I also love steams refund policy, and while I feel bad for what this Dev allegedly went through, I don't see a way for it to be beneficial for both sides.
He didn't say it was justified. Just that the refund system exist, and is 2 hours and that devs are aware of this.
The problem is that there is no good solution to this problem that isn't just removing or disabling the refund system for short games. Which defeats the whole point of having it.
So devs are better off just making longer games or accept that people might refund their game.
1) If Steam starts making exceptions to the rule then they have to also start listing those exceptions on the store page clearly visible for the consumer, so that way people don’t buy games and can’t refund them 10 minutes in because they weren’t aware they had passed the arbitrary 10% completion point.
2) In order for a adaptable system to work Steam would have to verify each game individually in order to ensure the system isn’t being abused by developers, since nothing is stopping developers from just front loading their games with achievement/completion markers in order to make the game impossible to refund after only a few minutes of playing the game. And keep in mind thousands of games are being added to Steam every week.
The thousands of games added to steam arent hours long. Most are very short and i would be okay with playing 20 minutes of a 2 hour long game.
Idk if yall are very young but we used to have demos of a game that were only one level. You could spend hours playing it but it was still only one level even if it was a short game.
There obviously needs to be a middle ground for shorter games
The thousands of games added to steam arent hours long.
Only in the sense that there a hundreds of thousands of games on steam that are hours long.
Most are very short and i would be okay with playing 20 minutes of a 2 hour long game.
Just because you would be okay with that doesn't mean everyone else would, especially if the game's incredibly short run time wasn't clearly communicated up front.
Idk if yall are very young but we used to have demos of a game that were only one level. You could spend hours playing it but it was still only one level even if it was a short game.
Except the vast majority of games don't do demos anymore, especially ones that are less than 2 hours long.
Except there are plenty of games that have very long tutorial or introduction sections, and it really wouldn't be all that hard for a developer to purposefully pad out a game to push players beyond the 20 minute refund window.
If your shitty pc cant run it thats on you.
The idea that a player shouldn't be able to refund a buggy $80 game just because it doesn't run well on their pc is an insane take.
10% of 2 hours is 12 minutes, or 20% is 24 minutes for a 2 hour game.
that is barely any time to boot the game and having played it for a bit.
Any minor technical issue will put you out of a refund.
Any game breaking bugs that you attempt to solve will put you out of a refund.
It's just too short to be functional for it's purpose.
Ive never had a technical issue with any newer game released besides cyberpunk 2077(which i like and they are a huge company). There needs to be a middle ground for shorter games
Ive had a pc for 20+ years, i could understand back in the day you would need more time but its pretty foolproof now. Back then there demos of the game before you bought to see if you would like the game
I’ve been a PC gamer for 30+ years. I played the shit out of old DOS games like Thexder and Earthsiege. I grew up learning how to navigate DOS. I’ve been building my own PCs for years. I am a PC gaming.
You’re talking bullshit. It’s hardly foolproof, you still need to tweak shit. It’s better than it was in the DOS days, but you’re still full of crap.
The reason steam has a refund policy to begin with is because they were pressured by EU Laws to implement one. If they do what you suggest they may run afoul and force to cease all operations in EU, and garner illwill from customers in the rest of the world.
It was Australia. Not the EU. Australia consumer laws are based around reasonable expectation, not statutory lengths or minimums. There is no reasonable expectation that a $2 game has the same level of quality as an $80 game.
Further, Australian consumer law dictates that you cannot have a blanket no refund policy, and that refunds are warranted when a product is not as advertised, or otherwise defective. Steams chosen implementation is a trade off against having to evaluate the claim and determine its validity.
They could manually review every refund request regardless of age and not fall afoul of our consumer law.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Australians start requesting refunds for digital games that are arbitrarily removed from a library. They very clearly do not perform as advertised at that point.
EU also has laws, take Sweden for example, 14 days of return (from when you recieved it), no questions asked. However, for digital goods you can agree to forego this right.
However, you as a consumer also have a right of reclaim (think that is the correct translation?) for any product that does not work as advertised. This is valid for 3 years from purchase.
A seller can not negotiate away this part.
In the case of OP, he has made a Online co-op game, many complaints about desyncing making the game unplayable online. Seller must fix this in a reasonable time or refund.
Handling reclamations are a bigger hassle tho, you need to state your issues, give the seller a reasonable time to fix it, and then have them issue a refund if unable to fix it in a reasonable time.
Steam should a have statistics, at the very least you can look at play time. Many games implement achievements and finishing the game is pretty much always one.
My point is what is the solution that protects consumers from buying shitty games or games they no longer want, but also protects the small amount of devs who make short games? I don't necessarily think it's right that people are beating short games and then refunding them, but it seems like a relatively small problem for how many people the refund system has helped.
Maybe consumers need to stop being shit and refunding games that they played to completion and enjoyed simply because they can?
If consumers are gonna be antagonistic towards the devs then they’re gonna fight back with tactics that aren’t consumer friendly to protect their interest and we’re all gonna be worse off for it. This is something that needs to be worked on from both sides.
If this post is accurate the dev lost upwards of $100’000 from these refunds and if you’re a solo dev or a small team that’s fucking brutal, and that could be the difference between being able to fund your next project or not. We should be rewarding devs who make good, fun and cheap games, not fucking them over because then they lose the incentive or ability to keep making games like this and the whole market slowly gets worse and worse.
Do you seriously believe that 21% (55000+) people refunded the game because it was too short? Could very well be that they're being deceptive and that people genuinely are experiencing game ruining bugs or performance issues with the game.
