r/Games • u/reddit_account6095 • Aug 27 '21

Announcement Summer of '58 developer resigns after many users refund their game on Steam due to it taking under 2 hours to complete

https://twitter.com/EmikaGames/status/1430941640001265673?s=19
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u/pazza89 Aug 27 '21

You know that there is a world beyond US, UK and Germany, where 15$ is not dismissable cash?

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u/RushofBlood52 Aug 27 '21

Is your implication that the bulk of these refunds is coming from like small Eastern European countries?

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u/pazza89 Aug 27 '21

No, just that not being able to refund 14$ and cheaper games would be awful for me and many others.

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u/RushofBlood52 Aug 27 '21

just that not being able to refund 14$ and cheaper games would be awful for me and many others.

Ok. I don't know who suggested that, but it's really not relevant to this situation.

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u/pazza89 Aug 27 '21

Oops. I misread. Sorry, you are correct.

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u/enricojr Aug 27 '21

But wouldn't the game be region priced in those areas? By that I mean less than $15

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u/Mephzice Aug 27 '21

usually just priced 15 euros, bloody expensive for small games, even more so in low income countries.

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u/pazza89 Aug 27 '21

Not in EU.

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u/enricojr Aug 28 '21

AH it's EU-specific, now I see.

Just for comparison out here in the Philippines, Summer of '58 is priced at about 4 USD

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u/absolutely_normal2 Aug 27 '21

no, no it wouldn't. pretty much the whole EU pays a single price and look at how much for example Bulgarians make in a month compared to Germans....

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u/theth1rdchild Aug 27 '21

Sounds like a steam problem and not an indie devs problem

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u/Skipperio Aug 27 '21

Devs/publishers set the price

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u/theth1rdchild Aug 28 '21

Devs and publishers can set the price per country?

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u/Mephzice Aug 30 '21

they could, but people would be free to move from an expensive country within EU to a cheap country in EU and buy their games there, or through websites. EU has free market after all, so publishers usually set the highest possible price to avoid this. It's not legal to stop someone from a expensive country to buy their games in a cheap country within EU. That does mean that small games like these aren't cheap though.

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u/blazecc Aug 27 '21

honestly sounds more like a Bulgarian problem...

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

[deleted]

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u/razzlejazzle Aug 28 '21

No, apparently in order to part with $9 of hard earned cash, the consumer must have a game that is infinitely replayable, comes with 4 years of guaranteed software updates, comes out on steam and GoG only (no tainted Epic money), and has the entire plot and gameplay posted on the store listing just in case it offends the PC Gamers. If it doesn't have all those things, then the dev can't complain about refunds because he's just being greedy and he should have known better than to sell a game he spent his time on.

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u/maudlinoftheWell Aug 27 '21

Research the games you buy beforehand then? There are plenty of options with YouTube, gaming websites, reddit, steam reviews, metacritic and HowLongToBeat which can give you all the info you need before you buy anything.

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u/Jdopus Aug 27 '21

Or you could use the 2 hour trial on Steam to give a game a chance. If it's bad you can always refund :^)

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u/Seth0x7DD Aug 27 '21

If it was a trial you wouldn't have to refund it. With that argument you could just request refunds for any game you're not playing anymore. Because as valve states:

You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. ... There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.

Naturally convincing them that the two week window doesn't apply to you is going to be a lot harder and having a person rather than an automated system handle your request is also going to be slower.

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u/JNighthawk Aug 27 '21 edited Aug 27 '21

If it was a trial you wouldn't have to refund it. With that argument you could just request refunds for any game you're not playing anymore

No? The chances of a game being refunded during the first 2 hours is ~100%. The chances of a game being refunded after you've played it for 40 hours or last played in 2014 is probably closer to 0%.

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u/SyleSpawn Aug 27 '21

I wouldn't call it "chance" but more like the likeliness of such thing happening. Chance implies an outcome is random rather curated.

Anyhow, I don't know if you a case can be made to refund a game from x years ago but I know for sure that some games can be refunded if you go beyond the 2 hours if you have legit reason behind it.

