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

[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.

 

[dmonkoff]

So let me tell you a story.
I bought a game some time ago called 'Please, Don?t Touch Anything'.
It's a small indie game and the whole point of the game is pressing buttons until something happens. It can be completed under two hours, and there's basically no replay value but I won't refund it and you know why?
It was fun!
It had nice graphics, good music, was quite cheap and solving these little puzzles was really satisfying.
And I think it was worth money spent.
So basically, if you want your game to succeed, maybe you should just make good games.And yes, some people will refund your game, but that's the point of refund system, some people will not like the game and want their money back.
Also, it's a great counter to all the greenlight shit, that poured to steam lately.

 

[webkilla]

My 2 cents:

With the refund policy Valve has essentially instituted policy that creates quality control, something that users have been crying out for, for quite a while... hell, people like Jim Sterling have built their youtube presence up by taking the piss on shitty steam games, both as entertainment, as a public service to warn people against shitty games.

With this, the shitty games have no chance.

Of course, it also means that really short games - like the one shown in OP - suffer.

What's the lesson to be learned? That the barrier of entry is now a two hour game. That's it. You have to produce enough content that a complete playthrough takes a little over two hours.

Now, will this result in short games padding their content needlessly? Probably.

Will it result in some indie devs making their games last longer with worthwhile content? maybe, though likely less so than simply padding their content needlessly.

Also, the qwibo tweets are now protected... its almost as if they don't want consumers to be able to see the devs bitching at them over the refund policy? How about instead engaging your costumers in a debate over why people are refunding the game?

 

[Lightknight]

"Abused"? To know if they're being abused you'd also need to know how long the average person asking for a refund played the games. What if it's a bunch of customers who, five minutes in, hate the game? We don't know without more data and displaying the number of refunds doesn't mean anything more. No offense to the game, it's a great iOS/Android game but it really doesn't belong as a computer game. I could see refunding it the moment I bought it only to go buy it on my phone. In fact, that's what I think I'll do right now (buy it on my phone, not buy it on steam then refund then buy on phone)

Steam definitely needs to reduce the time frame on smaller games. Something that is only two hours long should have something like a 30 minute refundable window, not two hours. That just makes sense.

What I really want is the opportunity to buy a game, recognize that it is completely awful, and then return it. Not to play the whole game for free. The refund in general is a great policy that really responds to Jim Sterling's criticisms on business practices of most of these indie titles that really are garbage, but the policy needs to be catered to size.

You'd think that Steam, who basically introduced the indie market single handedly, would have figured this out?

 

[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

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.

That's your answer as to why people wouldn't just pirate a game? Petty=/=displeased with the product. Why shouldn't we have the right to a refund if the game didn't meet decent standards? Fuck, I paid £2 for Risen 2 and I would've still asked for my money back if the refunds policy would've been implemented then, that's not petty, that's telling a developer I'm not going to stand for being sold sub-par products.

 

[MonsterCrit]

Are you kidding? This is the best thing Valve has done in years, without question. In what bizzaro world is this a PR nightmare? Players love it, and the primary complaints against it are from developers that have created games with no lasting value. Arcade games can be beaten within a couple hours and have been like that for years. The difference is that their gameplay is rich enough that multiple playthroughs continue to provide enjoyment and further depth. There will always be idiots that buy a game and get a refund after a single Playthrough, but the answer is to create games that are worth keeping, not alienate customers further by screwing them with DRM.

Dude... do you remember what arcade games were like? Seriously. Difficulty curves that would make K12 blush, 1-hit deaths and the lives system. Where you could scrape your waty to the last battle only to be bumped off by anyone who popped in a token after you reached the last boss for them.

Honestly this policy is not a good thing. It's great they're trying to follow origin and all but they forgot. Origin's policy only apples to EA's first party titles. Games made by EA and it's subsidiaries. WHich means the money lost is EA's money. What steam has done is more drastic. They're basically forcing the policy on third party devs and publishers.

Is this good? for gamers... not really because while there is a short term benefit... what do you think the long term change will be? Will we see games with mandatory 2 hour tutorials? Padded out with slow text crawl dialog screen. Or mor insidiously will we have to buy games in bundles. Because one ***** is that Bundles have to berefunded as bunbdles and can only be refunded if no single title has been played for more than 2 hours.

