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

Eric the Orange

Gone Gonzo
Apr 29, 2008
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ryan_cs said:
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.
Clickbait is an article with a title ment to make people want to click it. so as an article title that goes against the general feeling of the site goers on a contentious topic it will draw views. And I think it's kind of shady because a quick read of the new refund policy will tell you that just because a game was bought over 14 days ago does not mean it will be automatically rejected.
 

Eric the Orange

Gone Gonzo
Apr 29, 2008
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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.
Just because the title is accurate does not mean it's not clickbait. lemme do a copy paste from the last guy.

Clickbait is an article with a title ment to make people want to click it. so as an article title that goes against the general feeling of the site goers on a contentious topic it will draw views. And I think it's kind of shady because a quick read of the new refund policy will tell you that just because a game was bought over 14 days ago does not mean it will be automatically rejected.

So the title seems to be insinuating that something is wrong with steam refunds, that will make people who are pro-refunds want to click the article. The fact that at the end of the article The octodad developer says he's still for refunds does not change that.
 

Vigormortis

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Nov 21, 2007
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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/
It's almost as if all of the confusion and click-baiting bullshit running rampant around the 'net could be prevented or resolved, simply by people taking five minutes to read over the refunds FAQ.

But fuck that! It's so much easier to just get all-up-in-arms over it and write news posts designed to stoke the flames.
 

residentout1

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May 21, 2013
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you can get a refund for games bought outside of the two weeks window. "This purchase occurred significantly outside the refund window, and cannot be refunded. You can only submit refund requests for purchases made within the last 6 months" this is a quote from steam on a game that falls outside of the six mouths window. I can conform that you can get a refund for a game that falls outside of the two weeks window.
 

Orange Lazarus

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Jun 3, 2009
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http://devsonsteamrefunds.tumblr.com/

That is a collection of about 25 indie developer's opinions on the steam refund system, unfiltered, in their own words.
 

Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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Eric the Orange said:
Clickbait is an article with a title ment to make people want to click it.
By this definition, any article that's remotely interesting or newsworthy (aka the writers doing their jobs) is clickbait.

I think a far more standard and accepted definition is titles that do one of two things:
[ol]
[li]Blatantly omit key piece information that didn't need omitted, so that you need to read the article to even know what it's about. For example: "You won't believe what purchases are getting refunds on Steam"[/li]
[li]Intentionally mislead readers with a flat-out dishonest title, such as by paraphrasing the dev to say something they didn't say, such as: "Octodad Dev Thinks Refunds Are Ruining Steam, Here's Why"[/li]
[/ol]

The only thing this news story is guilty of is not putting the entire multi-paragraph article into the title, which is completely reasonable (I'd hope for obvious reasons). Not clickbait at all, by any sane definition. The title isn't excessively editorialized, dishonest, or lacking something it should contain, so I really don't see cause for complaint.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. Seriously, as has been pointed out, the system is brand new. Any study on its positive and negative effects, in order to be remotely worthwhile, will need to last several months, not days, and won't even begin until after the system has stabilized so as to avoid being significantly skewed by obvious outlier data. Trying to reach any sort of conclusion now is like going to a Magic: The Gathering tournament, asking six people what the best card game is, and then announcing that MtG is the most popular card game in the world. Both the sample size and source are gonna make the data worthless, and a high percentage of people who would give answers such as Poker aren't even going to be represented.
 

MonsterCrit

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Feb 17, 2015
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Outside the two week window? Wait a tick I smell shenannigans. The system hasn't been up for two weeks yet. Also the big issue the devs isn't the two week window it's the two hour playtime window. Again this could be an issue for quite a few games since Many games on Steam can be played without the use of the steam launcher which means there's not time tracking. And these aren't just indie games. Bioshock, Mass Effect 1& 2 and Doom 3 are just a few of the larger scale titles that can actually be run outside the client. Meaning one could theoretically play these games to completion and never rack up more than 5 minutes of game time as far as steam can see.

That's what worries devs. So basically devs will wind up having to put call homes into their games so they can track and record playtime independently from steam. Or basically hard chain the game to the Steam Interface and remove Offline Mode compatability.
 

