Steam's two-hour refund policy leads to indie developer quitting game development - $8.99 for 90 minute games

[DMX DA GOAT]

Steam's two-hour refund policy leads to indie developer quitting game development

www.eurogamer.net

A new debate has erupted surrounding Steam's two-hour refund policy.

If you weren't aware, Steam offers a refund for all game purchases, no questions asked, as long as your playtime is less than two hours and it's within two weeks of purchase.

It's a ‌pro-consumer policy (or a cost-effective way to reduce the number of customer service staff, depending on who you ask), and the two-hour playtime threshold is intended to stop less trustworthy consumers from exploiting it.

But while most AAA games easily exceed the two-hour length (looking at you, Assassin's Creed Valhalla), smaller indie games with short stories can fall short. This potentially leads to a situation where players can finish a game and return it within two hours.

That's the exact situation faced by indie developer Emika Games, who recently released Summer of '58, a psychological thriller that's received an overall rating of Very Positive on Steam. Unfortunately, the game can be completed in about 90 minutes, which leaves plenty of time for players to exploit Steam's refund policy.

n a statement posted on Twitter, the developer said they are "leaving game development" and referenced that they aren't earning enough to develop more games because of the high amount of refunds.

It's an unfortunate situation where a consumer-friendly policy is harming the very developers who can least afford to be losing sales. It's also a difficult problem to fix.

Reducing the threshold from two hours will only hurt consumers getting through extremely long AAA releases. Steam could potentially have a separate policy for shorter indie games, but that would require additional staff to verify that games are indeed shorter, which Valve is unlikely to do. Another potential technical workaround is using Steam achievements as a signifier of game completion. If a player gets the final achievement for finishing the story, the option to return the game could be removed.

Make your game longer yo

 

[Bogliacci]

Lmao I did the same thing with Inside.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

*looks up the game in question*

Walking Simulator With jump scares.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE INDUSTRY YOU HACK.

 

[Epic Fail Man]

Maybe make your game a little more interesting. Games with no replay value are usually not worth buying.

 

[byuu]

Valve was literally forced to introduce a refund policy after they were sued in Australia for violating their consumer laws.
If it was Valve's choice they would still have no refund policy at all.

 

[Beautiful Border]

If the average player can not only beat your game, but also exhaust all possible replay value or desire to play it again within two fucking hours... maybe you should make better games?

 

[Dona Morte]

These comments!
"This game was great, and to all the people who played it and returned it, you are the scum of the planet and I hope you get herpes on your face."
"The refund exploitation really sucks, but on the bright side I wouldn't have found this game if this situation didn't happen - I came straight here after reading about it in the news. Hopefully many others will have a similar reaction to me and you'll get enough funding for your next game! Until then, don't let a bad situation ruin an otherwise promising career and lifelong passion."

I hate fragile customers. Is it a value or not. Enough fee fee reviews.
10:00 for two hours? I would do it too.

Guys remember Myst? That was like a handful of dudes YEARS ago.

 

[Anonymus Fluhre]

Valve was literally forced to introduce a refund policy after they were sued in Australia for violating their consumer laws.
If it was Valve's choice they would still have no refund policy at all.

Not just Australia but Canada and most of the EU and Uk.

 

[Beautiful Border]

"This game was great, and to all the people who played it and returned it, you are the scum of the planet and I hope you get herpes on your face."

I refuse to believe this isn't the developer posting on a sockpuppet account. The alternative, that there's somebody out there who is so soy that they're genuinely angry people refunded a shitty indie game they didn't even make, is too much for me to believe.

 

[RinguPingu745]

The game itself is complete garbage with low effort jump scares. Good on the dev leaving, because we need less indie developers like this. Maybe make something worthwhile next time and people will stick around.

 

[faint horizons]

I'm shocked. Flabbergasted even. Someone used the refund policy because your game couldn't keep someone attentive enough for more than 2 hours? Fuck off and literally make a game that's actually interesting. Very Positive my fucking ass.

 

[Forgetful Kiwi]

Notice how it is always the devs with really bad games that complain about stuff like this and the review system.

 

[Dona Morte]

I refuse to believe this isn't the developer posting on a sockpuppet account. The alternative, that there's somebody out there who is so soy that they're genuinely angry people refunded a shitty indie game they didn't even make, is too much for me to believe.

It happened before.
I am too lazy to dig it up but our favorite CAPITALIZM EEEEEVIL COMMUNISM good Stephanie Sterling uncovered at least comment deletions in the past.

 

[TheShedCollector]

TL;DR - Knew about refund policy. Listed game on Steam anyway. Threw temper tantrum.

 

[Crunchy Oats]

He shouldn't have started development in the first place, what a self entitled nigger.
Apparently thought his game would be cool enough to not get refunds and this has become a total shock and reason to quit all of development.

 

[MooseGump]

Just for the sake of it, here's the tweets where he's quitting

I too can just slap some text on a canvas, but also the tweets about the game's release barely reached 100 likes so no one still didn't give a fuck about the game and it looks boring

 

[winterfag]

There isn't a huge epidemic of customers returning DVDs of two hour long movies because most of them are going to want to keep them on their shelf and watch it again somewhere down the line, the same can't be said for most of these shallow indie games

 

[Govt. Shitposting Machine]

Honestly if you wanna make walking sims go off it's your choice but maybe, just maybe, don't sell really short games (especially of this nature) on Steam?
He's already selling it on itch, sure more exposure is nice but itch.io is literally the platform for indie walk sims of all kinds.
Even better he could just not charge because let's be real a lot of these games go for free and some of the free ones look better than this.
No other spooky walk sim beats Yume Nikki after all.

Also speaking of itch it seems all the comments for Summer of '58 are favorable and there's even videos reviewing it so this is probably just a stunt but my point still stands about putting specific games on specific stores.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

overall rating of Very Positive on Steam

Life is Woke has Overwhelmingly positive rating, fuck off with that.

 

[Zilortha]

It sounds like the dev is just really upset that people didn't like it.
You want people to not refund your game, but you don't want to "artificially prolong" it?
Then make something people actually like and want to keep despite being a short experience.