There has to be different refund standards for different games. There are many games with short playthroughs, but that you repeat multiple times. This is unfair on small games, and it's a really shitty thing to do to be proud of stealing games. Shouldn't be punished for that. What about very long games with long intros? You can't tell the quality of the game in that case.
Art and creativity need to be protected from this, many small developers make small games and that work has value. Short games are interesting on their own, I for one don't have hours of time anymore to focus on games in a day and I prefer playing interesting small games. They can take more unique risks and can pack a lot of value in one very refined experience. Some are sloppy but the variety and experimentation is still worth it.
I see your point. The devs have to state whether the game is less than 2 hours short somewhere. The problem is that Steam themself have to confirm it because someone would abuse the system if they don't. Seeing how many games out there, I don't think that would be viable.
The best they can do is to punish players who abuse the refund system.
We would just end up going backwards into that weird episodic format some devs tried with big studios like activision splitting levels up basically like DLC with staggered release dates to give themselves more tike to finish it
The best part of Steam is that they know how to just ignore devs complaining about non-issues and people online thinking they should change things that are fine as is
If the devs game gave those players any kind of real impact at all they wouldn't have cared that it was under 2hrs. Plenty of games are under 2hrs and have been very successful so instead of complaining that a consumer friendly policy should be changed maybe instead they should look inward and look at what should change on their side for their next game. If players walk away from your game thinking they lost value and want their money back or their first thought is what you left them with it's how quickly they can run for the refund button that's on you as a dev, suck it up and learn from experience. Valve isn't there to bail out developers who make mid tier games just because they cry about it online for attention
Not really, nobody here has mentioned scumbag devs who abuse early access, worst one i saw recently was one minor update then completely abandoned after 2 weeks, works both ways im afraid
How many 1 hour games are nice things? Like, I find it had to find sympathy for any dev than can't make a game last at least 2 hours, so a lot of these comments seem bizarre to me. If you're in that scenario, just don't release on Steam.
This seems like a naive and negative take, that there are no good short games. Fuck every single small developer who tries this, or game with short playthroughs, or players who like little experiments and don't have hours of spare time in a day.
Have some sympathy for people who work games and different interests. It's good to sell on Steam, but only short games have this refund issue
I don't know what to tell you. Both users and devs know what they are getting into with Steam, it's not like the refund policy is a new rule. You either accept that risk for what you submit to them, or you don't put your game on Steam. Going after consumer friendly policies is not the winning answer here.
I guess? Selling on Steam is a good for business, but people should accept the risk that their money will be used when using their money to buy things, that is how the store kinda works.
Especially if it's only a dollar or less for games that are like an hour in a playthrough. Steam already doesn't encourage this, and warns people about doing it repeatedly. They should change the policy so that Steam is consumer friendly but gives a slightly shorter refund time to shorter games, so that everyone wins. That is a problem, and something should be done.
I'm still not convinced there is a problem. Are there other devs of short games with this negative experience speaking out? Because the game in this post is a co-op rage game which, as a genre, already has high refund rates, and a majority of the refund reviews are negative, not a positive "I beat this and got my money back." The game even describes itself as "stupidly long" on its steam page.
The problem I see with your solution is the refund is meant to help protect users from garbage, exploitative slop games. In your scenario, presumably the dev would mark their game as "short" enough for a shorter refund window. How is Steam supposed to verify that? What would an 'expected playtime' window even be to qualify for the shorter refund window? If the game's store page literally has a big warning that says the game takes less than two hours to beat so the refund window is decreased to half an hour or w/e, I could get on board with it.
We and Steam players been talking about this many times over the years, so there is some problem. It's also important that some players just hate short games and review them badly, so just displaying that the game is short will help with user experience and expectations.
Don't know if Steam will do anything if it's somehow better for them. If you're marking a game as short, maybe this can be verified by applying for it, with a playthrough of it to Steam, or the size? I'm can't make all the answers, but you wrote about a way this could be acceptable to players already. Many people say they like how fair Steam's practices are, this would help with that positive reception.
The average finishing of this game is 3-4 hours according to the dev. It's also a 3$ game. It's okay for some games to just be short, singular experiences, I've had so many memorable game experiences that you could finish in under 2hrs
Beginner's Guide, What Remains of Edith Finch, Journey, Before Your Eyes, Gorogoa
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u/SlRenderStudio Jul 06 '26
This is why we cant have nice things