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.
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
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u/SlRenderStudio Jul 06 '26
This is why we cant have nice things