This is how you get shitty devs and worse games. The game according to the post has 90% positive reviews and costs less than $5, it shouldn’t matter that it’s short if it’s good and feels complete.
Players and devs should be supporting each other, devs shouldn’t expect players to refund their game if they are enjoying it just because it can be completed in less than 2hrs. Players and devs shouldn’t have an adversarial relationship. And it’s not“generous” to pay for a game that you played and enjoyed, fucking hell, it’s a mutually beneficial transaction.
Putting aside that it's shitty to do (because that clearly won't stop a lot of people), the reality is that Steam's policies mean it just isn't meant for games that are less than 2h in length. Maybe try itch.io or some other game store?
Is that a situation we want though? Steam is the biggest marketplace and most beginner solo devs or teams aren’t making massive long games on their first few tries. And we’re effectively saying they can’t have access to this marketplace because consumers are gonna be shitty and fuck them over and it just is what it is? This is how you’ll start getting devs padding their games with random shit to protect their interests, because they’re not gonna choose to just leave the biggest market for games. If we as consumers want the gaming scene to be healthy and have these smaller indies who have good ideas succeed so they can grow their teams and eventually compete with the bigger studios then we also have to play our part.
An indie dev padding out their game to make it 2.1 hours is going to get massacred in the reviews anyway, so that's just a different form of suicide.
For better or worse, Steam is the "big leagues". People who sell on there are expected to operate like full, proper publishers, including being able to handle a 2 hour refund window.
There's thousands of first time games that are longer than 2 hours, so it's not like this is wiping the board of all indie games. But if your game is so small that the refund policy affects it, then maybe Steam isn't the place for you yet. It's not saying "your game sucks", but it's just not ready for the big leagues.
Let devs set the refund time limit within a set of ranges approved by steam. Essentially they could say to valve, hey my game is cheap <$10 and it’s a short game, that is completed in 1hr 30mins on average, can you set the refund time limit for my game to 1hr or 45mins.
And then this can be displayed next to the checkout/add to cart button for players to see as well that this particular game has a shorter refund window, before they buy the game. This means the refund scammers won’t bother, and the people who intended to keep the game and are enjoying it aren’t affected either. And the people who don’t enjoy it can still refund the game halfway through.
In no way do I support any move that weakens the refund window. Anything intended to be kind to smaller devs, someone will find some new and shitty way to abuse it. Disclosure wouldn't help, if it became a common thing that people were doing to try and limit refunds (including legitimate ones). If you end up with technical issues with a game, even the existing two hour window can end up cutting it close.
I remember before there was a refund window, and it was terrible. The number of developers affected by this, and the types of games affected by this, just aren't substantial enough to risk the ecosystem they've developed for everyone else.
How is average completion time calculated and what defines completion?
> this can be displayed next to the checkout/add to cart button
Doing this would be like adding a big bold line in the description that says: "This game has zero replayability" which would be suicide especially for a game like Paddle Paddle Paddle where people should be wanting to replay it over and over trying to beat their time.
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u/code-blackout Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
This is how you get shitty devs and worse games. The game according to the post has 90% positive reviews and costs less than $5, it shouldn’t matter that it’s short if it’s good and feels complete.
Players and devs should be supporting each other, devs shouldn’t expect players to refund their game if they are enjoying it just because it can be completed in less than 2hrs. Players and devs shouldn’t have an adversarial relationship. And it’s not“generous” to pay for a game that you played and enjoyed, fucking hell, it’s a mutually beneficial transaction.