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sounds like a steam problem.

21% refund rate means they sold over 250,000 copies and kept the money from approx. 200k. That's how the system works. Maybe steam should cancel refunds for finished games. But this isn't harming anyone too badly

.... :/ Assholes refunding that

not to be contentious but I think the developer is at best, embellishing and at worst is actively lying. based on sales estimates derived from the review count, 55k refunds would imply a refund rate of around 33~40%. this is stupidly high, like implausibly high. absolutely not a serious claim.

This is both sad & the epitome of players being cheap, but adding refunds to steam was a legal requirement due to an australia court case valve then implemented worldwide. Devs really should playtest & understand the platform they are publishing on to avoid things like this. 2h is really short.

Absolutely evil shit to brag about doing.

I think those speedrunners aren't even looking to keep the game. The only issue is that it messes with the numbers like sales and earnings

It's just theft at that point. No thought to the people behind the product. 😮‍💨

I own games I have finished in less than 30 minutes. I left 5 star reviews and platinumed them. I don’t believe in refunding games any more than I do refunding books.

Such BS! I feel guilty when I buy games on Steam that are discounted by 75% - I know how much work goes into them!

I have refunded two games. One didn't run on my system in a playable way, not the games fault, my PC was crap at the time. The second had a play style I didn't see in the trailer and it made me nauseous. I have games in my library I have played and completed multiple times. These people suck.

This sucks and people doing this are pieces of shit but the policy isn't at fault here. There's realistically no way to check whether a refund is legit or not aside from the few people who brag about it in a review and letting devs decide refund window would be abused to hell

This is why we cant have nice things.

Ouch, seems harsh of the players. What happened to being supportive?

If allegedly 55,000 players are refunding your game, then maybe the problem is your game and not the return policy grace period.

Disgusting. I have only used the refund option for two reasons since steam implemented it; because the game did not run properly or becuase the game play was not what I expected. I am pretty sure I have refunded less than half a dozen games lifetime.

I think it's capitalism at work... Arbitrary rules govern our lives, if anything it teaches Developers to not release games with less than two hours of content... Which if we're being honest is woefully short for a game.

I see this all the time and some people intentionally rush through games for it. Steam needs to either change the rule or just start banning people that do it from getting refunds. If that means they can't get them later for legit reasons then oh well, shouldn't have abused it.

It sucks because Steam’s refund policy is great for people who play games and can’t get into them, but unfortunately it hurts devs of smaller games. And it’s not like Steam can give devs free reign to set the refund timer because then they can just set it to be so short that it’s unreasonable

I wonder if it would work to just not allow refunds for games under $10. There's probably some currency exchange shenanigans you could do but it would make it much more difficult to abuse the system with short games.

How are there so many degenerates like this out there? Humans were a mistake.

It's going to be somewhat tricky though, as you can't just have developers set their "expected playtime", that'll just lead to everyone including Ubisoft to set it to an absurdedly small value to ensure you cannot refund. And I feel 2h is already a fairly low time exactly for that reason.

I feel the same way about people reading comics in the store then putting them back on the shelf. You enjoyed it then pay for it so there will be more.

Its THREE dollars, what are gamers even gonna do with that refund??

It sucjs I see why the two hour thing is in place cause a lot of games take a little time for the actual gameplay to start and being able to try the game and seeing if it’s what was promised within two hours is reasonable. But definitely bad actors take advantage of that.

Agree with you here. Recently bought a game on sale for 5$ and beat it in 74 minutes. I briefly considered refunding it but honestly did not want to be an asshole.

I've always tended to quantify enjoyment/time/cost in terms of movie tickets, which cost about as much as an indie game in terms of price most of the time (sometimes more!) and also provide around 2h of entertainment

Is that a comment of the site they bought it from? Because then I have serious questions about their policies.

What a shit thing to do.

even if the game is bad?

Very sorry to hear this and it sure feels unreasonable. I don't have a solution, but offer my sympathies instead. I have only ever refunded one game. It was the latest game I bought. I have some issues with my sight and the game was just not a fit. But I have more than 60 games in my library

“Economic anxiety” sneaked the bro

Steam should add a system where beating the game flags it as un-refundable

Deva should be able to flag certain achievements that require completing a large part of the game, and achieving one should close your return window.

Meanwhile AI slop games are artificially inflated to barely extend over 2 hours. Followed Zoroarts for a long time, cant help but feel sorry for them. Steam should NOT grant refunds on 100% games. Big reason I left the achievement hunting community. They call this 'refundos' (refund hundo).

Suddenly, I get the appeal of every game being so damn long

The game is only 3 dollars BTW.

