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

[shrekfan246]

Nope.

13 out of 18 isn't a usable statistic. There are millions of people using Steam. That number does nothing to tell us anything.

And it's been pointed out already, but the percentage of refunds has gone up in comparison to when people using Steam had to jump through multiple hoops without touching the ground just to even try to get a refund? Insert youdon'tsay.jpg here.

Sorry, small indie devs, but you're not being played here. If your faith in your consumer base is so low, then frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy. People support things they like. Refunds have been a part of the market for decades. The economy isn't going to crash overnight because digital sales are finally catching up.

 

[Politrukk]

If your game is worth it, people will keep it,as Yahtzee and Jim Sterling have pointed out on numerous occasions via their youtube channels there are SO MANY SHIT GAMES on steam.

This new policy is allowing people to refund games they really wanted to refund for numerous reasons, the reason why the refund percentage increased to 17% is because there was a heavy cry for the policy and there still is a cry in regards to some specific games (like I posted on this forum in regards to Godus or as has been pointed out to me in the case of Starforge)

Developers who aren't screwing over their customers but are just producing shitty games are taking a hit.
Developers who are screwing over their customers are taking a hit.
Developers who's games don't mandate their cost are taking a hit.

I think that's a good thing.

Perhaps there are some people who are abusing this policy at the moment but I find it highly unlikely seeing as steam has already implemented a failsafe for abuse.

 

[MonsterCrit]

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.

Define "Good". The irony is. It's mor ethe 'Good Games' that will be hurt the most. But we'll see what happens when M#9 hits steam.

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

"Nothing like that will ever happen" , "It will never happen" . Look through history and you always find someone always says that.. and is immediately proven wrong. YOu need to think in terms of cause and effect.

ONe very real change that's already happening is that more than a few games have had 'Offline Mode' support patched out. As a protection against abusers. Since steam can't keep track of time played when the game is run in offline or launched without the steam client (don't snicker near a third of steam games can actually be run directly from their install directory.). The Steam DRM is about to become much more obtrusive as more developers actually start implementing it fully.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Players love it, and the primary complaints against it are from developers that have created games with no lasting value.

Indeed, the players do love it, but this policy is still turning out to be a bad one for - as the article is about - smaller companies. Not everyone has a massive budget and some have to start out with smaller games. Qwiboo wasn't trying to rip anyone off with their game. $2 for an hour or so of gameplay is a fair price...it's not like they were just raking in the cash even before the refund policy, but now they're making next to nothing.

I'd say they could solve this by putting a minimum payment requirement for the refund...like no refunds for games under $5. But that would just encourage devs to jack their prices to be above that mark.

The point is that a balance must be met. Yeah, we hate it when a policy like Paid Mods comes around and completely screws over us, the consumer. But there is another side to that coin, and this policy is detrimental to the smaller devs that are trying to make (in this case literally) a couple bucks for a small game.

Edit:
To be clear: I am all for this refund policy. After all, a refund is a basic consumer right that Steam has been lacking for too long.

Your edit contradicts your post. You can't have a refund policy with an exemption for the small developers. The point of a refund policy is to give consumers confidence to buy without worrying that they will be stuck with a lemon.

The game industry has enjoyed the lack of refunds too long and now it's time to address refunds for physical games that aren't worth a shit too.

 

[fix-the-spade]

That sucks but a return policy was desperately needed. I hope Valve fix this issue for smaller games.

The primary issue is that Qwiboo specialise in rubbish mobile ports, the kind that Steam is inundated with.

They are whining very loudly about it, but the fact is that Steam has just become an extremely hostile environment for lazy port companies like them. Before they could fling up crap safe in the knowledge that nobody could claim anything back once they got a sale. Now people have a magical 'this is bullshit' button and the results speak for themselves.

I doubt this will have anything like the effect it's having on 'real' indy developers that it's having on Qwiboo.

 

[Politrukk]

Nope.

13 out of 18 isn't a usable statistic. There are millions of people using Steam. That number does nothing to tell us anything.

And it's been pointed out already, but the percentage of refunds has gone up in comparison to when people using Steam had to jump through multiple hoops without touching the ground just to even try to get a refund? Insert youdon'tsay.jpg here.

Sorry, small indie devs, but you're not being played here. If your faith in your consumer base is so low, then frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy. People support things they like. Refunds have been a part of the market for decades. The economy isn't going to crash overnight because digital sales are finally catching up.

It is when you consider it might be 13 out of 18 units sold for them personally.

But 13 out of 18 sales out of millions on steam should pretty much explain his plight and it isn't going to be favourable to his argument.

 

[Aerosteam]

No shit people don't want to keep the game after completing it in less than two hours; it's a generic mobile game port.

 

[shrekfan246]

Nope.

13 out of 18 isn't a usable statistic. There are millions of people using Steam. That number does nothing to tell us anything.

And it's been pointed out already, but the percentage of refunds has gone up in comparison to when people using Steam had to jump through multiple hoops without touching the ground just to even try to get a refund? Insert youdon'tsay.jpg here.

