Smaller Devs Abused By Steam's "No Questions Asked" Refund Policy

[BloodRed Pixel]

Know what?

devs who see their customers as pirates in the first place can go home.

'dedicated gamers' are as close to pirats as 'dedicated devs' are as close to scammers.

the rest are assholes anyway and should not be taken into equation because they don't create or buy anything anyway.

And fun-fact: GOG is still here and prospering - DESPITE DRM FREE & RETURN POLICY!!!!

for detailed explanation please see the latest Jimquisition on Steam' Refund Policy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-0dgDsCtw

 

[umbr44]

Those abusing it = scum...

As for the rest, if Indie devs with very short games find their refund rates going through the roof...then that shows that people aren't willing to pay for such short games. Or at least for the quality many of these games may or may not be.

That is not being unfair to the indie devs, that is the way the market works. If a new television comes out and everyone buys it and then realises it isn't very good, they'll return it. This is no different.

I understand some Indie devs may not have enough money to make longer games, but tough. That's the way the world works, if you can't produce something people are willing to pay for; you don't get money.

 

[alj]

I also want to add.

A plan to drastically cut the amount of people getting refunds on steam!

Valve needs bloody quality control, its getting beyond a joke now. No wonder they had to put this in with all the terrible scammers out there flipping unity assets for a quick buck. In any civilised country you have a right to return any product, the fixed 2 hour window is a bit silly , what if there is a game breaking bug in a quest 5 hours into an RPG that stops you completing it ? At the other end some ( and a i mean very very few) shorter games may see a very very small drop in profit due to refunds , but you do have to ask yourself . Are they returning to abuse the system ? or Is my game just shit ?. You cannot compare number of refunds in the past to number now , considering valve refused to give them like some dodgy car salesman .

And quite frankly if this causes shitty unity flipping dev to go out of business then thats a good thing in my eyes.

We just need quality control as well

 

[Kameburger]

Captcha: sausages

What kind of non-sense DRM are they supposing they'll put in that won't allow customers to get refunds on steam? I would venture to say that he's taking the piss by bringing up DRM at all in a completely unrelated conversation. Dev's flock to steam not so much because of DRM, but because Steam has a virtual monopoly on PC games. DRM that tries to circumvent Steams terms of use, or ULA is probably going to land them in a lot more trouble, with being kicked off of steam being the least of their worries. GOG has this policy. This is already technically EU law if I'm not mistaken. Don't get me wrong, I get that indie devs will have the toughest time abiding by these rules, and I think maybe appealing to Steam perhaps to change the criteria for shorter games might be a fair argument, but what they're really complaining about is that their user engagement is going to have to be a part of the conversation when developing and that sounds more corporate.

 

[Kahani]

There are more refunds when refunds are actually possible? No shit.

 

[BeerTent]

[...]

Fuckin' sweet. Now I don't have to say all of this shit.

I've been explaining it time and time again. If your game is good, people will be more inclined to keep it. I do have shorter than 2 hour games in my steam library, and if I bought them today, I wouldn't want to return them. But I've looked over these games mentioned in the article*.

The only reason these games made money was because there was no refund policy. I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

[...] Developers should not rely on user error, or uninformed purchasing decisions to make money. They should also not rely on bait and switch, or overuse of marketing to make money.

[...]

The people telling you there's a downside to this are either gullible, or they're predators. There is nothing negative for anyone who matters in this policy change. If anything needs to be altered, the times need to be extended. Significantly.

EDIT: Furthermore... This newspost? This newspost is basically saying, "People are using the feature as intended, the bad devs are whining." You want a better game than Gratuitous Space Battles? Look up Battle Cats on your phone.

 

[elvor0]

I think this policy is shit.

The internet is horrible and you all know it, and everyone here is brushing off the fact that this platform is set up to be abused, which will lead to more anti-consumer trends to try fight it.

But again, /why/ would you abuse this situation? Why not just pirate? If I fully intended to play and return from the start, why would I bugger around with the steam refund policy and wait for my money to come back when I could just set sail to the pirate bay and be done with it?

In every other business transaction, people have the ability to request a refund, so why are games speshul? If asshole indie devs want to be anti-consumer then that's their problem, not ours, and on their head be it. Indie devs don't have the capitol to be anti consumer so if they want to be stupid and kill their business, so be it.

Smaller Devs Abused By Steam

Damn you do post a lot of one sided click bait drivel. is this kotarku or the escapist?

I got warned by the forums mods for a question like this once. You're walking on thin ice, mister!

No fuck it, I agree, that title is clickbaity and loaded as fuck. Sort it out Escapist. The title should be "Indie Devs Complain About Steam Refunds". This isn't an op-ed, it's a news piece.

