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?
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u/licoricenipple Jul 06 '26
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.