Octodad Dev: Most Steam Refunds Are Outside of The "2-Week Window"

Steven Bogos

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Jan 17, 2013
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Octodad Dev: Most Steam Refunds Are Outside of The "2-Week Window"


Octodad developer Young Horse weighs in on Steam's new refund policy.

Ever since Steam launched it's developers [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141003-Steam-Adds-New-Two-Week-Two-Hour-Refund-Options], particularly small-time indie devs. Octodad developer Young Horse is a small-time indie dev, and while it disagrees with the whole "Steam refunds are harming developers," sentiment going around (it stressed that "Our general opinion at Young Horses is that the refund system is a positive change"), it has noticed a few problems with the system.

Just like all the other devs, it has noticed a surge in refunds since the new system, but doesn't believe that is too huge of a cause for concern. Developer Kevin Geisler said he "would think that pent up refund demand / fascination and Valve's large focus on the new system would naturally encourage an initial boom of refunding."

However, he doesn't believe that Valve's "two-week" window policy is accurate, noting that a huge majority of Octodad refunds are falling well outside of it. "Since Steam does break down the data by sale price, we are in a position where we can have some certainty on when a returned game was purchased," he explained. "It turns out that 80% of our refunds match the sale price for these periods, putting the purchase dates between 2-5 months ago. The other 20% of refunds at full price could have been purchased at any point in the last 6 months."

"We did not expect that the vast majority of our refunds would come outside of the advertised 2-week window guarantee. Upon figuring this out, we were able to find a good number of anecdotes of people on reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/38oqjn/psa_valve_will_still_refund_you_even_if_you/] successfully getting refunds outside the limitations," he continued.

Despite this, Geisler does not think there is a cause for concern. He trusts Valve's judgement, and does not believe that the system will be abused in the long term, again stressing that the initial spotlight on the system is what is causing the massive surge in refunds.

Source: Gamasutra [http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KevinGeisler/20150608/245463/Steam_Refund_Experience_Majority_Outside_of_2Week_Window.php]

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Alfredo Jones

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Jul 1, 2013
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Considering how new the system is there are bound to be a few quirks like that. So long as Valve properly fixes them there shouldn't be much cause to worry.
 

Jake Martinez

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Apr 2, 2010
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Wow. I mean, really - wow.

It's kind of sad that someone has to point out that of course on the first day that refunds are allowed you're going to see a spike of pent-up refund demand.

I'm actually buying games now that I wouldn't normally buy because I don't have to worry about spending 20 bucks on a piece of shit. I've bought 6 games in the last week that fall under this criteria and I've returned about half of them (one because it just wasn't my cup of tea - the game play didn't match the description on the tin, and the other 2 because they were just garbage).

Those people who's games I returned didn't "lose sales" because prior to the refund policy, I would have never touched their steaming (no pun intended) piles of hot shit. However now, I can take a chance on things and sometimes it leads to a pleasant surprise of a game I enjoy and sometimes it leads to confirmation that the game in question is shovel-ware garbage.
 

ampzero66

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Feb 24, 2011
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I wonder if the two week countdown is starting just since day one. I know plenty of friends who played only minutes of a game, and wanted to return them before this policy was enacted. Valve could be letting people return games that are over the two week limit if they haven't hit the two hour mark as sort of a make-up period for people who felt burned before. Although Valve never stated as much, so more likely a bug.
 

Kameburger

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Apr 7, 2012
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I keep looking at these stories as if they're important and then I remembered that recently valve was noted as having BS customer service, and then I also remembered that they won't let me buy games from them anymore until I submit a copy of my passport and drivers licence, along with a copy of my credit card. I thought I was being scammed at first to which the Steam support specialist reminded me that "I" had contacted them, and not the other way around.
 

LokiSeto

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Jan 25, 2008
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Has no one else tried to do a Refund? I did and tried a few games. It seems that since this is a new feature, Steam is currently accepting all games purchased within the last 6 months to be reviewed for a refund. Try it yourself. I wonder why no one else has figured this out.
 

Fensfield

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Nov 4, 2009
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Well that's a bit irritating. A certain strategy game that turned out to be a disappointing rip off of its peers was refused me a refund when I thought I'd chance it the other day, despite minimal play time and being only a few weeks outside the window.

Bah >.>
 

ryan_cs

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Aug 13, 2013
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Eric the Orange said:
Dude, Steve are you trolling us for clickbait. Because no offense that's what this looks like combined with yesterdays article. I mean I guess your job is to get views and purposely taking the opposing side of a contentious topic will do that, But I guess I always felt that the escapist held it self to higher standards.
How is this clickbait? The title says that the Octodad devs think there are a lot of refunds coming from outside the 2 week period, and the content clarifies why they think so.

Edit:
valium said:
escapist, I am disappoint.

I know I shouldnt be, after the wizardchan thing, but you instituted new policies and archon even came on and said things be changing.

if you are going into making games with the mindset that your consumer base is nothing but terrible shitty pirates who are only out to exploit you, then maybe you should not be making games, and instead work at EA or activision where your mindset fits right in.
Also, can you clarify why you are disapointed?
 

inmunitas

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Feb 23, 2015
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It says right on the refunds page, end of second paragraph
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam?for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.

It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we've described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we'll take a look.
Source: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

There is also a boatload of statements from devs on http://devsonsteamrefunds.tumblr.com/
 
Sep 13, 2009
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Eric the Orange said:
Dude, Steve are you trolling us for clickbait. Because no offense that's what this looks like combined with yesterdays article. I mean I guess your job is to get views and purposely taking the opposing side of a contentious topic will do that, But I guess I always felt that the escapist held it self to higher standards.
Uhh... what? This is an accurate title, and it is, if anything, giving the opposite perspective of yesterday's article.
 

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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The Almighty Aardvark said:
Eric the Orange said:
Dude, Steve are you trolling us for clickbait. Because no offense that's what this looks like combined with yesterdays article. I mean I guess your job is to get views and purposely taking the opposing side of a contentious topic will do that, But I guess I always felt that the escapist held it self to higher standards.
Uhh... what? This is an accurate title, and it is, if anything, giving the opposite perspective of yesterday's article.
Thank you. That's what I was aiming for.
 

WhiteTigerShiro

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Sep 26, 2008
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inmunitas said:
It says right on the refunds page, end of second paragraph
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam?for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.

It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we've described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we'll take a look.
Source: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

There is also a boatload of statements from devs on http://devsonsteamrefunds.tumblr.com/
Right? Because Heaven forbid that after several years of people demanding a refund system, Valve is maybe being a little lenient on the 2-week rule for a while to make-up for all the time when you were just stuck with a purchase.
 

WhiteTigerShiro

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Sep 26, 2008
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Eric the Orange said:
But I guess I always felt that the escapist held it self to higher standards.
Well, we ARE talking about the website that has been systematically purging all of its unique content, then replacing it with what amounts to syndicated content from this or that YouTube channel. So yeah, not really holding them to high standards at the moment; which is a shame, because even just a year ago I'd have stuck with them through hell and high water.
 

CardinalPiggles

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Jun 24, 2010
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It's nice you get a period of leeway to refund games from 6 months ago, although I doubt Valve are doing out of the kindness of their hearts.

LokiSeto said:
Has no one else tried to do a Refund? I did and tried a few games. It seems that since this is a new feature, Steam is currently accepting all games purchased within the last 6 months to be reviewed for a refund. Try it yourself. I wonder why no one else has figured this out.
Fortunately I haven't bought any shit games in the last 6 months so there is nothing I need to return. Everything I have tried to return they won't let me because they were bought too long ago.