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

Oliveoil said:
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."
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Waiting for Steams "review bomb" system to kick in any moment now. ...or does that only happen to "problematic" devs and those with the right connections?

whatever I feel like said:
or if there was a connection between him and the journos, but it doesn't look like there is one.
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I'm surprised. I was fully expecting this to be a game journo's friend.

whatever I feel like said:
Apparently the dev shits out games like this on the regular
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I'm going to guess it's thrown together with stock assets.


This comment on the article sums up my opinion nicely.
Banning refunds for games that have their "completed" achievement triggered would suck too, a game being too short can be a valid complaint (think e.g. Dark Matter which just abruptly ends as you walk down a corridor because the dev ran out of money).

I don't like the idea of allowing devs to alter the refund policy either, you know AAA publishers will be the first to flag all their games as "no refunds" and any leeway in the refund rules will see them use their influence and lawyers to push for themselves getting the exceptional treatment. With a blanket rule it's much harder for them to find an opening to exploit.

It's odd that this seems to be the only case where this happened, plenty of games are sub 2 hour but I haven't heard of any of them failing purely due to refunds. Without numbers it's hard to tell what's going on, whether the game is seeing an exceptional amount of refunding or the dev is just overly sensitive. Without numbers we can't tell how common this is either, I don't think it'd be a good idea to make huge changes to a central aspect like refund rules if it only affects like two games out of the thousands that are on Steam.
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Either they are learning that the indie crowd they market towards are cheap assholes who believe they should get everything for free or projecting like mad to assume everyone is an asshole to beat, enjoy and immediately refund it.

Most Chad gamers I know will keep games they enjoy because they might want to re-experience it.
 
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Someone in a Tree said:
These are the kind of people that are created when society entertains the idea that games can be high art.
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To be fair, actual high art has retards like this, too. Everybody wants to make lots of money for minimal effort, and thanks to a few rich retards buying in on shit a few especially gifted con artists sell, society's come to see "High Art" as being exactly that.
 
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Literally the first time I've ever heard of something like this happening
As others have pointed out, there's a lot of short games that can be completed in under an hour and yet somehow they don't have this problem

Also a walking simulator with jumpscares, which is the fucking madden of indie games, fuck out of here
it shocks me to see all the people defending them like mad
Either bots, paid, or proving my point that indie game communities are indeed full of fags
 
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All this guy makes is fucking walking sims, and this is apparently his third game. Does he really waste this much fucking time and money developing games to where one game being refunded hard for lack of content relative to price is outweighing the success of his other games is making him throw in the fucking towel?

I'm glad this faggot's gonna start taking up less store space.
 
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Burmese Rice Farmer said:
All this guy makes is fucking walking sims, and this is apparently his third game. Does he really waste this much fucking time and money developing games to where one game being refunded hard for lack of content relative to price is outweighing the success of his other games is making him throw in the fucking towel?
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You just don't get it man. Walking around at a geriatric pace while suffering from constant jump scares is beaux arts.
 
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Man ignores policy, gets mad when consumers don't like their shitty game. More at 11. Anyway, pretty sure that since this is his third walking simulator, he figured it'll bring easy money, especially when more popular YouTubers need to play through garbage just to keep their 1 upload a day schedule. Simple game mechanics beats story, writing, gameplay - anything else, right???

This is just as hilarious as the devs that put shitty drm on their games and complain that piracy of their games increased as a result.
 
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eternal dog mongler said:
You just don't get it man. Walking around at a geriatric pace while suffering from constant jump scares is beaux arts.
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"No, you don't understand, walking slow and having monsters pop up is an artistic choice! You just don't get the message, it's high art!"
Maybe being a game developer really is as easy as acting like a snooty artfag.
 
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