#Steam refund how to#
#Steam refund movie#

Many $60 games have released with only ~5 hours of singleplayer campaign. Some of those are only ~90 min.Ī concert, orchestra performance, play, or other live event is often $20-50 per ticket. Movies that you purchase are often $15-30 when they're released.

Movies in the theater cost $8-15 per ticket. Why would Steam intentionally steer users towards games that are bought once and played for a long time as opposed to shorter games, which would result in more game sales per time spent playing? I've never heard of that being a thing, but I don't see why Steam would need to use the refund policy to intentionally harm games with short playtimes when they could just prevent most users from ever finding these games organically on their platform in the first place.Īnd if you stop and think about it, Steam makes money from game sales. If Steam wanted to disincentivize short games, they could tune their discoverability algorithms to promote games with higher playtimes and hide games with shorter playtimes. The Steam discovery algorithm already does a good job of surfacing games that are well reviewed and sell well, and conversely 'hiding' games that are poorly-reviewed (or not reviewed at all) and sell poorly. I don't believe this to be true, or at least the reasoning here doesn't seem sound. In any case, if you do make a short game, make sure to communicate this and properly set expectations. Or at least you have to accept that some people will refund. It’s sucks because some games genuinely don’t need to be longer yet offer a great experience for a good price, but I think if you wish to be financially successful it’s just a part of it that you’re game probably needs to be longer. If it’s shorter than 2, expect refunds on steam. So I think the bottom line is, if you make a game that’s shorter than about 5 hours, expect complaints.

While a game that’s under two hours long can still be great entertainment and great value, especially when compared to the cost of non-gaming entertainment, people have learned to expect more from games. Since the beginning of gaming, games were mostly designed to be played for a long time either because of replayability or general game length. Honestly I think most people are conditioned into expecting many ho it a of play from a game. You get kicked off pretty quickly and presumably IP banned, but you can walk off with a small sum of money before Valve catches up.

#Steam refund how to#

Summer of '58 doesn't have trading cards, but often these purchases are automated, and not all bots are programmed to check before they buy.Īnd that's just a possible cause picked out of the legal options, the game could have also been used in a credit card scam or money laundering scheme I'm not comfortable sharing the details of how to pull that off because I don't want to give instructions on how to commit crimes, but both of those things are possible using Steam. For all we know the purchases could have been a mistake from a trading card farm, which sometimes buy thousands of copies of cheap games to milk them for trading cards. I doubt the majority of people refunding Summer of '58 purchased the game to play it.

Steam has a shady underbelly of people exploiting its various systems for their own personal gain, and often small developers are the ones who get caught in the crossfire of this exploitation. Last time I read a story like this, it turned out the returns had nothing to do with the game or its developer.

Some people are just shitty and able to justify their poor behavior with weak arguments like, it was a Very Positive experience, but not long enough. My suspicion is that someone realized the loophole, which then got spread on a social platform, and it was taken advantage of by parasites.

You're enabling people to go and abuse the policy further. Why not assume that people are maliciously taking advantage of a developer? Technically they did nothing wrong, but the behavior should not be made socially acceptable and defended.

#Steam refund movie#

Have you paid for and watched a movie at the theater then requested a refund because it wasn't long enough? A comic book that was finished in two minutes, get a refund? A boxing match that lasted less than a round, get a refund? Bag of chips downed in a minute, get a refund? Where does the time = value equation come in? I find far more value in quality over quantity. Yet you want to assume it is worthless? Based on what? The reviews of three of their games I just checked were all Very Positive, which is more than I can say for much of the garbage that gets onto Steam.