So fallout 4 by example may not run $60 on release now.. it might run $80 because it's publisher worked out a deal with the makers of bad rats and stomping grounds to have their games bundled with it thusly cranking up the price.

 

[thethain]

Make games longer and the game devs won't have this problem. Rarely short games are worth the money spent unless it is for less than $1. Basically I have no sympathy for these devs as unless it is stated in the game's description it is a short game it feels at best like a scam to buy a game and have it end so quickly.

Should the value of a game be decided by it's length, though?
Padding a game doesn't magically make it better.

Long games can suck. Short games can be fun. Portal is a short game. that doesn't make it bad, it arguably makes it better since it doesn't wear out it's welcome.

As long as the developers are honest about the length of a game, a customer shouldn't get angry about getting exactly what they paid for.

Still think this system is better than the previous "no refunds" one, though.

I think in the long run it is good for smaller games too. Do you want to spend your $10 on a developer you have never played before? Or just spend 20 on something that is actually a little polished.. Refunds allow you as a customer to take a chance on unknown stuff.

In reality, Steam has done what EVERY PC gamer has been asking for, for eternity. Players want a fully functioning demo before they spend their money. Now you have a full demo of every single game, without the developer saying, "Making a demo costs too much," and the only people who can access it are those willing to put their money where their mouth is. This is quite literally Win-Win-Win. Customers get more power/choices in buying, developers can skip the cost of demos and should make more sales to reluctant customers, and Steam makes more sales.

The ONLY player who loses in this scenario is companies who make shovelware that players can instantaneously recognize as worthless. My very first sit down of Witcher 3 was over 2 hours, same for ARK, DayZ, Galactic Civilization 3, or any other compelling game. If you cant hold 2 hours of attention after a fresh install your game is suspect, and a customer deserves a chance at a refund.

 

[Alleged_Alec]

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

Clickbait title.

Smaller indie devs are seeing a massive surge in refund rates after the implementation of Valve's "no questions asked" refund policy. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141003-Steam-Adds-New-Two-Week-Two-Hour-Refund-Options]

GASP! We see an increase in people doing something which is possible but wasn't before!

Earlier in the month, Valve finally decided to match one of "no questions asked" refund policy [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127004-EA-Offers-Full-Refunds-For-Unsatisfied-Origin-Customers] that allowed gamers to get a full refund on games purchased within two weeks and played for less than two hours. However, unlike Origin which features mostly EA-made games, Steam features a wide variety of games from thousands of different developers, ranging from the very big to the very small. While the big boys will no doubt simply absorb the costs of additional refunds into their bottom line, smaller devs are starting to feel the heat, and many are considering resorting to drastic measures - like DRM - to combat it.

No explanation whatsoever of how DRM would help here in the entire article.

Qwiboo, for example, is the developer behind Tweeted [http://store.steampowered.com/app/317510/].

Again: what a surprise. Refunds were minimal before because Steam shat all over consumer rights by not allowing refunds. We now see refunds happening because it's now actually possible.

The key factor in Qwiboo's story is the length of it's game. As Beyond Gravity can be finished in an hour, and Valve's refund policy puts a blanket 2-hour grace period on all games, there is nothing to stop someone buying the game, finishing it, and then refunding it like some kind of free rental.

Pure and utter speculation. No numbers whatsoever to back this claim up.

Elsewhere, other devs are considering more drastic measures. Cliff "Cliffski" Harris of Democracy and Gratuitous Space Battles has always proudly sold his games completely free of any sort of DRM,

He sells his games on Steam. That means that by definition they're not DRM-free.

but is now worried about people simply buying his games, downloading them, getting a refund and then continuing to play them.

Yup. He's worried. That's it. There's no reason to assume actual abuse, as the clickbait title implies.

"Bloody hell steam refund rate has gone from 0.09% to 17%.

Refer to comments above.

Methinks people are taking the piss. Here comes DRM again sadly..." Harris lamented [https://twitter.com/cliffski/status/607490264475836416].

So he's being a whiny ***** because people are exercising their rights.

While many people initially celebrated Valve's refund policy, the blanket "2 weeks, 2 hours, no questions asked" doesn't seem particularly well thought out,

What?

and after the whole paid mod fiasco [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140608-Valve-Ends-Paid-Mod-Program-On-Steam-Workshop] may be turning into another "Valve is completely out-of-touch with its fans and its partners" PR fiasco.