Sorry, small indie devs, but you're not being played here. If your faith in your consumer base is so low, then frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy. People support things they like. Refunds have been a part of the market for decades. The economy isn't going to crash overnight because digital sales are finally catching up.

It is when you consider it might be 13 out of 18 units sold for them personally.

Not really. It just means that people didn't like their game very much. If they only sold 18 units in the first place, then their game wasn't catching many eyes. If most of those were then refunded, that's indicative of people not enjoying the thing they purchased, which the Steam reviews (horrible as they may be) seem to confirm.

It can't be used as any sort of data to determine a pattern or the likeliness of people abusing this refund system in the future. It's a single game that barely anybody bought in the first place. It's like picking out 25 men and 25 women and putting them into a study to try and extrapolate the tendencies of male and female gender; it's such a small sample size picked from a likely heavily homogenized group that doesn't take into account all of the other aspects that shape human societies that it's useless information.

Thousands of people buy games daily that they keep. 13 people refunding a single title is nothing. Sucks for that one developer, but I don't hear Klei whinging. Or those guys making Darkest Dungeon. Or Trine. Or Skullgirls. Or the Endless franchise. I can keep going.

Hey, maybe this will snowball into a massive epidemic in the future. But, much as I love slippery slopes, I'd still rather stand behind the slope that allows for more consumer protection than the one that only cares about the interests of companies.

 

[Politrukk]

Nope.

13 out of 18 isn't a usable statistic. There are millions of people using Steam. That number does nothing to tell us anything.

And it's been pointed out already, but the percentage of refunds has gone up in comparison to when people using Steam had to jump through multiple hoops without touching the ground just to even try to get a refund? Insert youdon'tsay.jpg here.

Sorry, small indie devs, but you're not being played here. If your faith in your consumer base is so low, then frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy. People support things they like. Refunds have been a part of the market for decades. The economy isn't going to crash overnight because digital sales are finally catching up.

It is when you consider it might be 13 out of 18 units sold for them personally.

Not really. It just means that people didn't like their game very much. If they only sold 18 units in the first place, then their game wasn't catching many eyes. If most of those were then refunded, that's indicative of people not enjoying the thing they purchased, which the Steam reviews (horrible as they may be) seem to confirm.

It can't be used as any sort of data to determine a pattern or the likeliness of people abusing this refund system in the future. It's a single game that barely anybody bought in the first place. It's like picking out 25 men and 25 women and putting them into a study to try and extrapolate the tendencies of male and female gender; it's such a small sample size picked from a likely heavily homogenized group that doesn't take into account all of the other aspects that shape human societies that it's useless information.

Thousands of people buy games daily that they keep. 13 people refunding a single title is nothing. Sucks for that one developer, but I don't hear Klei whinging. Or those guys making Darkest Dungeon. Or Trine. Or Skullgirls. Or the Endless franchise. I can keep going.

Hey, maybe this will snowball into a massive epidemic in the future. But, much as I love slippery slopes, I'd still rather stand behind the slope that allows for more consumer protection than the one that only cares about the interests of companies.

I think you sort of misunderstood my reply, we're on the same page.

What I tried to illustrate by quoting his 13 out of 18 statistic I just meant that apparently this is a horrible developer and his word counts for nothing to me because this is exactly the evil people wished to combat with the policy

 

[munx13]

Maybe more people will consider putting their games on GOG and Humble now, sans Steam codes. I'd be happy about that.

GoG has quality control, so 99% of the devs complaining about this wont be able to get their games on there.

Also on the DRM, how the hell would that stop people from getting refunds?

 

[CrystalShadow]

Players love it, and the primary complaints against it are from developers that have created games with no lasting value.

Indeed, the players do love it, but this policy is still turning out to be a bad one for - as the article is about - smaller companies. Not everyone has a massive budget and some have to start out with smaller games. Qwiboo wasn't trying to rip anyone off with their game. $2 for an hour or so of gameplay is a fair price...it's not like they were just raking in the cash even before the refund policy, but now they're making next to nothing.

I'd say they could solve this by putting a minimum payment requirement for the refund...like no refunds for games under $5. But that would just encourage devs to jack their prices to be above that mark.

You know that doesn't actually make sense right? Refunds benefit consumers, not devs. The consumer has no direct influence on what a game is sold for.
If a dev is worried about getting a lot of dubious refunds, they'd want to ensure their price is below the cutoff amount.

Eg, if you have a short game you think people are going to play all the way through then refund, and the policy is no refunds below $5 then you have an incentive to sell your game at below $5, and raising the price of your game would only hurt you in this case, not help.

Maybe you mis-stated what you actually meant, but as written nothing about that remark has any real logic to it.
Consumers want to be able to get a refund.
Devs want to make as much money as they can, usually, and that if you have any actual business sense, that means selling at a price you estimate to have the highest number of reliable sales. (eg. Sales that aren't going to get refunded, or otherwise negated.)

 

[shrekfan246]

Nope.

13 out of 18 isn't a usable statistic. There are millions of people using Steam. That number does nothing to tell us anything.

