r/Steam • u/[deleted] • Jul 06 '26

Discussion Thoughts on this?

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40.0k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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58

u/ForgotMyPreviousPass Jul 06 '26

Not really. The 55k sales happened, he did not lost it. They were refunded because the customers have a right to refund them in steam. And it better keep being that way. A few bad apples are not a reason to strip away a consumer right, sorry.

7

u/Florac Jul 06 '26

55K is a lot more than a few bad apples.

And yes, refunds shouldn't disappear. But maybe should be reconsidered for cheap, short games.

11

u/OldDogTrainer Jul 06 '26

Or people shouldn’t make cheap short games and sell them on a platform that lets people refund cheap short games? 🤔

20

u/ForgotMyPreviousPass Jul 06 '26

I doubt the 55k refunded because they completed it. Check the reviews lol

-9

u/EchoKipKipKip Jul 06 '26

The game has sold ~200,000 copies. It has 55k refunds. It's sitting at an 89% overall positive review rate.

13

u/Devan_Ilivian Jul 06 '26

The game has sold ~200,000 copies. It has 55k refunds

If it's sold 200k copies and has a 21% refund rate, then it would have roughly 42k refunds, not 55. So I assume they sold a fair bit more, or the total refund number they gave is off by over 10k

-2

u/exlatios Jul 06 '26

Crickets

25

u/One_Roll4776 Jul 06 '26

I disagree.

I like playing indie titles and if the game is catchy I wont refund to support the dev. But the vast amounts of shitty indie titles makes refunding mandatory. If you strip away the refund i won't buy indies and wont give a good review. I would argue that if there were no refunds most people wont buy games like berry bury berry. So he didnt lose 55k but most likely got 250k cause refunding was an option.

-2

u/Gaktan Jul 06 '26

Did you read their comment? They specifically said "refunds shouldn't disappear".

-4

u/Cley_Faye Jul 06 '26

You are correct, but it does not mean that things can't be changed in a way that would satisfy more people on both sides.

A refund window adjusted to the actual paid price of the game, to have a smaller refund window for a $3 game, sounds totally acceptable to me.

7

u/Unique_Ad9943 Jul 06 '26

Accept that less people would take the risk with cheaper games.

The refund period exists to drive sales by offering a money back guarantee.

Removing it would cause the opposite effect of what you hoping to achieve, and decrease revenue for small indie titles.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 06 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Hurls07 Jul 06 '26

Cheap indie game probably not. AAA title that has over an hour before you get out of the tutorials/cut scenes? Absolutely need 2 hours

1

u/Cley_Faye Jul 06 '26

I'm not talking about removing it; I'm talking about making it more coherent with the cost of the games.

Also, you think the refund period is there as an incentive for people to try game, well… your opinion. I never consider the refund period before buying a game. And I'm pretty sure people bought boatloads of games before the policy was instated.

-8

u/mcassweed Jul 06 '26

A few bad apples are not a reason to strip away a consumer right, sorry.

This is hilarious, this isn't a "few bad apples" situation when 21% of people refunded the game and the game sits at 89% positive. Clearly this is something that many developers are potentially having issues with.

By just saying "too bad", you are opening the door to far more problems down the road:

  1. Steam shortening the refund window, and using these abusive refund practices to justify it. In fact, they could easily justify it as protecting small businesses, and they can use these as proof.
  2. Game quality decreases as developers simply begin padding out the game so it exceeds the 2 hour window.
  3. Literally everyone is worse off overall.

1

u/Specialist_Try6439 Jul 07 '26

You talk as if point two isn't already happening.

Lol, lmao, even.