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Indie Dev Says Game Refunded 55,000 Times Via Steam Loophole (kotaku.com)
submitted 23 hours ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

If someone doesn't want to pay for your game they would just pirate it.

I get that's a disappointment for the publisher seeing a sale and then seeing that sale dissapear. But AFAIK they do not have to do anything, Steam manages the refund for them, so it's harmless.

No matter how well you try to adjust the window, I could just copy the game files in my computer, apply the crack if needed and be done with it. I could ask for a refund after just one minute if I wanted. So my advice would be, don't worry about it. You will be paid, as always, by people who appreciate your work and want to give money to you, and, as always, some people will play your game for free.

[-] FuyuhikoDate@feddit.org 8 points 9 hours ago

As somebody who did it twice I learned there are usually 3 reasons why people do it:

  • they are assholes
  • the game was really disappointing inclusive the time window to finish / price for the game
  • they want to see if they fan speed run zhr game and refund it. (For example portal 2)

Paddle Paddle Paddle, is a fun game and does not deserve that treatment. It also has a fun replay value with different friends :D

[-] ToxicWaste@lemmy.cafe 11 points 13 hours ago

it is for sure bad taste, to refund a game you enjoyed. but it can't be solved. adjusting time windows will only shift the problem...

however, i do not think this is a problem which needs solving. while it enables some frustration, i am pretty sure this feature makes more money than it looses: because players have this relatively generous refund model, they can take a risk in what they buy. that way players can properly test drive the games they buy and keep the ones which actually strike their fancy.

if that policy would not exist, i think many purchases just would not be made in the first place. especially in this economy.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 51 points 22 hours ago

I hate to say it, but the business model always affects the game design. The "meta" is to make a game that's longer than 2 hours if you want to avoid this, or that the player otherwise won't want to part with after that 2 hours is up.

[-] creamfresh@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

It's like there are less and less songs produced now that bother with an intro because streaming services demand that you should get to the chorus fast.

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

there will always be exceptions and innovation. One of the things that shaped They Might Be Giants style is they used to release songs via a telephone number and if they held a note too long the phone service would think it was a dial tone and hang up.

[-] terranoid@lemmy.cafe 23 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

If your game doesn't provide more content than 2 hours that's kinda on you IMO

And I say that as an indie game developer. Like it someone just thought it was neat to play for an hour then they were completely done touching my game... Why would I be shocked they refunded it? They might have refunded it because they expected... Dun dun dunnnn... More content?

It's a fuck load of work to make a game. It is kinda ridiculous to go to all that trouble then just stop after making 2 hours of gameplay, like 2 hours total without even a good sandbox.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 35 points 21 hours ago

Eh, not every game needs more "content". Clickolding and And Roger are, as I understand it, very good at what they do, but you can finish them both in an hour. It would probably be to their detriment to make them any longer.

[-] VerdantTome@programming.dev 17 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

It's a fuck load of work to make a game. It is kinda ridiculous to go to all that trouble then just stop after making 2 hours of gameplay, like 2 hours total without even a good sandbox.

Not that it's Steam's fault, but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.

Yes, it's a lot of work to make a game, but the only way to extend the play time of a story-focused single-player game without having to do even more work, is to water it down with low-effort filler content that reuses the expensive assets.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works -2 points 11 hours ago

but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.

There are literally orders of magnitudes of difference between making an indie game last 3-4 hours vs a bloated AAA 100+ hour collectathon. Comparing the 2 isn't an honest arguement

[-] VerdantTome@programming.dev 6 points 8 hours ago

There are also orders of magnitude of difference in their staff levels and budgets. Both sides of the equation are relative. I don't know of any techniques for creating good content quickly and inexpensively that only work for small indies and not for large AAA studios.

[-] bookmeat@fedinsfw.app -2 points 18 hours ago

Yes, so put in thework. Duh?

[-] terranoid@lemmy.cafe -1 points 14 hours ago

... Or just don't put it on Steam. I don't see why this is so controversial when it protects the players far more to have the refund option.

And just because someone finished and refunded it doesn't mean they enjoyed it. These devs complaining about people "playing it to the end" then refunding it need to realize that part of it might be their game just isn't that good.

[-] huey_m@reddthat.com 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I don't think that's a good reason for a refund, honestly. If you go to a restaurant or a movie, most places won't give you your money back if you finished the meal or movie. If you finished it, you should pay for it... if it really is so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle, you know before the end of the meal/film. This just feels like an excuse to be a cheapskate.

[-] MolochAlter@lemmy.world -1 points 10 hours ago

if it really is so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle, you know before the end of the meal/film.

I disagree that you would necessarily know.

Mass Effect 3 is stellar, until the ending invalidates basically all of your choices and destroys the galaxy no matter what you do, because the lead writer and the director thought it right to bypass their internal review process.

Firewatch feels like it's going to take at least some of the dialogue choices you made in the game into account but then it turns out it's entirely linear and smoke and mirrors.

A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.

Don't forget The Witcher 3, where bad end is on par with Mass Effect 3 and the logic to get it is really dumb and poorly telegraphed.

I still have CDPR (and by extension GOG) blacklisted. They burned me on that entire franchise and wasted a ton of my time. As far as I'm concerned, they owe me a game yhat doesn't suck.