And it's been pointed out already, but the percentage of refunds has gone up in comparison to when people using Steam had to jump through multiple hoops without touching the ground just to even try to get a refund? Insert youdon'tsay.jpg here.

Sorry, small indie devs, but you're not being played here. If your faith in your consumer base is so low, then frankly I don't have a lot of sympathy. People support things they like. Refunds have been a part of the market for decades. The economy isn't going to crash overnight because digital sales are finally catching up.

It is when you consider it might be 13 out of 18 units sold for them personally.

Not really. It just means that people didn't like their game very much. If they only sold 18 units in the first place, then their game wasn't catching many eyes. If most of those were then refunded, that's indicative of people not enjoying the thing they purchased, which the Steam reviews (horrible as they may be) seem to confirm.

It can't be used as any sort of data to determine a pattern or the likeliness of people abusing this refund system in the future. It's a single game that barely anybody bought in the first place. It's like picking out 25 men and 25 women and putting them into a study to try and extrapolate the tendencies of male and female gender; it's such a small sample size picked from a likely heavily homogenized group that doesn't take into account all of the other aspects that shape human societies that it's useless information.

Thousands of people buy games daily that they keep. 13 people refunding a single title is nothing. Sucks for that one developer, but I don't hear Klei whinging. Or those guys making Darkest Dungeon. Or Trine. Or Skullgirls. Or the Endless franchise. I can keep going.

Hey, maybe this will snowball into a massive epidemic in the future. But, much as I love slippery slopes, I'd still rather stand behind the slope that allows for more consumer protection than the one that only cares about the interests of companies.

I think you sort of misunderstood my reply, we're on the same page.

What I tried to illustrate by quoting his 13 out of 18 statistic I just meant that apparently this is a horrible developer and his word counts for nothing to me because this is exactly the evil people wished to combat with the policy

Fair enough, though that's why I just responded to the part that seemed to be worded in a "devil's advocate" sort of way.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

Snap.

Actually I don't contradict myself with my edit, however as CrystalShadow points out I very likely failed to properly communicate my point.

My point is that I'm all for refunds. It's good that we're finally getting because as consumers we deserve the right to purchase with confidence and have a safeguard against being ripped off.

What I was trying to express, however, was that I wish there was a way to ensure that honest small devs wouldn't get screwed over by players essentially renting their games for free. I'm not even trying to imply that's happening at the moment, just saying that this current system is open to such abuse.

 

[Kathinka]

What? The Game Industry being held to the same standards that are the default in pretty much any other media branch?! Shock! Disbelief! Pitchforks! Torches!
What is it with the entitlement in this particular sector of businesses that has somehow become the norm and acceptable standard?

 

[LordLundar]

You know what the sad part is with Harris? He has stuff on GoG.

http://www.gog.com/games##sort=bestselling&devpub=positech_games&page=1

All of it eligible for the 30 day refund policy.

http://www.gog.com/support/website_help/money_back_guarantee

All someone has to do is lie to support in their efforts to fix it (or not even, see Redshirt) and boom! Free game. Easily exploited.

If he wants to implement DRM then he'll have to pull his stuff off of GoG which is not a wise business decision.

 

[Cowabungaa]

So the idea is that people buy their small game, finish it, then get a refund for it? Okay, I can see that as being a problem, regardless of anything else around it. That thing by itself is an issue, as we all know quality =/= length.

Problem is; what else can Valve really do? The article says they might not have thought it through, but I don't think that's the case here. A balance has to be struck; you can't have it too high or else a lot of games can be completed, but you can't have it too low or else someone doesn't get a relatively decent look at the game and possible problems they might want to get a refund for.

2 Hours, in that light, sounds quite reasonable. With a refund system you'll always have some games that are going to fall in the "too short to fall outside of the refund period" category. Games that last less than two hours, well, maybe they need to move to a different distribution platform.

 

[MrFalconfly]

So 1 game, out of hundreds of thousands on Steams, sees 13 out of 18 units sold being returned for a refund after Steam enacts this return-policy (which I personally think is way overdue).

That's not abuse. That's just one incredibly shitty game.

 

[Hedberger]

So consumers that felt cheated by bad games got their money back. I am completely ok with this. Anyone arguing this needs to stop in order to accomodate a few small indie developers when it's very neccessary to keep the bigger devs, like EA, in check clearly has their priorities wrong as far as consumer advocacy goes and the indie devs complaining seem to be completely self-centered.

 

[CaitSeith]

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.

I'm sorry, but if you checked the store lately, you would had seen the Greenlight section saturated with horrible quality games, designed to be blatant cash-grabs (the equivalent of CoD-clones in the indie market); which made good indie games very difficult to find.

 

[Sylveria]

Indies are now in a position that they can't rely on the all-sales-final mentality of digital gaming and the consumer has the avenue to return shoddy product, and you call this abuse? Alarmist.

This is consumer protection, the kind of thing journalists and distribution platforms should be praising. Consumers will buy more, quality titles, if they know the risk of flushing their money is reduced. This is quality control. The only people who are going to suffer are crappy devs relying on the fact there was no avenue to get a refund.