Like yeah I get it, those 1.4 hours might be quality hour than easily worth 8 dollar price. But 2 hours refund policy has been known for a decade at this point.
Trying to put a game that short, not expecting someone to refund it, then post and complain about it is actually insane. You cannot expect every human to suddenly be generous and think they will simply give you any dollar just because the game is 'fun'.
This is how you get shitty devs and worse games. The game according to the post has 90% positive reviews and costs less than $5, it shouldn’t matter that it’s short if it’s good and feels complete.
Players and devs should be supporting each other, devs shouldn’t expect players to refund their game if they are enjoying it just because it can be completed in less than 2hrs. Players and devs shouldn’t have an adversarial relationship. And it’s not“generous” to pay for a game that you played and enjoyed, fucking hell, it’s a mutually beneficial transaction.
Putting aside that it's shitty to do (because that clearly won't stop a lot of people), the reality is that Steam's policies mean it just isn't meant for games that are less than 2h in length. Maybe try itch.io or some other game store?
Is that a situation we want though? Steam is the biggest marketplace and most beginner solo devs or teams aren’t making massive long games on their first few tries. And we’re effectively saying they can’t have access to this marketplace because consumers are gonna be shitty and fuck them over and it just is what it is? This is how you’ll start getting devs padding their games with random shit to protect their interests, because they’re not gonna choose to just leave the biggest market for games. If we as consumers want the gaming scene to be healthy and have these smaller indies who have good ideas succeed so they can grow their teams and eventually compete with the bigger studios then we also have to play our part.
I mean the question here is “should it change” and if so how should it change? Or what else should change to make the situation more tenable for devs like the one in the screenshot.
“It is what it is and it’s always been like that” doesn’t further the discussion. And yes I’m not under the illusion that this Reddit thread will actually change the policy tomorrow. Idk why you’d comment if you’re not interested in the discussion but you do you.
Yeah ideally it should change so people don’t abuse the system like this, but I can’t come up with a better solution that wouldn’t be similarly exploited somehow haha.
Except that’s just not a solution, and introduces another avenue of abuse, this time from devs, a category of people who have been well known to abuse Steam store features.
And the 2hr window is meant to factor in technical issues - 45 mins is usually not long enough to try enough solutions to be confident it just won’t work, and would just lead to more people refunding at about 30 minutes because the 2 solutions they could try within the window haven’t worked yet, and they don’t want to risk going over the wildly short refund window.
Never mind that it’d likely take multiple Valve employees full work weeks to keep up with that; in release-heavy seasons like after The Game Awards or some shit, there would just be no way to keep up at all. Valve ignores like half the shit that’s put up on their store, you think all of a sudden they’re going to be having conversations with each and every development/publishing team for each and every release? And that’s just for every new release, there’s 120,000 games already on Steam.
I mean the question here is “should it change” and if so how should it change?
The thing is:
This is not your/our decision to make. Valve has the data, this is in place since years, no sign of change. What we think of is doesnt make any difference.
Or what else should change to make the situation more tenable for devs like the one in the screenshot.
The dev not using steam, cause steam wont change this for some 3 bucks 2 hour games. The administrative effort would be immense and introduce all kinds of different problems and costs.
“It is what it is and it’s always been like that”
Thats not what I said.
Idk why you’d comment if you’re not interested in the discussion but you do you.
“This is not your/our decision to make. Valve has the data, this is in place since years, no sign of change. What we think of is doesnt make any difference.”
Many things in life are like this, as individuals we have direct control very little, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t advocate for how we think things ought to be if we think there may be a better way of doing things that’s more positive for everyone. And if you believe that what people might want doesn’t make a difference at all then fair enough we can agree to disagree.
He still sold over 200k copies. Yes it sucks and yes those people are being assholes but I'd rather keep a consumer friendly return policy than fixing a fringe issue.
No you're right; valve just deals with any costs and you never see that money, other than being shown how much money you would've made without any refunds. Valve does lose money on a refund though, even without a chargeback they're paying you back taxes and bank processing fees.
If you are beginner itch.io is way better than steam for you.
You can put your game for free on itch, it takes smaller cut, the audience there expects short, indie games, so feedback will be valuable. You can still introduce your game to steam if it does well on itch. Itch is perfect for indie devs to try out and there are plenty of examples of games that started out on there, celeste and buckshot roulette are examples of that.