One big difference here, Steven. The Paid Mod program was a bad idea because of the following reasons: they didn't think things through on multiple levels, including abuse of the system by selling worthless shit and selling mods which rely on mods which the owners want to be free for others to use. It was a huge clusterfuck which fucked over customers.

What we have here is something different: we have a system in place which finally allows us to exercise our rights as consumers and there are a few people being pissy about it because they think that the system might be abused. And as others have said in this thread: why would you need to? You could just pirate these games and play them for free that way. Unless they manage to get some actual data and show that there is indeed a large number of people abusing this system, there's no reason to assume that it's being used this way.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Honestly this policy is not a good thing. It's great they're trying to follow origin and all but they forgot. Origin's policy only apples to EA's first party titles. Games made by EA and it's subsidiaries. WHich means the money lost is EA's money. What steam has done is more drastic. They're basically forcing the policy on third party devs and publishers.

You mean like an actual retailer? Sounds about right to me.

Is this good? for gamers... not really because while there is a short term benefit... what do you think the long term change will be? Will we see games with mandatory 2 hour tutorials? Padded out with slow text crawl dialog screen. Or mor insidiously will we have to buy games in bundles. Because one ***** is that Bundles have to berefunded as bunbdles and can only be refunded if no single title has been played for more than 2 hours.

1. If developer's purposefully make their game worse to pad out gameplay, they'll see less sales, not more. And they'll deserve it.

2. Steam bundles aren't really bundles. Each one has a price listed separately. Bundles not sold on Steam aren't eligible for Steam refunds because you didn't buy it on Steam.

So fallout 4 by example may not run $60 on release now.. it might run $80 because it's publisher worked out a deal with the makers of bad rats and stomping grounds to have their games bundled with it thusly cranking up the price.

You're making shit up. That hasn't happened, there is no indication that it will happen, and there's no logic based on past behavior that publishers would do that, or that indies would go for it. Big publishers would gain nothing from this, the higher price would actually harm them(believe me, if they thought they could get away with just straight up jacking up the price, they would; that's why we have DLC priced separately), and it's a fair guess that enough indies that actually tried this would get burned hard because they can't afford good contract lawyers(the ones that can also don't need publisher assistance to get sales).

 

[And Man]

I agree, Steam's refunds are a horrible thing that will destroy indies. Can't wait for the upcoming articles detailing how used games sales are destroying the AAA market and how the moon landing was a hoax.

 

[Strazdas]

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.

Once again. Interactive story and interactive story-based game are not the same thing. When you have a book and you sell it as a game your simply miss-classifying 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.

That's your answer as to why people wouldn't just pirate a game? Petty=/=displeased with the product. Why shouldn't we have the right to a refund if the game didn't meet decent standards? Fuck, I paid £2 for Risen 2 and I would've still asked for my money back if the refunds policy would've been implemented then, that's not petty, that's telling a developer I'm not going to stand for being sold sub-par products.

This is my answer to why Steams system is stupid.

I have no problem with refunds. Where I live, steam was strongarmed into giving refunds years ago, because its the law.

I think this execution on steam, is right for abuse by petty gamers with minor gripes. The fact that Steam offers refunds in EU, AU and UK, and was at around 1%, yet immediately jumped to 17% this quickly, only serves to reinforce my beliefs.

 

[Alleged_Alec]

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.

That's your answer as to why people wouldn't just pirate a game? Petty=/=displeased with the product. Why shouldn't we have the right to a refund if the game didn't meet decent standards? Fuck, I paid £2 for Risen 2 and I would've still asked for my money back if the refunds policy would've been implemented then, that's not petty, that's telling a developer I'm not going to stand for being sold sub-par products.

This is my answer to why Steams system is stupid.

I have no problem with refunds. Where I live, steam was strongarmed into giving refunds years ago, because its the law.

I think this execution on steam, is right for abuse by petty gamers with minor gripes. The fact that Steam offers refunds in EU, AU and UK, and was at around 1%, yet immediately jumped to 17% this quickly, only serves to reinforce my beliefs.

I live in the EU and I never realized that I was actually able to get an honest-to-god refund.