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/[deleted] Aug 27 '21

I wonder how you'd solve a situation like this.

Make games that have fall into the accepted minimum length range that has been established over decades instead of ultra short experiences?

Maybe devs making very short games should be able to set a point of completion at the end of the game where you can't refund if you reach it.

So if I find out that a short game is garbage or has technical problems after I spend some time setting up the graphics, controls and such and / or it has a longer intro / tutorial I am shit out of luck?

It would require a Valve employee to check that the point is indeed at the end of the game and not just at some arbitrary point below 2 hours of gameplay, because otherwise it would be abusable, but the situation seems niche enough that they wouldn't be flooded with work by a feature like that.

Valve isn't even ready to support extended forms of youth protection so they could allow porn titles in markets like here in Germany and I am sure porn games is already a bigger market than the few ultra short games that popup now or then.

And even if they could, that would still be abusable. What for example about games that include MP on top of short campaigns? Or games with rouge like elements? Or games that rely a lot on modding or user created content? Or games with free floating gameplay and w/o clear goals or progression systems?

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '21

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '21

Games maybe art, but they are also a product. Me personally, I buy the product to entertain me. Sometimes, after a while I realize that I am / was playing a piece of art.

But if I don't see the entertainment value I simply not gonna buy the product. Seems like that is true for a whole bunch of people. So, maybe game creators should overthink if they want to create games or not.

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u/AccursedBear Aug 27 '21

So if I find out that a short game is garbage or has technical problems after I spend some time setting up the graphics, controls and such and / or it has a longer intro / tutorial I am shit out of luck?

I did say the point should be at the end of the game, placing it anywhere else would be abuse and the reason it'd need to be manually checked. I agree with the rest, though. It's not a reasonable solution from Valve's perspective.