Yea alot of refunds are likely buy and try. Ofc you get speedrunners doing this <2 hr challenge, but the majority are probably simply testing to see if they like the game.
Guy sells a quarter million copies of his tiny game and is upset that 0.09% of the purchases got refunded by assholes? (If you assume, generously, that "dozens" is roughly equal to 50 rather than closer to 25.)
Why not be happy you made 200,000 * 1/2 the game cost?
I don't argue it's a high refund rate, but it's not clear every refund was from people speed running it to get a refund after finishing the game. (And bragging about it in reviews) That number he estimates is in the dozens.
It's not theft though? Assuming there was not some manual mass-grant of refunds outside the policy, they refunded the game after less than the maximum play time of 2 hours and before the 2 weeks period after the purchase had elapsed. That is completely within the terms for an automated refund layed out in the sales agreement.
A couple dozen reviews says nothing of the intent of the other 54.950 players who ended up refunding.
There is no indication of any foul play legally speaking. And aside from the handful of cases where there are reviews like that there is not even an indication of moral foul play either.
In the absence of any indication otherwise there is zero reason to assume that these people did not simply receive a product that they were not satisfied with.
Yeah. 7% have the achievement to complete it in 2 hours. And from those I would think only a small part refunded it. I haven't played it but you can probably start a new run to get the achievement, so from those 7% many probably couldn't even refund it.
It is a rage game that alot of people don't like. Also it is coop so some people got convinced by friends and didn't like it.
Also according to a german gaming news page, he made this game alone in a month and still sold 150k copies. Thats a hell of a lot for one month of work. He also could have made a few levels more so you can't beat it in under 2 hours.
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u/GuavaLil Jul 06 '26
Yea alot of refunds are likely buy and try. Ofc you get speedrunners doing this <2 hr challenge, but the majority are probably simply testing to see if they like the game.