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

[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.

 

[Elijin]

snip

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

Because 90% of steam UI is designed around America, and they didnt want much attention given to the fact that consumer rights are championed in the rest of the world. Wouldnt want people to realise how much they're being taken for a ride...

 

[Strazdas]

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.

Absolutely not. Two hours is too small as it is. You can spend 2 hours trying to launch a broken game easily. What needs to happen is developers stop making shit games that people want to refund instantly. it does not matter how long the game is, if its good people wont be refunding.

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

Nonsense. Indie market was alive and well before steam even existed. It just didnt try to sell asset swap crap everywhere because it knew it wont fly.

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.

Yes, arcade games were horrible penny pinchers. This is NOT a point in their favor.

No, Origins policy applies to all games sold on Origin, and it actually sells quite a lot of non-EA games. It just does a very bad job of advertising them (you have to go look for them yourself).

This is GREAT for gamers. The long term benefits is that developers will stop being rewarded for bad job and only those that make good games will be getting paid. Padding wont work because people will not wait for finish to refund. they will see padding and refund before the 2 hour limit anyway. GOOD games will work, because people will have fun.

your points about price increase and bundles are utter nonsense. nothing like that is going to happen.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

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.

They gave refunds, but they pretended we were not entitled to them ...

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-restricts-14-day-eu-refund-law/1100-6425990/

By the way, all this is almost certainly a result of the Australian court case about their deceptive practices which entered mediation in april. I assume the mediators told them they didn't have a leg to stand on.

http://www.incompetition.com.au/2015/03/april-fools-mediation-steam-case/

 

[JayRPG]

What strikes me as the worst thing is that there are people out there so incredibly petty that they need their two dollars back after (most likely) fully completing the game they paid two freaking dollars for.

Hell, even if the game was total crap I wouldn't refund my $2, it's two fucking dollars for fuck sake, I'd have to have a personal vendetta against a developer to request my two bucks back.

 

[Areloch]

They should have written a book, then.

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.

I agree. One can ABSOLUTELY make a purely narritive based walksim game and have it be worth a price of admission. The Stanley Parable, for example.

Howlongtobeat implies that the average user beat the main of it in an hour and a half and it's $15 on steam. But I haven't heard many people complain that it wasn't good/worth the price.

So yeah, one can absolutely make a valid, short, narritive-driven lightly interactive adventure that's worth a price tag.

It just needs to be GOOD.

 

[Bindal]

What strikes me as the worst thing is that there are people out there so incredibly petty that they need their two dollars back after (most likely) fully completing the game they paid two freaking dollars for.

If they didn't like it, why should they be forced to keep it?

 

[MonsterCrit]

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.{/quote]

YOu're missing the ramifications. If the industry on teh whole adopts the strategy. the gameing public is left with a choice of put up with it... or take up new hobbies. We all know how that goes. Think of the proliferation DLC and the previous proliferation of on-disk DRM.

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).

You're right . it hasn't happened... can it happen? yes. You see the fallacy of history is that nothing happens until it happens . It's why people study hsitory to get a better understanding of cause and effect relationships. Again if it's something that is adopted by the industry at large... gamers will have little choice. Either put up with it.. or take up reading, or samba dancing.

Larger influential publishers would love an excuse to justify tacking another $20 on new release prices. . Bundle two games that would have normally sold for $5 that works out to Bethesda pocketting a cool extra $10. THe thing is there are plenty of games on steam that are sold only in bundles I.e they have no individual listings. That's on of the things the publisher does. A two-pack is ironically a single product.

 

[BadNewDingus]

I'm so glad people see through the indie devs. They had their fifteen minutes of fame and now it's time to actually make REAL games. Not to say that what most of them do isn't worthy of our money. I'm just saying that most indie titles are just clones of old school games, or whatever flavor of the month(zombies, minecraft and so on).