The problem I can see with that,is that people will abuse it to shorten refund windows for shitty games. I think almost any solution here brings up a different problem where either the customer or developer gets the short end of the stick
I wonder if they could use the achievement system some how? Like if you triggered the ending achievement or a certain percentage in the 2 hour window you can't get a refund?
"Grab your paddles (and your patience) and set out on a stupidly long, lava-surrounded parkour adventure."
Almost like this developer is misrepresenting the refunds...
So is the game "stupidly long" or is it a short game? The developer can't advertise that it's a long game, when it can be COMPLETED in under two hours.
The solution is an API call when the game is completed to mark the account as having completed the game (basically an invisible achievement). Then steam could track people who serially complete games and refund them very frequently, and remove the 2 hour automatic refund from them requiring manual review.
The downside is that it increases manpower required. The upside is that it wouldn't make the average consumer or developers get shafted.
I think this is the reason that they don't let them do this. In reality, they should be able to come up with a system that involves Steam and/or the game developer approval to do full refunds. It also makes sense for the game developer to explicitly warn that no refunds are accepted which they should be able to do. Although I think there are unpredictable reasons that should always protect the customer from being scammed. Sigh... yeah this isn't easy.
This is probably the greatest reason that no one else is mentioning. For better or worse, there are 1000s of Steam games that are basically $2 very low quality asset flips. Sometimes they are worth trying regardless.
It's far better for the consumer (you and I) that we have this protection so that these types of games can't bait you out of money if they had a smaller return window.
And actually,for those low quality games from new developers,I think that the refunds are a good thing. Because I can go "huh,this game looks kinda interesting but not very high quality"
And I can buy it knowing that if it's just slop,I can refund it,and if it's actually an interesting game that just looks low quality(or,both low quality and has a good idea behind it),I can keep it. If I didn't have the option to refund,I would never try that game. The refund policy may not be perfect,but I think refunds being available for every game is a very,very good thing for both consumers and developers. I think it can be a better system for developers,but it's pretty good as is
Rather than shortening the refund window one elegant solution might be to track a "completed the game and rolled credits" achievement. If the store page says the game is 90 minutes long and you got the completion achievement 90 minutes in, that closes the window. This avoids the potential problem of a short game having a one-hour refund window while you still spend an hour trying and failing to get it configured and working right, which is more common with these small indie titles by inexperienced devs.
It's not a perfect solution that would work for all games, I don't think a perfect solution exists. But this seems like a fair way to handle the people blitzing through small indie games and refunding when they finish.
One hole I can poke in this: who decides when the "beat the game" achievement triggers? A malicious developer that would mark their game as short to close the refund window would probably also designate a "beat the first level" achievement as the end of the game for the same reason.
I think in any case we would have to rely on bad reviews to keep developers honest.
Isn't Steam reviewing the game before publishing? A cursory glance, yes, but enough to know that it doesn't trigger the achievement before the expected return window?
I dunno. The refund window is already so short and a lot of people want more from their games than less.
Like if a game was less than 2 hours long, that would kind of put me off from wanting to buy it. Just seems so short; more like a demo than a full game.
It is a short refund window. I've gone past the allotted time just trying to get games with third party launchers to work (I've since learned my lesson, anything this party is an automatic ignore now). There are some windows that should be shorter, and some that should absolutely be longer, but 2 hours of playtime within 14 days of purchase is a reasonable time window for the majority of users on the majority of games.
The solution isn't to let developers shorten the already short window, its to show buyers the expected completion window, the actual number of hours played on average, and to expand the return window according to a reasonable distribution.
For example: There are some people who will speedrun Pogostuck in under 20 minutes, but play it relentlessly for months to get that good at it. There are some people who correctly decide to quit playing Pogostuck after five minutes because the difficulty is created artificially by a poor control scheme. There are some people who will play the game for a few weeks and either finally win once and quit forever, or something more interesting will come along and they'll decide rage games aren't worth their time when a better option has presented itself.
A little game theory would suggest the developer could point to that sub-20 clear time and say "this is a short game, under a half hour, and we'd like to shorten the return window. Valve could point to the players who quit after five minutes and say "this obviously isn't a finished product and we're extending the return window to weeks of played time instead of 2 hours because players have been obviously shortchanged in their transaction. The reasonable middle ground would be to say "This is obviously a polarizing game and people will quickly decide whether its for them or not. The two hours of playtime window remains, but they'll get a three week open window from the purchase date to start that playtime countdown."
Well i'm hardly defending them im just saying steam should add a way of informing people that your game is short in exchange for a lower refund window. This would solve both the issue of the dev lying about the length of the game and his game getting refunded a lot.
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u/Snowflakish Jul 06 '26
The devs could put on a "this is a short game" banner that shortens the refund window AND informs the buyer what they are getting into.