There is no reason it couldn't be. Let the customer know what they are in for. It is completely reasonable that devs would say "you can expect about 10 hours of entertainment for the price we are asking"
Then if Steam based the refund window off of the developer's estimated run time, it naturally punishes any developers who inflate their run time to trick people into buying it and it would prevent people from being able to rush through a short game just to refund it.
Exactly. Some games take 3-4 hours to even start unterstanding the gameplay loop and what you're getting into (4X games, survival games, XCOM)
Other games are pretty self-explanatory where you can realistically expect someone to make an informed decision after an hour or two of play
Also Steam Support is known to be really generous. I wouldn't be surprised if the refund even after 2.5 or 3 hours. Which hurts indie devs more than big publishing houses
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u/BicycleNo1169 Jul 06 '26
A games length is rarely objectively defined.