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

[KingofNothing]

I feel bad for the dev, not like people weren't buying the game in the first place, but buying it, beating and refunding it. Also seems so people gave the game a good review before refunding.

I do agree 90 minutes for $9 isn't a great deal, but rather a game but short and to the point rather than a bloated mess of AAA games like Ass Creed.

But at the end of the day, how the hell do you fix it. If you make it a 1 hour cut off and remove it all together, just making stuff worse for customers to only help a few small indie devs.

Well people don't buy, beat, and refund a game under 2 hours for no reason. Especially en masse. Most people will just eat the hit and move on if it's shit and refunding it to get a free game normally isn't worth the effort when just pirating would be easier at that point. If he really did get mass refunded and is not just exaggerating, that game must have pissed off a lot of people.

 

[UzumakiLeaf]

There is not much I can say that hasn't already been said but one thing indie devs need to keep in mind is that their games are facing heavy competition including from freeware. If you have a shorter game and you want to charge ~10$ for it, well you really need to make it a stellar experience and better than anything offered free. For this game, it needs to beat Yumi Nikki.

For freeware you are just in competition for people's free time and attention. For a commercial game (which any paid for game is) you need to justify the money people are paying you as well.

 

[NerdShamer]

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.

Honestly, if you're in a position to refund a game, it's still your fault for buying it in the first place.

I think the best example of a "short game" could be Bad Mojo.

Almost every playthrough I have seen (besides Vinny's- I think) has been under 2 hours.
That game IS worth 20$ because of innovative it is.
Anyone post others?

Helltaker is shorter than this walking simulator, but was well received. But that doesn't really count, considering that it's free.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I really hate the mentality of you fail once and you quit. Like stop being retarded, failure is expected to happen in software. FNAF guy failed a bunch of times before he succeeded.

Literally use what you already made as a learning experience and don't charge nearly 10 dollars for it and lower the price and people won't bother refunding it.

 

[NerdShamer]

These people only have two settings, walking simulators or visual novel. Anything else scares the shit out of them from a technical standpoint.

Isn't it kind of easy to set up a FPS? I mean, they used to be considered shovelware around a decade ago.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Isn't it kind of easy to set up a FPS? I mean, they used to be considered shovelware around a decade ago.

Depends what you want to do. The default/free interact controls for both unity and unreal are spotty at best. If you want to have some puzzle where you have to shift and move shapes into a specific position in three dimensions that's going to take some work to get going on the coding end. But if you're just doing shit like find switch and hit button that's just needing two scripts or modifiers on the objects so they can recognize each other.

 

[Dysnomia]

*looks up the game in question*

Walking Simulator With jump scares.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE INDUSTRY YOU HACK.

If your game has a 90 minute play time it better have tons of replay value or be quite a bit cheaper than $8.99.

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.

Unless you knew exactly what to do Myst required a lot of experimenting and exploring. It's only short if you already know how to do all the puzzles and therefore can skip reading books and exploring for clues. And if you decide to use a guide on your first playthrough to cheat your way through you have absolutely ruined the experience.

Just for the sake of it, here's the tweets where he's quitting
View attachment 2485006
View attachment 2485007
View attachment 2485008
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

In other words, you aren't creative enough to make a longer, richer experience.

Instead of making a bunch of short games why not spend more time creating a longer one worth the price you charge for 90 minutes of Soviet jump scares.

It looks like all his games are pretty much the same in terms of premise. They could all be part of one larger game then. Maybe instead of cryquitting the game industry try to take all your idea clones and string them into one continuous narrative next time.

 

[ZMOT]

I feel bad for the dev, not like people weren't buying the game in the first place, but buying it, beating and refunding it. Also seems so people gave the game a good review before refunding.

I do agree 90 minutes for $9 isn't a great deal, but rather a game but short and to the point rather than a bloated mess of AAA games like Ass Creed.

But at the end of the day, how the hell do you fix it. If you make it a 1 hour cut off and remove it all together, just making stuff worse for customers to only help a few small indie devs.

you don't have to fix anything, it works exactly how it should. "don't like game? well, refund it" - if you can beat it in that timeframe or not has no bearing on that.

at the end of the day it's the same retarded argument as "if people can get games for free they wouldn't buy games, PIRACY WILL KILL VIDEO GAMES!!!!!11" - except plenty of people still buy games instead of torrenting them, so why is that? yes, there will always be people who refund sub-2hour games or pirate, but the vast majority has no qualms to pay even for shit entertainment. the bigger truth is they're also lazy, why go through the trouble refunding when you can do something else? if there's suddenly a large amount of people asking for a refund, you can pretty much guarantee it has nothing to do with the actual length.

there's also the overlooked fact which no one mentioned yet that steam can and will block you from refunds if you abuse it. they literally tell you to not use the refund system as free game demos. you really want to possibly fuck up your future $70 refunds with legit reasons for a dollar store walking sim?

