I have a lot of mixed feelings about this one. The developer mentions the idea of having "expected time to complete" featured on the Steam Store page, and using that as an exception for 2 hour refund periods. But he also says he intended this Paddle game to be between 3-4 hours long. He was already aware of the problem of short games on Steam, made efforts to avoid it, and still missed the mark. By his own admission, his game would not meet his own recommended refund exception.

He also blames speed runners as a general player type that is causing this abuse, but the way he speaks of them sounds like he is implying that it is a concentrated community effort. Now, I haven't checked speed running community discussions or watched any YouTuber's talk about this game. I could imagine some not so well thought out "influencer" talking about this games short run time, and their audience turning it into a novel blind speed run challenge. That would hypothetically be some real shit head behavior, and the best course of action would be for speed running communities to take some moderation action against people who post their times but refund/remove the game from their libraries.

But I don't think Valve should change their refund policy over this. There are games with much shorter completion run times that don't get refunded. Including linear, narrative focused games comparable to Paddle Paddle Paddle. The developer even mentions that despite the large amount of refunds, this game got a much larger reception and net profit than other titles. Its an easy assumption to make that the social advertising of being a gimmicky speed run caused its financial success. 1/4th of the sales are refunded, but the total sales dwarf many of the countless indie titles that drown at launch.

Idk. I can think of 10 games in my library off the top of my head, that I completed in less than 2 hours but didn't feel like refunding. "They beat my game and still refunded it" isn't a valid problem to the no questions asked refund policy. People get refunds for things besides games for much less time and more money spent. Hell, it doesn't even seem like he has any negative consequences to these refunds! The game is at positive reviews, its not algorithmicly being suppressed over the refunds, he's making the same "ratio" of profit as he would without the refunds; what is the actual problem here???