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

[MonsterCrit]

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.

Now the important question: is how many gamers in Steam are petty and have minor gripes? And how many aren't? I've heard that in business usually 80% of the customers are good, 5% are bad, and the rest is in between.

That wasn't my post... but it raises a point. And to answer your question you only have to look at Skyrim. The game got a tone of negative reviews around thepaid mod thing. Mind you these reviews had nothing to do with the game or the quality of the game. People were just giving thumbs down reviews bew cause they had a beef with a policy.


That I believe shows the general level of maturity. There are easily between 10-30 thousand such users on Steam. It may not seem like much taking into account the steam population but to a small indie dev.. 10K users pulling this sort of crap can and will break the bank.

 

[RJ 17]

The point is that you want to find a way to not be "all for refunds" whilst also claiming you are all for refunds.

No, actually my point was that I'd like there to be a refund system that isn't open for abuse that will starve out smaller devs. But I'd rather there be a "no questions asked" refund policy that could (potentially) run honest smaller devs out of business than no refund policy at all.

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

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.

Now the important question: is how many gamers in Steam are petty and have minor gripes? And how many aren't? I've heard that in business usually 80% of the customers are good, 5% are bad, and the rest is in between.

That wasn't my post... but it raises a point. And to answer your question you only have to look at Skyrim. The game got a tone of negative reviews around thepaid mod thing. Mind you these reviews had nothing to do with the game or the quality of the game. People were just giving thumbs down reviews bew cause they had a beef with a policy.


That I believe shows the general level of maturity. There are easily between 10-30 thousand such users on Steam. It may not seem like much taking into account the steam population but to a small indie dev.. 10K users pulling this sort of crap can and will break the bank.

Skyrim users were perfectly valid in reviewing the game negatively for the paid mod thing, just as someone is perfect justified to review a game poorly for abusive DLC practices or terrible DRM. Skyrim's popularity is highly dependent on the PC's huge modding community, and the removal or endangerment of that feature is a major blow against the product. This is something that is perfectly valid to review a game poorly for. Consumers protesting against their abuse is not immaturity, and neither is consumers returning a game they feel has been a waste of time and money, no matter its length, cost, or who made it.

 

[JayRPG]

This shouldn't be used as some full game trial service, and people shouldn't be refunding pathetically small amounts from small indie devs when they delivered exactly what they described on the game page.

You absolutely should get a refund on any game that is unplayable (due to mechanics, or bugs), misrepresented (described as an open world third person shooter but it's actually a first person physics puzzle game), or offends you in some way etc

Developers are allowed to make demos for their games and make them freely available to try. But they don't. If they don't want people to do things like this, they shouldn't be making black boxes for people to put their money into and then crying when people want to make sure they want a game before they buy it.

And you are being far too general. This doesn't just fit every game, situation, and scenario in existence. The world isn't black and white, and neither are games (not even mad world, that had some red in it too!).

In Beyond Gravity's case, it is described on it's game page as a procedurally generated platformer, do you really need a demo for a small platforming title? really? even with all those screenshots giving you a clear picture of what the game is, looks like, and plays like?

Even if they wanted to put a demo up for this game, it would either A. basically be the full game experience meaning nobody would actually buy the game in the first place, or B. take significant re-coding/re-developing to limit the trial experience given the procedural generation.

The negative reviews the game does have almost all list it's cheap price as a pro for the game, and most admit they were engrossed for at least a short while (not to mention the trading cards for this particular game being worth more on the steam market than the $2 game cost), and I'd be willing to bet that most of the previous negative reviewers would not have requested the refund, because they all seem like reasonable people.

Describing situations like this as black boxes is simply wrong, there is a very clear picture of exactly what the product is in this case, and I'm sure there are many other similar cases, and of course there are many cases which are the opposite; it all comes back to what I said earlier: misrepresentation - if the dev is purposefully vague, omits screenshots and/or details, or paints an inaccurate picture, you are absolutely entitled to a refund.

