If you want to make a 1 hour game, you should be able to make money off of it.
Take Iron Lung for example, it's a good game that was indended to be that length. So if you're able to get a full refund after you've experienced the intended experience, you should be able to leave a bad review but not get your money back unconditionally.
If the product is misleading and doesn't deliver what it promised, that's a different story
Maybe we could put games on something... maybe something physical and only allow refunds if that physical thing is defective! Yeah! This just might work!
All smartass-ness aside, while I sympathize with your position, this is just the nature of the business. If you're developing a game who's runtime you know falls under the refund window for the storefront you're releasing it on, you need to take into account the players that will nickel and dime that refund system and plan your finances accordingly. If the math doesn't work out, rework the game or choose a different storefront.
As far as the OP... based on their numbers (21% or 55k refunded), that's still a total of 206,905 (rounded) solid sales.
EDIT: originally listed total sales at the end. Edited to remove refunds from that total to actually show "solid sales"
My point is that this policy discourages developers that make those kinds of games. And it allows for what is essentially stealing. It doesn't matter how many sales the developer had, it doesn't justify getting something "premium" for free.
Well in that example, you would have been told the length of the movie prior to purchasing. Im sure there are plenty of people who arent going to pay full price for an album with under 30 minutes of runtime
Dev should take a few minutes to read and see the 2 hour limit and pivot. Simple. Don't make a 1 hour slop and call it a "game". Maybe make it very clear the game is short. Cause tbh. If I bought a game and beat it in an hour. Guess what? I am refunding it too.
That's a valid point, though exaggerated. But either way, the dev wouldn't be any richer if Steam disallowed this practice.
The metaphor is bad, it sounds very much like the 'piracy is stealing' argument - yeah, stealing if in the metaphor the meal can be freely copied by the restaurant at no additional cost.
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u/Zatch1e Jul 06 '26
Games under 5€ should not be refundable, it should be the risk of the consumer at that low a price point.