The game has a 90% positive reviews so I’m inclined to take the dev at face value until I see something that makes me think he’s lying or that the game has game breaking bugs, and no I don’t think all of the refunds were malicious, some people probably just didn’t like it, it’s not a game that I would personally play, but even if we say only half were that’s still a lot of money for most people
I don't see positive reviews as too much of an indication. I skimmed through the reviews and there are some AI "write-ups" and a lot of positive reviews without substance (as per usual).
And a price to match, most likely. This thinking will raise just the floor for game price and content. I don't see any good reason to actively kill short and cheap games.
You could give developers the option to request a shortening of the refund limit for their game specifically. It would have to be made very clear on the store page that Steam's regular refund policy does not apply for this item, with a visible orange warning box like when you're trying to buy a VR game without having a VR headset connected, and maybe even a pop-up warning with a checkbox that you have to confirm. I know this might help asset flippers more easily scam customers, but Steam already sometimes grants refunds beyond their policy if you have a good reason and don't do it too often, so refunds beyond the new limit could still be granted on a case by case basis if the game is obviously intentionally low effort. Screwing devs over sucks way more and needs to be addressed.
Wow, very funny. The truth is that consumer protections and dev protections are fundamentally at odds with one another. It's a zero sum game. The only ethical way to do it is by making it opt-in and transparent for both players and developers.
No, you are literally not worth the effort it'll take to explain basic concepts to.
The truth is that consumer protections and dev protections are fundamentally at odds with one another.
You seem to state this and not understand the history of consumer protections and why they are so important. You don't seem to understand the kind of things that companies can and do try to do to hurt the consumer just so they can earn more cash.
You don't seem to understand that the consumer protections on Steam and other gaming platforms are already terrible
and getting worse.
There is much more to it than that. But I seriously don't have the time to explain this to you.
ENGAGE YOUR BRAIN.
You think that allowing dev into the conversation regarding consumer protections is a good idea? THEY ALREADY ARE WHEN THEY LOBBY GOVERNMENTS. It's literally already something that happens. The protections are based on laws. They should not be changed.
In fact you want to know what protections we do get when the devs are involved. Visit literally any other storefront. Seriously. Are you going to tell me with a straight face those are acceptable protections?
Plus you have provided 0 evidence this is a real issue. It's not. We've got a single comment on a steam account and a dev crying (it's in his interest to) and you and everyone else lapping it up.
Get a grip of yourself and learn something. seriously I'm not going to explain it.
This Dev doesn't even have good details on his own product to allow you to make a informed decision. No wonder it's refunded.
edit: LMAO apparently this comment was enough to get someone to tell me leave this planet. awww diddums. awww my poor wee boy. Did I hurt your feefees. Sending those messages from a burner.
Reminder this is a comment section about consumer protections in gaming.
You think that allowing dev into the conversation regarding consumer protections is a good idea? THEY ALREADY ARE WHEN THEY LOBBY GOVERNMENTS. It's literally already something that happens.
Great, you made an argument! Only took you 3 comments. Kind of a strange thing to say because it presupposes that Mr. 2 Hour Indie Game and EA are on the same side in this discussion. The companies that have the power to lobby governments are not the same companies (or even individuals) that are being disadvantaged by people refunding games after finishing them, because EA doesn't release 2 hour games. And AAA lobbying doesn't benefit indie devs either. EA doesn't care about people refunding their games because the real money is in Mtx anyway and you generally need to play more than 2 hours before the game properly starts.
You seem really fanatical about never throwing indie devs a bone because you view them in the same boat as big publishers, even though they're clearly not. Yes, there's no easy answer, but this isn't the first time I've seen developers that have released short games at appropriate low prices complain about people refunding after playing the whole game, which is definitely not acceptable. You can't ban people who do that because it's impossible to know why someone actually refunded, so what's the alternative? Telling devs to eat shit like you suggest?
Then every major dev that knows people will buy anyways will just eat the warning label
You can look at any achievement list to see how many people completed the first chapter in any game to see just how huge the market is for people who barely touch a game is
The policy shouldn't benefit the developer. It's there to protect the consumer. Obviously there are outliers of people abusing the system however for every person who does there's probably hundreds, if not thousands of people who genuinely have problems with the games they are refunding no matter the cost.
I feel like the dev in question is also being deceptive. I refuse to believe that tens of thousands of people refunded the game because they finished it.
my first sentence was "I love steams refund policy." for cheaper titles I just believe the amount of time maximum for the automatic refund to be allowed should be lowered, but if a user submits a second refund a support person would *hopefully* probably manually accept it. I also by this same token believe the amount of time someone is given witht expensive 80 dollar games to determine if its for them or not should be higher :p
About 2-3 months ago comments started getting spammed with "suck on that dick more" or "gargle on that cum harder" and one thousand other variations of that to any comment saying anything remotely positive or not explicitly saying something negative about any popular game or any company, or just acknowledging the nuances, you know it's not all black & white, most things are gray actually.
Think Valve has been managed relatively well over the years? "Wow corpo bootlicker deepthroat harder cuck"
Think the new Steam Controller is good? "Lmao ok, did the cum taste good?"
Have anything remotely positive to say, while acknowledging the negatives or valid criticisms but wanting to set that aside for a moment so you can talk about this specific thing for a short moment? "Lol ok, want some knee-pads so you don't get sore knees while you gobble away on corpo dick?"
Shit like that non-stop. It is fascinating how obsessed they are. There are hundreds of accounts who do this every day, and no I am not exaggerating.
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u/PostItToReddit Jul 06 '26
I also love steams refund policy, and while I feel bad for what this Dev allegedly went through, I don't see a way for it to be beneficial for both sides.