I will also reiterate yet again that we are talking about two dollars. This isn't a $60 game with a CGI trailer, you aren't being lied to on the game page. People pay $1 per song on itunes, and they are <5 minutes long, considering the procedural generation, both the game and song have the same replay value. It would be like buying a song on itunes, listening to the whole song and then refunding it. You are given a small preview of the song on itunes which gives you a good idea what the song will be like, the dev in this case gives you a description and in-game screenshots which give you a good idea what the game will be like.

The only way to get a refund on itunes is if the song was misrepresented IE it features profane language but wasn't listed as explicit.

 

[veloper]

Those are acceptable casualties for a far more consumer-friendly policy.

Even games I feel are only average in quality still get more than 2 hours of my time.

If a 2 hour long indie movie that is being sold as a game, is still good for what it is, then it should also attract enough fans who won't rip off the devs, while anyone so inclined could easily pirate it or watch it on youtube, with no need for Steam anyway.

The indie business has always been about fans and enthusiasts willingly giving their support. If people don't like you or your product, you don't have a leg to stand on.

Best thing Valve have done in years.

 

[WeepingAngels]

The point is that you want to find a way to not be "all for refunds" whilst also claiming you are all for refunds.

No, actually my point was that I'd like there to be a refund system that isn't open for abuse that will starve out smaller devs. But I'd rather there be a "no questions asked" refund policy that could (potentially) run honest smaller devs out of business than no refund policy at all.

Ok fair enough.

I probably should let this go but I want to say it anyway. I have never understood this shield that people want for indie devs to have. Just like anyone else, if you can't make a product that people want to buy and keep then you don't deserve to stay in business. If you need special protections to stay in business, you are doing it wrong. The same rules should apply to all.

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

This shouldn't be used as some full game trial service, and people shouldn't be refunding pathetically small amounts from small indie devs when they delivered exactly what they described on the game page.

You absolutely should get a refund on any game that is unplayable (due to mechanics, or bugs), misrepresented (described as an open world third person shooter but it's actually a first person physics puzzle game), or offends you in some way etc

Developers are allowed to make demos for their games and make them freely available to try. But they don't. If they don't want people to do things like this, they shouldn't be making black boxes for people to put their money into and then crying when people want to make sure they want a game before they buy it.

And you are being far too general. This doesn't just fit every game, situation, and scenario in existence. The world isn't black and white, and neither are games (not even mad world, that had some red in it too!).

In Beyond Gravity's case, it is described on it's game page as a procedurally generated platformer, do you really need a demo for a small platforming title? really? even with all those screenshots giving you a clear picture of what the game is, looks like, and plays like?

Even if they wanted to put a demo up for this game, it would either A. basically be the full game experience meaning nobody would actually buy the game in the first place, or B. take significant re-coding/re-developing to limit the trial experience given the procedural generation.

The negative reviews the game does have almost all list it's cheap price as a pro for the game, and most admit they were engrossed for at least a short while (not to mention the trading cards for this particular game being worth more on the steam market than the $2 game cost), and I'd be willing to bet that most of the previous negative reviewers would not have requested the refund, because they all seem like reasonable people.

Describing situations like this as black boxes is simply wrong, there is a very clear picture of exactly what the product is in this case, and I'm sure there are many other similar cases, and of course there are many cases which are the opposite; it all comes back to what I said earlier: misrepresentation - if the dev is purposefully vague, omits screenshots and/or details, or paints an inaccurate picture, you are absolutely entitled to a refund.

I will also reiterate yet again that we are talking about two dollars. This isn't a $60 game with a CGI trailer, you aren't being lied to on the game page. People pay $1 per song on itunes, and they are <5 minutes long, considering the procedural generation, both the game and song have the same replay value. It would be like buying a song on itunes, listening to the whole song and then refunding it. You are given a small preview of the song on itunes which gives you a good idea what the song will be like, the dev in this case gives you a description and in-game screenshots which give you a good idea what the game will be like.

The only way to get a refund on itunes is if the song was misrepresented IE it features profane language but wasn't listed as explicit.

