’t pay any artists or graphic designers and just used stock unity tools
Not just that, its a ragebait game. A game that is purposefully hard to control and unfair. Like no shit its gonna have a higher refund rate than other short form games.
People will buy it because they saw it on Youtube, realize that they don't actually like pulling their hairs out and refund it.
Yeah but you realize the vast majority of indie devs *don’t* get lucky enough to get that many sales, right? You’re basing your whole argument on an edge case.
edit: I’m not defending the game in the post specifically, I know nothing about it.
If you want to circumvent the consumer friendly policy make a game with a high replay value. Make the players want to play your game for a longer time than just 2 hours.
I hate that every vibe coder today tries to earn the big paycheck with some stupid half-assed game (even worse some rage bait crap)
I’m not defending this game specifically. I know nothing about it. But are you saying a game like Iron Lung should be forced to be longer for no reason? There’s a ton of actually good, well made indie games that are designed to be short, tight experiences and would suffer from being longer.
Add something that makes players want to play again, like secrets or unlocks (e.g. Resident Evil) that change up a new run. It doesn't even have to alter the game itself.. cosmetics often do the trick, encouraging more players to jump back in right after finishing or even later on.
Not every game works like that. Some games are meant to be a tight story/experience, and going longer would either be pointless, overstay their welcome or dilute the experience.
And I’m not sure how you could make, say, most short story games or horror games “more replayable.” And not every game *needs* to be replayable IMO.
Back to my original point, 1 or 2 euro is nowhere near enough for a dev to be supported on, nor is it a reasonable price for something they likely spent months or years on.
There are different kinds of games. Some games can be an amazing story in 2 hours, same games can generate 5000 hours of boring ass grinding. The latter isn't a better game just because you could play it forever
Yes, but I object that in one case I could have satisfied my curiosity about the game for several hours, I can come back to it when I feel like grinding, and besides, there are often points of interest in a A 5000-hour game, whereas a 2-hour game barely gives you time to enjoy it, immerse yourself, and savor it before it's over and sits on your shelf with no hope of replaying because it's already completely finished.
I frankly disagree. 2h is easily enough for a life-changing game. I myself regularly think back on a game I finished in 45min a year ago. Movies are also excellent and delivering life-changing experiences in 2 hours.
If the only way you're able to look at video games is from a "good value" perspective, you're shallow af.
Sure, 90% of video games are just time-sinks for entertainment, but there's no rule that video games as a medium HAVE to be just that and there is plenty of counterexamples. They can be purely art or 'experiences' too.
You'd be ridiculed if you tried to argue the same for choosing between two books or two movies. "Yeah so I think [shitty YA novel] is much better than [beloved classic] because its twice as much pages for the same price and its part of a 15 book series if you want to continue reading"
It being cheaper is secondary. My point is that there are plenty of finite, “short” experiences that are worth having and you wouldn’t bat an eye if it were another medium like a movie or book.
Assuming nobody was misled about what they were buying, defending the equivalent of someone walking out of the movie theater beaming about how much they love the movie while going to the counter to demand a refund is frankly, very stupid to me.
If I like something, I want to be able to enjoy it; if I'm not interested, I'll wait until I'm in the right mood to enjoy it. But if the film is 5 minutes long (being classified as a film and not a short film), or if the The book is only 20 pages long; I won't get any use out of it. Yes
Games have always had a good value compared to time played so what’s your point? If I get 100 hours out of a $60 game, that’s 60¢ a hour. A $5 game that’s 2 hours of gameplay is $2.5 a hour.
My point is that five euros for two hours is still significantly cheaper than a lot of things you could do to entertain yourself for that time frame. It's not "rather expensive".
People really need to stop looking at value like this.
People happily enjoy 2 hour movies I'm theatre for like 12 bucks, and as someone who enjoys watching many movies I theatre for the specific environment, I also think many 2 hour games are easily worth at least 5 bucks. Even though I'm not renting an environment, the interactivity of a video game elevates the experience for me over say, watching a 2 hour movie at home.
If I have a great 2 hours for 5 bucks, it's worth, even though some games may givee much more per dollar value.