Then maybe the dev shouldn't have made it such a short game then lol.

Every game should have a completed achievement, if you have that, there is no refund, ever. The disrespect and absolute soulless evil of stealing one's work that one enjoys so much they complete it entirely and then steal from them should be immediate lethal injection Evil society won't fix itself

Marie Winter (Susie Porter) Says EnoughALT: Marie Winter (Susie Porter) Says Enoughstatic.klipy.com

Yup, this is a whole thing that I've seen quite a bit of. I always thought it was a gross "challenge". It's likely a difficult thing to prove that somebody actually completed a game without them saying so. It's also something that could be exploited by devs to make sure people can't refund scams.

I returned like 3 games on steam. One cuz the Dev turned out to be racist and the others I couldn't get into it after an hour. I would never refund a game because I can. There has to be a compromise here. If the game has achievements and they beat the game they can't refund it. IDK has to be a way

I don't imagine it'd be that difficult to implement the additional refund requirement of "have under a certain level of completion or we'll assume you played it enough to enjoy it."

Can anyone think of a bad reason why refund windows shouldn't be shorter times the cheaper the game is?

Oh my god, if steam revamps their great policy because people are fucking scummy I’m going to sob

Now this is just assholic behavior

This sucks...getting a refund like this is pretty pathetic.

I think it should be based on the length of the game. Devs have an idea of how long it should take to beat their game, so if it's 40 hrs, they get 30 mins. If its like this one, 10 mins. Also, if they refund the game, their achievements should go away too. Just saying.

People who do this shit should be banned from Steam. Fuck you and fuck your library of games you degenerate pieces of shit.

Shocked that many players did it. Bought Idols Of Ash recently and didn't even crossed my mind to refund it, even though the game is def shorter than 2h

Sometimes gamers are great people. Sometimes they are vile, disgustingly toxic people. This is 100% the latter.

Ever since it became a challenge to do this, I’ve been awaiting Valve to take away this great feature that everyone apparently takes for granted

Thats just disgusting

so many comments don't understand what is happening here, the game is supposed to be way longer than 2 hours and probably was in the playtests, but speedrunners have made it a challenge and shown how to beat the game in under 2 hours as they do with ANY GAME, this isn't an issue of the devs not

Reason #5273 to hate Steam

Eeeeew...

Journey is one of the finest games ever made and can be beaten in under 2 hours. To do so, however, would be to spit on the ones who made it.

Honestly the refund policy is a sham for both reasons. There are games that are intended to be short experiences, and they shouldn't be exploited for that, and there are other games that just suck hundreds of hours out of you because they can. A hard two-hour policy is completely ineffective.

Yeah, I don't care what anyone's opinions are on value and time and whatever, you give the creator money because you want to support them. If you take it back only because the rules allow you to, you're a scumbag.

That sucks. Maybe have it so an achievement for beating the game would forfeit the refund policy? Cause that’s like buying a meal, eating it completely and then wanting a refund despite the fact you ate it all.

I feel like there should be some kind of setting, such as going by percentage of estimated game time rather than just 2 hours.

They need to fix it to "or you finish the game"

It sucks for everybody, too. Not only is the dev getting cheated out of sales, but people doing this could result in Valve having to change their policy in ways that hurt people with legitimate reasons. Sadly, I can't think of any ways to detect people refunding in bad faith that don't suck.

I think it really depends on price point. $5 for a >2 hour game, sure. $30, straight to refund. It's OK to refund based on value not meeting expectation of cost. Even retail stores have that as their normal policy, steam is actually MORE restrictive than some brick and mortar stores in that way.

Even better, I cant refund a game I spent 2.01 hours on and that was trying to get it to work.

The steam refund policy was a positive change but the implementation was somewhat naive. Punishing very short games is only going to incentivize games to pad themselves to run out the refund clock. It's no good to have a combative relationship between the players and the developers.

If I go to the cinema and pay a tenner to watch a 2 hour film, if I try to get a refund for anything other than the projector breaking down or the auditorium being on fire, I’d be shown the door, whether I watched it all or not. Why is this allowed with 2 hour games? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the developer said they got 55,000 refunds TOTAL, not that all of them beat the game

Goddamn that's gross. People can be garbage.

And this is why we get indi games with hours of useless padding in them or teedius game mechanics, so players can't return them if they were actually enjoying playing the game.

it is crazy and terrible

Jeez. If I did that i wouldn’t pay for anything. Shame, pox upon them!

Jeeze that's mean! I get if you don't like it, but why refund it if you enjoy it?! What game is this anyway?