Out of curiosity, if you were to buy a game, and then refund it, does the system prevent you from just buying it again and refunding it again?
-snip-

(again, this is assuming such a system is not already in place. If it is, then at least that's something Valve did right.)

Yeah there is a system in place to prevent you from chain-refunding. Not exactly sure of the perameters, but Valve have said they're keeping an eye on it and people who continuously do it will be flagged.

 

[BeerTent]

I think this policy is shit.

The internet is horrible and you all know it, and everyone here is brushing off the fact that this platform is set up to be abused, which will lead to more anti-consumer trends to try fight it.

But again, /why/ would you abuse this situation? Why not just pirate? If I fully intended to play and return from the start, why would I bugger around with the steam refund policy and wait for my money to come back when I could just set sail to the pirate bay

In every other business transaction, people have the ability to request a refund, so why are games speshul?

It's also worth noting how mindlessly easy it is to pirate a game that you want. I guess this is more directed to @Elijin

Piracy has gotten to the point where it's "Click click done." A smaller game takes seconds to download. Starbound, which is massive compared to the games affected took me 10 minutes to download via Steam, and Steam is much, much lower than an effectively seeded torrent.

Why would you rely on the refund system, when A. You have a time limit, and B. it's attached to your steam account (Remember, it says on the refunds page that abuse will lead to the revocation of your refund rights!) when you can download the game for free, and not have to worry about either options? You can play the game forever, with all the content (in most cases) still available to you risk free?

Finally, take a look at both of the games mentioned. These games... Should not be on the PC.

 

[Strazdas]

I don't think a dev wanting to make a one to three hour long, purely narrative-driven game is an invalid venture. I think such games have every right to exist along side any other video game.

Thats not what i said though. I said that if a developer wants to make a "interactive story" he should write a book.

They should have written a book, then.

I have never understood that answer. That's like telling people who play video games for their stories that they should read a book instead. It always sounds like the person feels they have some type of made up authority to tell others what or what not to do.

Thats probably because you dont understand what a videogame is. if you make an illustrated book and sell it as a videogame it does not turn into a videogame. Its just a miscategorized book.

 

[Vigormortis]

Thats not what i said though. I said that if a developer wants to make a "interactive story" he should write a book.

Then I'll rephrase:
I don't think a dev wanting to make a one to three hour long interactive story-based game is an invalid venture. I think such games have every right to exist along side any other video game. (and, given some degree of interactivity, should be considered video games)

I'm the kind of person who's not overly picky about how a story it told to me. As long as the end result is compelling, the characters interesting, and/or the world-building detailed, I'll take the story however the creator wishes to give it to me.

I understand your position. It's just not one I share.

Even so, I still agree with the majority of the points made in your earlier post.

 

[elvor0]

You people in the comments make me sick, to half of you your answer is "Well just make a better game!" sorry not all indie devs can make triple A games, and for 2 dollars, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

Steam never needed a refund policy like this, they need smarter customers, and don't try and tell me that you couldn't get a refund because the game doesn't work on your computer, they were already doing that.

Don't be daft, that's not what people expect.
I've bought plenty of cheap indie games that were great; a few from my Steam list: ARES, Amnesia Bardbarian, Binding of Isaac(christ have I had many hours out of THAT one), Don't Starve, Draw a Stickman: Epic, C'thulu Saves the World, Breath of Death 7, Game Dev Tycoon, Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, Plants vs Zombies, Super Meat Boy, Surgeon Simulator, Trine, World of Goo, Braid, Limbo, Brothers.

Make a better game is a perfectly valid point. "Make a better game" does NOT equal asking for AAA quality. That's an incredibly obtuse leap of logic.

And no, customers should have protection from scumbag devs or poor games. Don't try to shift the blame from bad developers or scumbag devs onto the customers. Nevermind the fact that for all other products, the consumer right to a refund is law, at least in Europe. Why shouldn't games be held to that standard?

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

So you would never buy a $60 game that you get less than 120+ hours of gameplay out of? Not many will make that cut. The policy should be tweaked a bit to combat gaming the system but yeah, the refund policy is definitely needed. Maybe track a game completion achievement and block the refund at that point.

Edit: I'm pretty sure my first play through of Portal didn't even take a full two hours, and I still consider it worth a solid $30 on it's own.

Diffrent guy answering: That's my policy on games though. The main reason i usually don't buy more than 1 AAA title a year. Jeah, most don't make that cut, but most are also pretty garbage.

Also: Did i and the rest of this thread play the same Portal? I have ~5 hours play time and when i check my friends Portal played time it's +3 hours. But finishing it in under an hour? First try?