 

[McAfee'sCorpse]

When will indie devs stop making only low-effort horror games, roguelikes, and games made with rpgmaker?

 

[Milwaukee Macho Man]

When will indie devs stop making only low-effort horror games, roguelikes, and games made with rpgmaker?

I'm pretty sure RPGMaker games will be eternal. That's been a thing for 20 years now at least.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Isn't "walking simulator with jump scares" basically just Kholat? Except for the part where two hours barely scratches the surface on the game?

Hell, Tetris can hold most people's attention for more than 2 hours.

Fuck, now I'm getting Tale of Tales flashbacks.

 

[AMHOLIO]

When will indie devs stop making only low-effort horror games, roguelikes, and games made with rpgmaker?

Easy: when the tools to make a more complex game of their choice are easier to understand to the layperson and when trends change.

Why are there so many games made on RPG Maker or Unity? Because they're cheap or free with cheap and free assets, and a library of other people's code and programs that can cut the heavy lifting in half for you.

Why are roguelikes and other random generators a thing? Because you don't have to spend as much time with asset creation, balance (if you market it as hard for the wrong reasons), or level design.

Why low effort horror games and walking sims and visual novels? Because they require low amounts effort, time, and money that is attractive to smaller game companies who can't make shit back. They also function as a low rent way to make a shitty movie or comic without having to draw or film either.

Lastly, some things are just trends. If you have no money but want money, why not follow something that has an audience hungry for more? For a while, the indie platformer with artsy story/visuals was popular due to the popularity of Braid, Limbo, Fez, etc. The "Simulator" genre became a thing when Surgeon and Goat Simulator got popular. FNAF clones littered the shelves for a while. Battle royal had it's clones come up and then die. We're going to get a wave of boomer shooters now I believe, that's the trend I've been seeing recently.

There are still a good number of indie devs & indie dev teams who aren't massive hacks, children, pretentious art students, or hobbyist playing around, they're just harder to find unless you go looking for them. We won't stop getting low effort shit made by talentless people on the same 3 engines for the same reason Deviantart will always have shitty MSPaint and lined paper and pencil art of the top 5 fandoms and fetishes: it's all easily accessible and anyone can do it.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Remember Gone Home can be beaten in under 5 minutes.

 

[cummytummies]

I agree but "it's only the price of a coffee" was a common defence these type of developers used back in the early iOS days to reject all types criticism.

Fair enough, but I was specifically talking of something good. Something I enjoyed. I was defending the idea that a 90-minute experience can be worth $8.99, be it a game or a movie or whatever, not that $8.99 is such a small amount of money it doesn't matter how you spend it.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

Anything that kills off the endless amounts of shovelware on steam - it's hard to find anything these days unless it's a well known company/title, I missed a few things because they were buried under glorified mobile games.

I think Steam was too generous with 'indies' and it did nothing but crowd the platform.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

If your game is short it seems like a death sentence. It might even make developers pad their games, which is the best way to ruin a good game.

At the same time, I think it's good for consumers. I'd say drop it to an hour. A game should last at least 90 minutes anyway.

 

[Kane Lives]

Anything that kills off the endless amounts of shovelware on steam - it's hard to find anything these days unless it's a well known company/title, I missed a few things because they were buried under glorified mobile games.

I think Steam was too generous with 'indies' and it did nothing but crowd the platform.

At least curators help a bit in that regard. I do think Steam did the right thing; better to have too many shovelware, than have a curated, but limited list of games.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

At least curators help a bit in that regard. I do think Steam did the right thing; better to have too many shovelware, than have a curated, but limited list of games.

Once you find some among all the shovelcurators

 

[ZMOT]

There are still a good number of indie devs & indie dev teams who aren't massive hacks, children, pretentious art students, or hobbyist playing around, they're just harder to find unless you go looking for them. We won't stop getting low effort shit made by talentless people on the same 3 engines for the same reason Deviantart will always have shitty MSPaint and lined paper and pencil art of the top 5 fandoms and fetishes: it's all easily accessible and anyone can do it.

steam has a showcase event every 2-3 months, it easier than ever to find good indie stuff and then just follow the recommendations or "similar games".

Once you find some among all the shovelcurators

>find game you like
>check what curators have written about it
>check other reviews in question

the more niche the game the more niche the curator dealing with that kind of genre, it's really not hard to filter the shit ones.

 

[cummytummies]

Once you find some among all the shovelcurators

I don't use Steam curators much, but this one has unironically proven reliable.

Also while I never use the Rock, Paper, Shotgun website their Steam curator page is very active and usually provides a nice synopsis for games I'm interested in, even if I they're a bit soy-ish and I don't always agree with them.

Then I have a few that focus on the PC port, technical details and anime titties and that's about it.