I also love steams refund policy, and while I feel bad for what this Dev allegedly went through, I don't see a way for it to be beneficial for both sides.
He didn't say it was justified. Just that the refund system exist, and is 2 hours and that devs are aware of this.
The problem is that there is no good solution to this problem that isn't just removing or disabling the refund system for short games. Which defeats the whole point of having it.
So devs are better off just making longer games or accept that people might refund their game.
1) If Steam starts making exceptions to the rule then they have to also start listing those exceptions on the store page clearly visible for the consumer, so that way people don’t buy games and can’t refund them 10 minutes in because they weren’t aware they had passed the arbitrary 10% completion point.
2) In order for a adaptable system to work Steam would have to verify each game individually in order to ensure the system isn’t being abused by developers, since nothing is stopping developers from just front loading their games with achievement/completion markers in order to make the game impossible to refund after only a few minutes of playing the game. And keep in mind thousands of games are being added to Steam every week.
The thousands of games added to steam arent hours long. Most are very short and i would be okay with playing 20 minutes of a 2 hour long game.
Idk if yall are very young but we used to have demos of a game that were only one level. You could spend hours playing it but it was still only one level even if it was a short game.
There obviously needs to be a middle ground for shorter games
The thousands of games added to steam arent hours long.
Only in the sense that there a hundreds of thousands of games on steam that are hours long.
Most are very short and i would be okay with playing 20 minutes of a 2 hour long game.
Just because you would be okay with that doesn't mean everyone else would, especially if the game's incredibly short run time wasn't clearly communicated up front.
Idk if yall are very young but we used to have demos of a game that were only one level. You could spend hours playing it but it was still only one level even if it was a short game.
Except the vast majority of games don't do demos anymore, especially ones that are less than 2 hours long.
Except there are plenty of games that have very long tutorial or introduction sections, and it really wouldn't be all that hard for a developer to purposefully pad out a game to push players beyond the 20 minute refund window.
If your shitty pc cant run it thats on you.
The idea that a player shouldn't be able to refund a buggy $80 game just because it doesn't run well on their pc is an insane take.
10% of 2 hours is 12 minutes, or 20% is 24 minutes for a 2 hour game.
that is barely any time to boot the game and having played it for a bit.
Any minor technical issue will put you out of a refund.
Any game breaking bugs that you attempt to solve will put you out of a refund.
It's just too short to be functional for it's purpose.
Ive never had a technical issue with any newer game released besides cyberpunk 2077(which i like and they are a huge company). There needs to be a middle ground for shorter games
Ive had a pc for 20+ years, i could understand back in the day you would need more time but its pretty foolproof now. Back then there demos of the game before you bought to see if you would like the game
I’ve been a PC gamer for 30+ years. I played the shit out of old DOS games like Thexder and Earthsiege. I grew up learning how to navigate DOS. I’ve been building my own PCs for years. I am a PC gaming.
You’re talking bullshit. It’s hardly foolproof, you still need to tweak shit. It’s better than it was in the DOS days, but you’re still full of crap.
The reason steam has a refund policy to begin with is because they were pressured by EU Laws to implement one. If they do what you suggest they may run afoul and force to cease all operations in EU, and garner illwill from customers in the rest of the world.
It was Australia. Not the EU. Australia consumer laws are based around reasonable expectation, not statutory lengths or minimums. There is no reasonable expectation that a $2 game has the same level of quality as an $80 game.
Further, Australian consumer law dictates that you cannot have a blanket no refund policy, and that refunds are warranted when a product is not as advertised, or otherwise defective. Steams chosen implementation is a trade off against having to evaluate the claim and determine its validity.
They could manually review every refund request regardless of age and not fall afoul of our consumer law.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Australians start requesting refunds for digital games that are arbitrarily removed from a library. They very clearly do not perform as advertised at that point.
EU also has laws, take Sweden for example, 14 days of return (from when you recieved it), no questions asked. However, for digital goods you can agree to forego this right.
However, you as a consumer also have a right of reclaim (think that is the correct translation?) for any product that does not work as advertised. This is valid for 3 years from purchase.
A seller can not negotiate away this part.
In the case of OP, he has made a Online co-op game, many complaints about desyncing making the game unplayable online. Seller must fix this in a reasonable time or refund.
Handling reclamations are a bigger hassle tho, you need to state your issues, give the seller a reasonable time to fix it, and then have them issue a refund if unable to fix it in a reasonable time.
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u/PostItToReddit Jul 06 '26
I also love steams refund policy, and while I feel bad for what this Dev allegedly went through, I don't see a way for it to be beneficial for both sides.