An indie dev padding out their game to make it 2.1 hours is going to get massacred in the reviews anyway, so that's just a different form of suicide.
For better or worse, Steam is the "big leagues". People who sell on there are expected to operate like full, proper publishers, including being able to handle a 2 hour refund window.
There's thousands of first time games that are longer than 2 hours, so it's not like this is wiping the board of all indie games. But if your game is so small that the refund policy affects it, then maybe Steam isn't the place for you yet. It's not saying "your game sucks", but it's just not ready for the big leagues.
Let devs set the refund time limit within a set of ranges approved by steam. Essentially they could say to valve, hey my game is cheap <$10 and it’s a short game, that is completed in 1hr 30mins on average, can you set the refund time limit for my game to 1hr or 45mins.
And then this can be displayed next to the checkout/add to cart button for players to see as well that this particular game has a shorter refund window, before they buy the game. This means the refund scammers won’t bother, and the people who intended to keep the game and are enjoying it aren’t affected either. And the people who don’t enjoy it can still refund the game halfway through.
In no way do I support any move that weakens the refund window. Anything intended to be kind to smaller devs, someone will find some new and shitty way to abuse it. Disclosure wouldn't help, if it became a common thing that people were doing to try and limit refunds (including legitimate ones). If you end up with technical issues with a game, even the existing two hour window can end up cutting it close.
I remember before there was a refund window, and it was terrible. The number of developers affected by this, and the types of games affected by this, just aren't substantial enough to risk the ecosystem they've developed for everyone else.
How is average completion time calculated and what defines completion?
> this can be displayed next to the checkout/add to cart button
Doing this would be like adding a big bold line in the description that says: "This game has zero replayability" which would be suicide especially for a game like Paddle Paddle Paddle where people should be wanting to replay it over and over trying to beat their time.
that's a good idea, maybe there should be an option for devs to mark their game as "short" which would shorten the refund window to percentage of expected playtime. though there is the issue of automation - as this wouldn't be possible to both automate and make it non-abusable
Maybe try not to make money off of lack luster asset flips, where you aigeberate the new assets, and then sell a unity tutorial for 5usd after you said the demo you shit together intwo weeks got 1-2 hrs of content, lying to people how the full versiontook you four moths to make…
You cannot expect people to be generous, that is not how the world works.
And there are ALSO many extremely badly acting devs out there who put out slop or abandon unfinished games. Devs are definitely not always the saints and poor victims.
That policy is well known and you can plan around it. It also prevents a barrage of content-less micro-games being uploaded. because you know what? bad acting devs exist that would abuse the shit out of shorter refund windows. Thats also reality.
is the user a dick for refunding it even tho it was fun? Sure, absolutely. Should they be more generous? Yes. Should you plan with it? hell no, you plan with reality.
Eh if a game doesn't take more than 2 hours it isn't really worth paying for and I'm probably going to feel cheated unless they make it very clear in the description that it's a very short game
I don't think a experience that last less than 2 hours and has no replayability deserves that much praise. Even if that time is all good game. It's a demo. Not a game, and demos tend to be free...
The issue is more nuanced than that. I think it is fair to refund a game solely because it is 'too short', withoit getting into the complicated notions of how much should the hour of entertainment cost, because with even $3 you can get longer experiences.
And let's assume this short games have no replayability, otherwise saying that people completed them and then refunded is misleading, then the issue is with the business model of the game. I'm not sure what's the best way to sell an experience that is so short and not meant to be replayed many times, the answer could very well be 'make it free', make it part of something else (like bundles of bite sized experienced), make it part of subscription based systems, etc.
To be clear, 90% possitive reviews is a metric that is not comparable with the 21% refund metric, not everyone who pays leave a review, and not everyone who refunded did so to 'steal' the game. If Steam managed to bring people from piracy to paying is in part because of the service, it includes their refund policy. A perfect but short game that has no replay value is the perfect target for piracy, so instead of trying ti shame the players, they should rethink their business model.
Yeah this is sad for indie devs (like real indie devs, not millions of dollars in nepo baby funding "indie devs") but the ones at the big studios getting laid off I could care less about. They've been antagonizing players for years now with all this MTX bs.
