The people who legitimately do this are the ones who make the rest of the gamers look bad.
If you bought a game, especially for $3, played it from start to finish over the course of an hour and a half, and then bragged about it when you refunded it. You fully deserve to have your refund capability disabled.
The thing is, though, I don’t really know a way that this can be implemented without allowing publishers to game the system. I do personally think that Two Hours is a little generous for the overall story because I will generally know whether or not I’m going to like a game within 35 minutes of playing.
I think a good alternative to it is have your refund window be based off of the current sale price of the game.
So for a game that’s less than five bucks, you would only have somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour of a refund window.
Then for your typical indie window, which would be like fifteen to thirty dollars, you have an hour to hour and a half then your AAA title pricing of ~60, you have two or three hours.
I can understand refunding a game if it’s broken on your system or just trash, but it feels real sleazy to me to spend money on a game, play it to completion, and then refund it anyway.
It largely depends on the type of game. There’s are plenty of games I’ve played where you’re still in the tutorial after 2 hours. Hell, I don’t think I knew if I liked EU4 until I was like 50+ hours in.
You don’t need 2 hours to figure out if you like Super Meat Boy though. You’ll know in less than an hour. Probably less than that.
For those who wonder how you could play a game for 50+ hours and not know if you like it; it’s a grand strategy game with lots of functionally. A full game can easily be 50+ hours depending on how fast you let the game run, and your first game is definitely going to have a lot of pausing trying to figure out various functionality. First game is or two is just figuring out the basic gameplay.
If you play a game for 50+ hours, you liked it. You don’t spend that amount of time being undecided.
You’d be wrong. Though you could say I didn’t hate it at least. But I certainly hadn’t made up my mind yet.
I played the first game with a friend. Which is largely why I even finished it. It’s pretty overwhelming because you’re left to figure out a lot on your own. Second game I played on my own. After that is when I knew I liked it, or at least toward the end of that second game.
I can’t think of anything other than grand strategy games that I’ve been that indecisive over. Everything else has been within like 3 hours. Some barely even 20 minutes.
Nah, you liked it. You don’t keep going back to a game for 50 hours if you don’t like it. Most people don’t even put 50 hours into games they like.
This might sound dumb but why not have it so that if you get the achievement for beating the game you can’t refund it?
That would be too easy to game or abuse by the devs
Maybe have a new rule for shorter games, like if its reasonable to complete the game normally in under 5 hours then the 2 hour window should be 1 hour or even 30 minutes. Idk how games are submitted but it should be an option at that time on how long the game is or a question about if its over or under x hours long so they know how to treat the game for this policy.
That’s where the abuse comes in, because how can you be sure a developer won’t make a short game and list it as 20hrs to complete?
I mean databases like howlongtobeat.com do exist. Steam could also come up with their own numbers by looking at the average playtime when players get the achievement for winning the game.
Issue with both is, the game needs to already have been released and beaten a few times.A developer can still game an achievement.
Enough rules, enough automations, I say, just make steam actually hire some real customer service humans. What? They can’t afford it?
If you’re planning to refund a game. Just pirate it
You have to trust the source where you download to pirate it.
Maybe not in this particular case: but what if you buy a game intending to get 10 hours out of it and after 1h you get greeted by the final credits. Shouldn’t you not be able to refund then? (Depending on the price of course.)
Depends if the game set some expectation for a 10 hour long campaign or not I’d say.
I tried Buckshot Roulette on gamepass last night. That would 100% be getting refunded if it was anything more than 50p.
You’re supposed to escape. And then get the white telephone. That takes many hours.
id feel like i got fuckin ripped off if it was an hour long, this isn’t a complicated game and even with the low price id refund it. then again id never buy this game in the first place cuz i already hold that view point.
all this will do is discourage an obviously talented developer from ever publishing another game.
good job gamers, you’re just as toxic as everyone believes you are.
Honestly that game looks pretty fun, especially as a two player game. Just keep it after you beat it and play it with someone else. Or play it again at varying levels of inebriation.
Easy fix: have a two-hour intro video that you can’t skip ;-)
Kojima: “what’s so special about that?”
“Only two hours? Oh man ive wasted so much effort…”
yah that deff won’t make the review bombing worse…
I have never refunded a game on Steam. But then, I usually wait to buy a game until it’s been out for a while and usually on sale.
Were they not aware of the refund policy when they listed their game for sale on the platform?
Maybe not all games should have the same refund policy.
According to all the statistics I have ever seen, especially from devs who’ve made short games, this isn’t an actual problem.
This is going to translate into “more sells” same as drm.
People who want to pay will pay. People who doesn’t want to pay won’t ever pay. With digital media there’s objectively any loss if someone who didn’t pay played your game. So just let it be, you are not going to sell more just because you removed or made smaller the steam refund window.
“More sells” is a giant leap past “make your game longer tham 2 hours”.
Especially when there’s no real proof out there that this game is getting refunded significantly more.
Remember, some people love to just complain, especially if it suggests that the people that don’t like them are evil
I have to imagine this was this risk the developer should have considered when making a game shorter than the return window.
The platform shouldn’t have to intervene because the developer didn’t properly evaluate risk when releasing the game
If your game is so short that users can finish it without prior knowledge in less then 2h, you’re doing something wrong.
agreed, this is just a friendslop game. at least it has the decency to be only a few dollars
if theyre also review bombing its cuz its not good, friend slop became a term for a reason and its likely being applied here.
Tagging the official Steam account, Covic wrote on X, “This should not be possible. Would be cool if you could finally do something about your refund policy… Got dozens of reviews like that and 21% refund rate even though the reviews are 90% very positive… That’s over 55,000 Refunds btw.”
The review bombing happened after he contacted steam regarding the multitudes of people refunding the game after completing it
ah, ok.
its a Unity game eww
So is Ori and the Blind Forest.
tey think the old ceo is still in charge, some people only listen to outrage news.
I hate Unity >:)
The engine or the games made therein?
Cuz if you dislike Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, Dead Cells, Subnautica, Valheim, Rust, Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, Cities: Skylines, Among Us, Fall Guys, Overcooked… then I’d say your taste in games is next to shit.
the engine
Ok fair, I’ve heard Unity has become sort of a pain in the ass to work with. I just couldn’t believe anyone could dislike Subnatica lol.
Good for you.