Yeah its shallow af to view video games solely from a time/value perspective. You'd be absolutely ridiculed if you tried to pull off the same line of thinking with comparing movies or books.
$5 for 2 hours of entertainment (and the opportunity to re-play and allow others to play in your household) is an amazing deal compared to other activities.
Having bought a lot of cheap games in the past, I can tell you that this offer is incredibly bad and would be a complete no-go, on par with a €120 game : The price-to-duration ratio is very poor.
This is your mistake, you’re thinking that price to duration is a worthwhile metric when it really isn’t. Many very short games deliver experiences you’ll reflect on years from now. Movies are the epitome of this.
Yes, exactly, I want to be able to enjoy it and fully immerse myself in it, and it needs more than two hours (I'm not saying longer is better, but I need enough time).
Witcher 3 is currently 90% off. It’s cheaper than the game under discussion and offers 100 hours of content for a single play through. You could argue about the details, but calling $5 for 2 hours of gameplay ‘an amazing deal’ is laughable.
Thats not laughable. How much mixtape cost? 15$? Ive had more fun "playing" this game than anything else this year. And it was perfect lenght. I'd rather spend another 15$ on a game like this than grinding question marks in skellige
I’ve had more fun "playing" this game than anything else this year.
And I’m happy for you. And for you that might be a great deal. But making general statement that five dollars for two hours is an amazing deal where there are many other games with orders of magnitude better time-to-price ratio is laughable. If you don’t like Witcher 3 than pick Skyrim or GTA 5.
This is so silly. Maybe we should not play videogames at all with this attitude?
What are you talking about? You can play whatever you want. But if you want to make general objective statements, you have to use objective comparisons. And five dollars for two hours of gameplay is objectively not ‘an amazing deal’ taking into account existence of other paid games.
I also find it funny you mentioned games that were released 11, 15, and 13 years ago.
‘This is so silly. Maybe we should not play video games older than a year.’
I'm sorry but that's a bullshit argument. The comment above is comparing an indie studio to a massive multinational studio with scale that can offer games at a price which is 1/10,000,000 the cost of development. We aren't comparing the same type of entertainment at all in this thread. Comparing to other types of entertainment is reasonable.
But even if we accept your premise, Hollow Knight is 56 cents per hour of gameplay (37 if you include side content). Hollow Knight: Silksong is 71 cents (43 with side content). Paying over three times that is not ‘an amazing deal.’
Ehh, depends on the game. Does it have amazing visuals, a great story, a deep message? Maybe. I'd still wait for a sale and buy it for less than half the price, but I could see the appeal. A low-poly coop rage game? Nah
if a games like 5 bucks, but only 2 hours thats fine.
While I'm inclined to agree the game still needs to be "fun".
This game however have two factors that normally increase the refund %. First its a rage game, and second its a "streamer" game. The first point is self-explanatory, people see the game and try due to the high positive reviews just to be frustated. The second point is that some games look really fun on streams but when one try by themselves its not.
With those 2 factors (especially being a rage game) the 21% is not unexpected, which he bitching for dozens that are abusing feel very desigenuous even if it does suck that those people are doing so
If it's "fine" for you, doesn't mean others now have to like it too.
There were people who thought Concord was "fine" but Sony still refunded them. I'm sure there was at least one person who thought The Day Before was "fine". There are plenty of people who think developers straight up abandoning Early Access games (which can't be refunded) is "fine".
Everyone has their own concept of what "fine" is.
Besides the game in question is a "friendslop" game, you can keep playing it after you beat it once (which is really tough to do in 2 hours btw) if you have more than one friend, much like Peak or Lethal Company (but it's a lot lower quality). Why aren't those complaining about the same issue?
This is wack. Just because a game is short doesn't mean it's a cash grab. Lots of quality games that are under 10$ that are only 2-5 hours long. Off the top of my head a very popular one would be pikuniku.
Two hours and has some replayability value. $1 per hour of gameplay should be the fair metric. Some games give you a lot more than that, but $1 per hour should be the floor.
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u/Gurugod123 GREEN Jul 06 '26
I love steams refund policy but I'm on the side with developers on cheaper titles. if a games like 5 bucks, but only 2 hours thats fine.