It doesn't matter if it's 99 cents. It doesn't matter if it's 100 dollars. It doesn't matter how long it is or how short it is. It doesn't matter if EA or a starving indie dev made it. What matters is that the game, in the eyes of those that bought it, did not feel that they had made a worthwhile purchase. Apparently, most people that bought this game felt this way, and it has been refunded. If he feels upset about this, good. He should, because people don't like his product. If he wants people to purchase his game and keep his game, he should improve his games so that people are willing to purchase and keep his games.

Until he does this, he should not be surprised that people refund his games, and he should not be surprised if nobody has any sympathy for him when he sobs about it on Twitter. And he should especially not be surprised if he loses future customers for being so insulting to his audience and brazenly anti-consumer. That's the way the market works, and complaining about how unfair it is will not make people want a repackaged mobile port barely worth the hard drive space. That's just how it is.

 

[Baresark]

It's not an issue in my book. You need to create good games if you want people to pay for them. If you have a game that can be beat in under an hour and there is no replayability, then a refund is probably deserved. Also, if someone buys a product and is unhappy with it, then they could deserve a refund. Buyer always beware, but the devs have to make sure their product is being faithfully represented in the advertisements they create as well.

 

[Jake Martinez]

How do we even know there is a problem? You can't judge that by looking at the amount of refunds because it stands to reason that now that Steams refund policy is so liberal, more people will be checking out games that they wouldn't have wanted to risk buying before.

I personally bought 6 games yesterday and returned half of them, not because they were "short" but because I thought they might be cool, but it turned out they were not for me (okay, 2 of them were just flat out bad).

The point is - I wouldn't have even bought those before the refund policy, but now that this policy exists I can be more adventurous in my steam purchases.

 

[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.

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.

Your point is now that its possible to get a refund, refunds have increased? Bugger me!

Of course it's jumped, because now it's actually easy in the EU/AU and possible at all in the US/elsewhere to /get/ a refund in the first place. The US and elsewhere were unable to get refunds, and even then, going through the EU regulations takes a lot of effort, Valve did not give refunds lightly. Now? Well you can just request a refund no questions asked.

The US is a biiiig place, and makes up a large chunk of Steams userbase, now that it's possible for them to request refunds, of course the percentage is going to increase. Nevermind the people who don't know that it was possible to use EU/AU law to request a refund. More so, this doesn't state why the system is stupid, it states that the people using it are petty, not that it's stupid. It's no different than 7 day returns policy for pretty much everything else.

 

[jklinders]

*sigh*
this proves nothing.

There is only one surefire way to prevent a majority of your customers from asking for refunds. Make your product good enough for someone to want to keep. There is only so much handholding that you an give people and if these people refuse to understand that people want value for money spent then too bad.

this is not about it being "make the game longer lol and this won't happen," it's more like if you give an experience people want to keep, they won't want to throw it back in your face.

Seriously, the amount of salt I am seeing put out over this is making me want to open a salt mine here.

 

[Ticklefist]

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

If a dev isnt willing to stand behind a money back guarantee then chances are they have no confidence in thier creation in the first place.

Hence, nothing of value lost.

If game companies and indie devs were willing to lose money we wouldn't be talking about Steam codes in the first place. They use Steam DRM to maximize profits. Games still exist if they're not on Steam so of course nothing of value is lost

 

[Ticklefist]

I'll reiterate my point:

I'm talking about the game companies and developers that hide under Steam as a DRM umbrella. It would be nice if this move made them realize how pointless that is and began to make their games available elsewhere.

 

[Lunar Templar]

yeah, no.

It's way to early to call this 'data' concrete evidence for or against this new system.

It just is.

Comeback in a month or two then, hit us with some real numbers, not this misleading 'poor, poor us, pity us' fabricated shit that seems designed to take try and get Steam to reverse and take away a basic consumer right.

 

[gigastar]

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

If a dev isnt willing to stand behind a money back guarantee then chances are they have no confidence in thier creation in the first place.

Hence, nothing of value lost.