On the policy in general i'm on the fence about it. A strict line can always hurt great + short games which only cost a low amount of money. TBH probably 99% of the indie games complaining right now probably don't belong in that catergory though. On the other side the "Make better/longer games or give them replayability" is an argument too.
Ontop of that: It's also on the customer. Stop being greedy cunts! If you bought a game for say 2-5$ and had a blast for 2 hours don't just return the game because you can.

This mindset is the reason we can't have nice things.

 

[Elijin]

I think this policy is shit.

The internet is horrible and you all know it, and everyone here is brushing off the fact that this platform is set up to be abused, which will lead to more anti-consumer trends to try fight it.

But again, /why/ would you abuse this situation? Why not just pirate? If I fully intended to play and return from the start, why would I bugger around with the steam refund policy and wait for my money to come back when I could just set sail to the pirate bay

In every other business transaction, people have the ability to request a refund, so why are games speshul?

It's also worth noting how mindlessly easy it is to pirate a game that you want. I guess this is more directed to @Elijin

Piracy has gotten to the point where it's "Click click done." A smaller game takes seconds to download. Starbound, which is massive compared to the games affected took me 10 minutes to download via Steam, and Steam is much, much lower than an effectively seeded torrent.

Why would you rely on the refund system, when A. You have a time limit, and B. it's attached to your steam account (Remember, it says on the refunds page that abuse will lead to the revocation of your refund rights!) when you can download the game for free, and not have to worry about either options? You can play the game forever, with all the content (in most cases) still available to you risk free?

Finally, take a look at both of the games mentioned. These games... Should not be on the PC.

Gamers are alarmingly petty.

Thats the short version.

Its also the long version, but more colourfully worded.

 

[Riotguards]

well if you don't want refunds put a demo of the game, otherwise people might buy it and then having a refund because they didn't like the "demo"

 

[Lightspeaker]

Yeah I'm just going to let Jim Sterling take this one:

http://ask.fm/Jimquisition/answer/128177519586

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-0dgDsCtw


You're comparing the return rate now with the return rate when it was damn near impossible to get a return. Plus its a new feature that some people are going to be inclined to try out anyway. This is total nonsense.


Also 13/18 to make to 72% is utter, utter garbage statistically. The sample size is way way too small.


PR fiasco? The only people I see complaining are a minority of devs. Everyone else thinks its great.

 

[K12]

Introducing a refund policy institutes a spike in refunds... no shit!

Without showing how the refund policy affected sales as well this info doesn't say much. If they got 14 sales more than they would have if the refund policy didn't exist then that's a net gain of 1 sale.

We also have no info about how long these customers played the game before getting a refund and on top of that the steam summer sale is coming up.

If people are taking the piss and damaging the profitability of short but good quality games then the refund policy could be revisited. The 2 hours limit is pretty arbitrary and seems to be chosen with AAA 8-10 hours+ games in mind but can we not automatically treat everyone like a criminal from the start please.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Some call it abuse, I call it refunds because the games were bad and people didn't like it and used their rights as consumer. Make better games, people don't return them.
Also the system as just recently introduced. Obviously everyone will use it right at the start to get ride of their shitty games that they bought. Later it will slow down and only happen once every now and then.

Imagine having 1000 people who need to go to the toilet while there is no open toilet. A new toilet opens. How many people will go?

Now imagine having 1000 people who need to go to the toilet, but the toilet is constantly open and they go when they need instead of all at once. That's what happened here. The number of people who want a refund is much bigger because it accumulated since there was no possibility of a refund earlier.

 

[owbu]

this might be the worst article I have read all week.
PR Nightmare because a couple of indie devs have to revisit their game making strategy? Yes, it sucks to be them.

But this was one of the most basic consumers rights missing and now we players have them. This is wonderfull!

This feels like a report on how abolishing slavery cost some poor guy somewhere his job so it should be reversed.

 

[mrgerry123]

I can see people using this as a way to demo a game (keep it if they like it) since developers don't provide them anymore. Question is whether that is abuse of the system or not.

 

[Metalrocks]

I can see people using this as a way to demo a game (keep it if they like it) since developers don't provide them anymore. Question is whether that is abuse of the system or not.

dont see this as an abuse. some will certainly do it, no doubt there but this refund option should have been there since day 1. just checked my library and i sure have a lot of games i would love to get refunded at that time. but i simply cant.
but yes, if the game is, regardless if short, good; people will keep it. i at least like to keep a game i had fun with. and there are still some games on steam that provide a demo. just last week i have played 2 demos and didnt like the game.
but now with this option you dont really need a demo. if the game sucks,....its obvious what you do.
like i have posted before, i took the chance for a game and i got my money refunded within 24hours. and i played less than an hour.