Kajin

This Title Will Be Gone Soon
Apr 13, 2008
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WhiteTigerShiro said:
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.
If this website had a "like" button I'd have hit that so hard it'd crash the whole net. The Escapist has definitely gone downhill in recent months.

On topic. I'm glad Steam has a refund option after all these years and I'm willing to believe the Octodad Dev's assumptions concerning the release of pent up refund tension.
 

DrOswald

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Apr 22, 2011
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My bet is that steam is being less restrictive about the time limit right now because lots of gamers probably have a backlog of titles they want refunded but never could. Valve will probably lock it down much more tightly after the first month or so.
 

Uhuru N'Uru

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Oct 8, 2014
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This is a clickbait post. Not for the reasons posted before alone, but for these reasons.

The original source is a blog post by a dev about his game.
He states some apparent facts about how old the the purchases are, based on the purhase price. It seems reasonable, but no evidence is shown. Thay's perfectly fine in a blog, which is an opinion piece.

It's not acceptable in a "News" Article.
No basic and factual research has been done, no journalism at all.

The longer than two weeks refunds are presented as a fault in the refund system and compounded by implying indie devs are generally objecting to the 2 hour limit.

Total Biscuit, who did do the basic research for his report, showed that general concern was one devs opinion again without any real evidence.

Simple research shows, as others have posted, that the two weeks is a guaranteed refund, not a cutoff point. There is no time limit to obtaining a refund and clarifications have stated that six months is almost certainly acceptable in this introductory phase.
Logic would suggest that phase will be just for the first two weeks.

The vast majority of indie devs have no real concerns at all. With the prevailing attitude of, "we'll wait and see, once it's settled down and we have some factual data".

So when a controversial argument is based on two isolated opinions and no research of actual evidence is done.
Damn right it's pure click bait and nothing else.

Do some real journalism or lose the readers for good.
Ethical journalism requires two things that are missing here.
Journalism and ethics.
 

Zeljkia the Orc

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Jun 5, 2015
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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/
because what is research?

Dont you know that the best way to get veiws is to ignore even the basic research into an article?

Keep up the idea that customers are all dirty pirates though, Escapist, It's not like that worked horribly for people.
 

DoubleU12

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Oct 3, 2011
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rbstewart7263 said:
its almost like if you make good game then you dont have anything to worry about.
Yes but almost everyone gets practically all of the satisfaction from most games within 6 months. That is a HUGE problem on Steam's part. Anyone could effortlessly take advantage of such an error and an obvious oversight they should have anticipated before implementing the system.

If I could return games like God of War or Uncharted which you beat once then never play again 6 months after I bought it I would do so no matter how much value the game had or not.
 

DoubleU12

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Oct 3, 2011
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DoubleU12 said:
rbstewart7263 said:
its almost like if you make good game then you dont have anything to worry about.
Yes but almost everyone gets practically all of the satisfaction from most games within 6 months. That is a HUGE problem on Steam's part. Anyone could effortlessly take advantage of such an error and an obvious oversight they should have anticipated before implementing the system.

If I could return games like God of War or Uncharted which you beat once then never play again 6 months after I bought it I would do so no matter how much value the game had or not.
Though that does bring up a good question. I'm pretty sure the money is in the developers hand by 6 months. o_O Where does the money for the refund come from at that point?
 

Hagi

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Apr 10, 2011
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DoubleU12 said:
rbstewart7263 said:
its almost like if you make good game then you dont have anything to worry about.
Yes but almost everyone gets practically all of the satisfaction from most games within 6 months. That is a HUGE problem on Steam's part. Anyone could effortlessly take advantage of such an error and an obvious oversight they should have anticipated before implementing the system.

If I could return games like God of War or Uncharted which you beat once then never play again 6 months after I bought it I would do so no matter how much value the game had or not.
Here's how it works:

If you've owned a game less than two weeks and played it for less than two hours then Steam guarantees you a refund. They'll do it even if you claim your dog has eaten your video card.

If you've owned a game less than six months then Steam allows you to request a refund. They do not guarantee it and will in all likelihood reject it if they see you've been intensively playing the game until completion.