If game companies and indie devs were willing to lose money we wouldn't be talking about Steam codes in the first place. They use Steam DRM to maximize profits. Games still exist if they're not on Steam so of course nothing of value is lost

When i made that post, i completely forgot that GoG also has a refund policy in place, so i highly doubt that any dev that eschews Steam over the refund policy will end up on GoG. Or Origin, for that matter.

And its been pointed out in the thread, the dev mentioned in the 'article' is raising a fuss over about $18 lost revenue, and thier drop in sales on thier fancy graph actually coincides with thier game going off sale.

And a few hours ago TotalBiscuit made this Tumblr post [http://devsonsteamrefunds.tumblr.com/] showing that far more inde devs are in favour of the policy than there are against it, including developers of far better inde experiences like Sunless Sea, War for the Overworld, Hero Generations, Ziggurat and more.

 

[Ticklefist]

Nevermind. Made my point already.

 

[gigastar]

Sigh... GOG does not have a no-questions-asked refund policy. Look it up before you say it does again. I also don't care that Steam does. I think that's great. Hopefully it means greedy companies and developers who had used Steam as a DRM umbrella will realize that's no longer going to matter and just release their game everywhere.

I can tell I'm gonna have to say it again.

Well i wouldnt actually know about GoG because i dont use it. I see no reason to do so.

And i only spotted your other post after i posted my reply. If you had made that clear in your first post or in your reply to me you would have saved us both a few minuites of our lives.

Also Steam as a DRM umbrella is a fallacy, its simply far easier to get onto Steam than it is to get onto GoG. Thats why Steam gets all the asset pack 'games' and publishers like Strategy First.

 

[Ticklefist]

Also Steam as a DRM umbrella is a fallacy, its simply far easier to get onto Steam than it is to get onto GoG. Thats why Steam gets all the asset pack 'games' and publishers like Strategy First.

No way is that a fallacy. You've simply found an exception. Why does it matter to you if games are available from more than one Source anyways?

 

[gigastar]

Also Steam as a DRM umbrella is a fallacy, its simply far easier to get onto Steam than it is to get onto GoG. Thats why Steam gets all the asset pack 'games' and publishers like Strategy First.

No way is that a fallacy. You've simply found an exception. Why does it matter to you if games are available from more than one Source anyways?

It doesnt. I simply dont understand people who eschew the superior platform just because it spends a few moments verifying your installation before launch.

 

[BeerTent]

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 [...]

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.

This.

This is the exact mentality we don't want our developers to have. The exact mentality that a lot of people are kind of tired of.

Gamers will just pirate it anyway.

Gamers will just exploit our game.

Gamers will just DDOS us to the ground.

Gamers will just abuse our money systems.

Gamers are sheep.

Gamers are stupid.

Gamers are petty.

Now, there are some things I'm inclined to agree with. How now-so-bright people can be when it comes to pre-ordering and Early Access. But the greater population is kind of tired of this mentality that AAA developers have been giving us, as well as a small handful of indie devs. The few ruin it for the many, right? But the methods use to combat these are very, very anti-consumer. It starts with DRM. Then it escalates to not delivering promised features, preventing legitimate customers from playing a product they paid for, and stripping away consumer rights. Pretty fucking basic ones too.

Another thing that seems to get me about your post is that you seem to state it as if it were lack and white. When your half my age, you tend to realize pretty quick that the world aint black and white. Nothing is. All obvious varying shades of gray. If you really think this way, you're too young to be making a statement, or I'm missing something big in your statement.

This policy is hurting people... Yes. It's hurting people who shouldn't be on the platform. And it's really, really going to hurt people who are in dire need of getting whacked by the quality control hammer. And people who should have had other things done to them, but can't because of an outdated international law and other consumer rights being stripped away. Make no mistake, the people who are complaining about this haven't delivered anything of use to their customers. They have not delivered a product that justifies the price. They're either in the wrong platform, or they have delivered something that is not fun to the greater community. What's the next article going to be about this? This shill complaining about his sales? [http://store.steampowered.com/app/370100/] Maybe when these developers do some real work, we'll take this bellyaching seriously. [https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/26912]

But my biggest question to you, well... It isn't one that I asked.

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