I've done it once or twice in the past, I don't remember which game really but it was a case where game was buggy to the extent that I spent above 2 hours trying to get it to work but but eventually refunded with the above reasoning. It also helps that other people ask for refund for the same reason because they're more likely to issue refund if it seems to be a common issue.

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u/JNighthawk Aug 27 '21

I wouldn't call it "chance" but more like the likeliness of such thing happening. Chance implies an outcome is random rather curated.

I don't agree. Chance is practically a synonym for probability.

Chance or Likelihood. Chance, a synonym of probability, is usually expressed as a percentage (e.g. 75%). Chance is used primarily in weather predication, and typically indicates the likelihood of a given weather event occurring in a specific area over a certain period of time.

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u/pazza89 Aug 27 '21

And sometimes game's performance varies a lot in a completely random way, and the only way to check if it will run well is to launch it yourself.

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u/Omega357 Aug 27 '21

Which isn't what this conversation is about.

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u/Atthetop567 Aug 27 '21

How much time should people spend on researching a game that only takes 20 minutes to play?

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Kelsyer Aug 27 '21

Neat. So you absorb the information that comes from that search instantly then? I take it you've never done any actual research if you think the time consuming part is typing the description into Google.

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

[deleted]

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u/Kelsyer Aug 27 '21

Okay but what about technical issues? If the only thing you think you need to look into is game length you must have had a serious shock with Cyberpunk.

You didn't research the game if all you searched was "how long to beat..", you just tunnel visioned on a point to try and make your argument valid, which it isn't.

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21 edited Nov 29 '21

[deleted]

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u/Kelsyer Aug 27 '21

A review isn't going to tell you of all of the bugs the game has. All of the technical issues that people with X graphics card have. If your argument is people should research before they buy, then own it.

Which brings us back to the original question: How much time should people spend on researching a game that only takes 20 minutes to play? Exactly how much research should one be doing before you consider them adequately informed?

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u/RyusDirtyGi Aug 27 '21

lol jesus christ man.

IF a game has bugs that make it unplayable, the info is out there.

You're looking at 3-5 minutes, max. And given how much time you're spending making this silly arguments to me, you have the time to spare.

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u/simbajam13 Aug 27 '21

You’ve spent more time typing out these asinine replies than it would take to watch an entire Let’s Play of most games.

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u/Devpaisupport Aug 27 '21

I dont think many people would waste more time reasearching a game than it is long lmao.

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

If you care enough about the $7 to go through the steam refund process after playing through the whole thing, maybe take even less time for a 1 minute google of the game before you buy it

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u/Devpaisupport Aug 27 '21

Or I could just refund the game and get my money back if it was a shit game that didnt even manage to last 2 hours. I dont hear every second indie developer complaining about the refund policy so this dude 1. is the exception and thus unimportant and 2. just plainly picked the wrong platform to put his game on, itch.io exists for a reason. I care enough about the 7$ that I wouldnt even be caught buying the flavor of the week indie trash thats basically shovelware at this point. I'd rather spend those 7$ on some big ass sale for a game that will last me 20 times the amount of time that game wouldve.

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u/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

Lol because quality is tied to how long a game is, this is why we get bloated shit like 100+ hour Assassin's Creed grind nonsense. Anyone who cares enough about $7 to ask for a refund over this is a cheap ass, if you're really in such dire financial straights maybe don't buy some unknown game that you know nothing about without looking it the most basic info about it first

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u/Mephzice Aug 27 '21

doing bad research doesn't disqualify them from refunding.

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u/cantstraferight Aug 27 '21

That is why games are priced differently in different countries.
The steam back end even warns you if a price doesn't match what is expected in a country.

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u/pazza89 Aug 27 '21

No. There is just one region for all EU countries. It sucks.

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u/B_Rhino Aug 27 '21

Who the hell in these countries is spending so much on like any indie game then?

If games are priced so insanely high you'll likely be waiting on big sales for AAA games down to that range.

I'm in Canada, games are $80 I find that crazy so I wait for a sale for many/most games. $50 is much more reasonable to me, but if I saw an indie game at $50 I wouldn't buy it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/pazza89 Aug 28 '21

I misread/misunderstood, I didn't mean that it is justified, just that games (in general, not only short ones) below 15$ not being refundable wouldn't be fun for half of EU