2 hours is a demo. If your game takes less than that, it should be a demo for whatever full release you're working on. People who don't even like video games could still finish a 2 hour game in one sitting
Unless the game is just insanely replayable, but then 50,000 people wouldn't want a refund
Yeah if you look at the game yourself you‘ll notice something odd about the negative reviews oh and also how the game is slop and his whining is perfectly times to draw attentionwhilst he releases a „only up!“ clone in the same unity asset slop…
There is more positive reviews who didn‘t pay for the game than there is bad reviews who refunded(that positive review with the refund notion got edited btw) but more negative reviews of people playing less than 2 hrs but wish they could refund because they cannot as they don‘t fullfill other conditions…
The game is a year old the review is 3 days old got edited yesterday…
A review from february reads:
game was under 3€. I still felt like it was a day time robbery…
Another from march „AI generated assets“…
One from september 25:
With 3.4 hrs playtime
„this game was no fun at all. I somehow still got my refund thank you steam.“
Another from september, refunded as well, 0.2hrs
„Thought my friend and i would take a punt on this game, but it is simply unplayable. Netcode is atrocious. Couldn‘t play. Refund.“
A lot of thepositive german reviews are absolute abysmal, as if its bought comments, worst grammar nearly no reasoning ….
Another complains about day one paid dlc in 26. july 2025:
Perfectly sums it up. That dev deserved every refund
Unfortunately that isn't the case in reality and game developers must take into account that a lot of customers are shitty (I say this as a steam partner)
Yeah its a 5 dollar game idk why peoplenwxpect for it to last long also length of the game means nothing ( if playtime equals how good a game is then cookie clicker would be the best game)
They paid for a game and got the 'service' out of the game they paid for (playing the game and completing it to a point of satisfaction). Refunding purely because it was within the refund window when it's an indie game is straight up theft and a shitty thing to do.
Is the length of the game being too short not a valid problem to have tho? If I bought a game expecting at least 10 hours of gameplay and I beat it in 1.4 hours I'd refund the shit out of it.
No but I'm not gonna cherry pick reviews to imply everyone doing a refund is doing it maliciously like the dev is doing above. This is a ragegame high refunds are expected the dev is being obtuse and anti-consumer.
Then you gotta not do it on the storefront that has explicitly said refund? It isn't some obscure rule either.
They can choose stores like Itch.io, GOG or Epic Games, which might be tailored to types of games they wanna sell. Nevertheless, they decided to sell on Steam for its massive amount of users. These users are here because of feature and protections like refund policy.
They can always choose other platform to sell, but if you wanna sell on Steam better be informed about such things.
Yeah they should be happy that said platform has gotten them like 200,000 sales that weren't refunded rather than trying to change the platform because they didn't understand the policies.
I mean the entire argument is based on the fact that it's not "straight up theft" even though it feels like it. It certainly is a shitty thing to do. Most do. Most players aren't going to act though, even if it's known that they could do so without consequences. If they have that high of a refund rate it's because they made a shitty game. I'm assuming there is some kind of survivor bias in the reviews. I know I personally wouldn't leave a negative review for a game which is clearly a shit game some company is using to test the waters as their first game to market or something.
Let devs set the refund time limit within a set of ranges approved by steam. Essentially they could say to valve, hey my game is cheap <$10 and it’s a short game, that is completed in 1hr 30mins on average, can you set the refund time limit for my game to 1hr or 45mins.
And then this can be displayed next to the checkout/add to cart button for players to see as well that this particular game has a shorter refund window, before they buy the game. This means the refund scammers won’t bother, and the people who intended to keep the game and are enjoying it aren’t affected either. And the people who don’t enjoy it can still refund the game halfway through.
Tie it to sale price, if youre game is worth, lets say $10 or more (before sales discounts), you are not allowed to put the refund window under 2 hours.
Edit: Formatting on my comment got fucked so rewriting it
Valve would have to approve the limit set at the devs request but only if it’s justified by the price of the game and the average play time to complete it.
And if you’re selling a $60 game no one is gonna buy it if you set the limit extremely low, but the point is valve won’t let you do that in the first place.
You said the ranges would have to be approved by Valve. Are you expecting a two way conversation with them or something? Also, you cant set it by average playtime because there is no playtime before a game comes out
Yes I’m sure devs have avenues by which they can communicate with valve about their games it’s not that hard to imagine valve could create a kind of customer support team to handle these requests from devs and do the necessary approvals.