[-] huey_m@reddthat.com 5 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

If the game itself was enjoyable enough that you kept playing it, that doesn't reach the threshold of "so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle" imo. Would you really expect your money back from a movie just because you didn't like the ending? That's wild to me.

A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.

Not to the point of deserving a refund, totally disagree. At what point do you draw a line? Should someone who hated the Game of Thrones ending get a refund for the years of subscription they paid to watch the rest of the show?

I don't think not liking a piece of media you bought as much as you thought you would deserves a refund when you've already consumed all or nearly all of the media. You've received a service and used a product at that point, you should pay for it.

[-] HereIAm@lemmy.world 15 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I 100% agree. I always refund every movie and music album under 2 hours as well. If they wanted to keep my money they should have added an extra hour of slop. /s

[-] iamthetot@piefed.ca 19 points 20 hours ago

Feels like a tough problem to solve, but I don't think it's unsolvable. Maybe the refund window could be shorter for games that report themselves as short/small/micro/whatever. Or ineligible for automatic refunds if you have a certain achievement (this one probably is not a good idea).

[-] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 10 points 17 hours ago

I think the short games get shorter windows would be completely reasonable. I'm sure that would even show up as a tag in the store, too, so it would be additional info for the buyer as well.

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 hours ago

At a high level it is reasonable, but I have been in a situation where I spent over an hour trying to get some buggy early access game to work and was forced to refund it because according to Steam I was running out of "played time" to be entitled to a refund. If I had been assured that I would have still been eligible for a refund I'd have tried some more and maybe not needed said refund. This was especially common when I used an Nvidia GPU in Linux as even being playable on the Steam Deck didn't mean that my GPU drivers wouldn't be an issue.

If a short game only had a 30 minute or less refund window, I may avoid buying them at all as it is too high of a risk.

[-] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 1 points 3 hours ago

I think that would be solved by making early access games have the normal refund window regardless of length. That seems reasonable as well.

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago

I've had it happen with standard release games as well, it is just more common.

Really short games are an interesting edge case for Valve's policy for sure. I don't personally buy games that are that short, but as long as they are priced accordingly, it feels awfully petty to refund a game that is a few bucks. I just don't see how much less time you can have to actually try a game and see if it isn't total garbage. I've had plenty of games that didn't reveal themselves to be completely broken until I was further along (time wise) than that and I was unable to get a refund.

Now with this specific game, I'm not sure it's an ideal poster child for changes in policy. The game clearly states that it was made in a month and is intentionally "rage inducing". Maybe the game absolutely sucks, is buggy, or maybe people though "rage inducing" just meant difficult, but in fact, it makes you angry because it is terrible in some other way. This isn't a shot at the dev, we simply have no way of knowing. All we know is that the dev says he received a review that said they beat it in under two hours and they refunded it after "beating" it. That would indeed sting to read and it seems needlessly petty to even post such a review. The dev himself said that he isn't necessarily asking for Valve to change the policy.

[-] iamthetot@piefed.ca 6 points 16 hours ago

And if devs try to game it, I'm sure Valve will kick them off or something. And, yeah, customers could be informed before buying the expected play time so they know what they are getting.

[-] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 6 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

You wanna get bloat? That's how you get bloat. Dev you now artificially waste your time to get past the 2 hours mark, if it doesn't already happened

[-] iamthetot@piefed.ca 18 points 15 hours ago

I'm confused. Doesn't the current system incentivize what you're saying?

[-] realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 24 points 21 hours ago

A tale as old as time. There's people who buy clothing for a wedding or some other event, for example, and then refund it since you have a 14 day refund window in europe (or at least the DACH area) for basically anything you buy. Companies like zalando have a global 50% return rate across everything they sell.

Sadge, but you can't make everyone happy. Overall, I'd argue that the 2 hour return policy for steam is overall more of a benefit to consumers than it is a detriment for developers. And then again, you can always add a bit more content to the game to make it longer.

[-] fpslem@lemmy.world 19 points 20 hours ago

I kinda love short games, I don't have time to put 100 hours in every game I buy. I bought this game in part because it seemed like a bit of silly fun, and was priced appropriately.

[-] kip@piefed.zip 17 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

it isn't a loophole if it is working as intended and the original headline doesn't say that

also he claims 270k sold and 55k refunded but the game has been out for just under a year and steamdb shows an all-time peak of 401 players?

https://steamdb.info/app/3570070/charts/

edit: might have been a bit harsh, the owner estimates range 160-200k

[-] Nighed@feddit.uk 6 points 9 hours ago

If it only takes two hours, the concurrent player counts are not going to be that high

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 18 points 20 hours ago

It's not working as intended for people to refund a game that they enjoyed and finished, or else the refund window would have been 100 hours.

[-] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago

I guess he should have checked to see how quickly one could beat the game before listing it for sale.

[-] StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works 14 points 14 hours ago

Shitty thing to do though, say it's great, and then refund it

[-] RainbowBlite@piefed.ca 10 points 21 hours ago

It would be good to know the refund rate on other games before deciding if this is a problem specific to short games. Maybe that 90% positive review would have been much, much lower if people couldn't get refunds. A $5 game with 70% reviews is not getting 250,000 sales.

this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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