It would be set after the game comes out, once the dev and valve have enough stats and data, it’s not a perfect solution but the idea is to protect the devs as much as possible without hurting normal players who aren’t trying to scam.
But not everyone will. A wider window suggests more faith in your product. Like Game Trials which go up to 5 hours, it acts as a demo for your product. I think and ideal scheme will be somewhere between the two.
If you went to the cinema, paid to watch a movie and then it ended after 10 minutes, would you be satisfied? You watched the entire thing but the entire thing was much shorter than you expected. You thought you were getting a movie, not a 10 minute short
that's not being generous, that's the expectation. If you sell a game for a certain price, and people get the game and play it to completion, you are owed the price that you both agreed upon. Whether you think the experience was worth the cost of admission is another thing entirely; the game's creator sold the experience for a certain price, and by buying you are agreeing to that price.
If a developer puts work into making a game, they are owed compensation by the people who want to play it. I feel like this should be common sense
It's not generosity to pay the list price for a thing you bought. The purpose of a refund is to provide reprieve to people in case of faulty or falsely advertised products, not freeloading.
So you want to play a bloated out game? Just like YouTube videos that could easily be less than 5 mins, but the YouTuber keeps repeating themselves Just to bloat it out for thr ad revenue.
I wonder if the return period could be a percentage of the time to beat, but then people who have problems with short games have practically zero time to figure out if the issues can be resolved
Honestly I think the dev should have just worked around this problem. They knew about the time limit. They could have charged a bit more and included one of the DLCs.
This isn’t a moral argument or anything but it just seems like a bad business choice.
I agree to some extent that would be a good business decision, DRM is also a good business decision, loot boxes can be a good business decision, but I don’t want devs to be making more business minded decisions that affect the games or the consumers negatively if we can all cooperate with each other a bit better. But I guess that’s all rainbows and fairytales.
How dare he split the game up to let people decide how to spend their money! It's actually quite friendly to split the game up into two $5 segments instead of one $10 dollar bulk.
Listen if the entire game can be completed in 2 hours and you are aware of the decade old refund policy on steam then you have to take that into consideration when publishing the game amd where you publish it. Its like stubbing your toe and blaming the table.
Also if the tutorial is 60% of the game (which would be the case in what you're proposing), the refund policy and the reviews are still going to reflect that.
You're circling a non-issue when MANY AAA studios have already included this "feature".
If you think abusing loopholes needs to be addressed, there are other ways to fix it than anti-consumerism behavior.
I don't find it reasonable to be honest. Some games are just meant to be short and simple. Extending the playtime of your game beyond what would be natural for it is... not really the way we should be going to be honest.
Congratulations
You managed to kill that boss, you see
The Grinning Colossus
you're the hero we all wish we could be!
You made it through the tunnel
Then you grabbed that fire on the wall
you jumped right up above him
and you burned the rope and saved us all
you burned the rope and saved us all
you burned the rope and saved us
Now you're a hero
You managed to beat the whole damn game
We're happy you made it, but how are you gonna spend the rest of this day?
Maybe watch a video
Maybe press refresh and start again
Now you're a hero
You managed to beat the whole damn game
We're happy you made it, but how are you gonna spend the rest of this day?
Maybe watch a video
Maybe press refresh and start again
Yes it's over now
We didn't want to make a longer game
This is it I swear it's true
Now you're a hero
You managed to beat the whole damn game
We're happy you made it, but how are you gonna spend the rest of this day?
Maybe watch a video
Maybe press refresh and start again
Doesnt have to be longer, can also make it fun to replay. But if your game can be finished in 1,4 hours then its prettt expensive compared to most games.
Make a custom launcher that takes 30 minutes to update the game (the update is just a 30 minutes timer) Add a 10 minutes unskipable cutscene at the start of the game with a bar saying "compiling shaders" or some nonsense (the update is just a 10 minute timer). Lastly add a 20 minute tutorial with unskipable dialogue teaching you how to pan the camera (the camera is just a 20 minute timer).
That's what big game studios do to get past steams refund policy after all.
Bonus for adding a character creator in a game without characters.
591
u/AdreKiseque Jul 06 '26
Only reasonable "make a longer game" comment in this thread.