Indie Dev Emika Games Quits Making Games After Steam's Refund Policy Gets Abused & Exploited
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- čas přidán 27. 08. 2021
- EDIT: Honestly, simplifying it further than what I said in the video, just making it so it's 2 hour refund grace period across the board while allowing devs to submit special requests to lower that if they can prove their game is much shorter than usual would, I think, be an adequate solution. I agree Steam's refund policy is overall great for most cases with scenarios like Emika Games being a less common, but that doesn't mean Steam shouldn't think about coming up with reasonable solutions for these kinds of special cases.
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EDIT: Honestly, simplifying it further than what I said in the video, just making it so it's 2 hour refund grace period across the board while allowing devs to submit special requests to lower that if they can prove their game is much shorter than usual would, I think, be an adequate solution. I agree Steam's refund policy is overall great for most cases with scenarios like Emika Games being less common, but that doesn't mean Steam shouldn't think about coming up with reasonable solutions for these kinds of special cases.
ORIGINAL: The kind of asshole you gotta be to take full advantage of a small indie game, be satisfied with it, and still refund it because of refund policy loop holes.
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I couldn’t imagine refunding a game I enjoyed… like that’s wild.
Sometimes I get a free game and I wnat to give them money, mainly psplus games. I usually buy dlc to help them out
Proof that happend once?.... zero given just bullshit
Um not everyone enjoyed the game...
I know some person who enjoyed the game but like it free. Hence abusing the refund system as much as possible.
I have bought games (mainly small indie titles) I got for "free" just to support those guys.
I remember people said that Hunt Down The Freeman game just had giant expanses of walking from point A to B just to up the game time past the refund time.
I don't blame them they know that cheapskates are out there and will take advantage of the situation smart move on their part.
@@Toastcat890 That game is basically a scam, so like
@@TheWrathAbove And that's why I'm extremely picky with the games I buy there's a lot of trash out there indie and AAA.
It's good to watch gameplay and reviews before buying, lots of good channels out there for every genre.
@@bsherman8236 Which is a decent idea for most games, but watching any gameplay from a game as short as these.. .you can very easily get the entire game shown to you if you are not aware of how little you should see in order to avoid being spoiled or seeing to much.
Either way... man does this suck.
Seeing a review saying a game is "amazing", and then refund it... fuck that is so fucking low that person deserves to be kicked in the nuts...
Playing a game to completion, liking and positively reviewing it. Then refunding it XD
That's almost comically scummy.
nobody is doing that, thats fake news
@@megazenn22 Found em! Let's get im, boys!
@@yaqbulyakkerbat4190 ?
@@megazenn22 That is happening. Fun fact, your account not only shows how long you've played a game, it shows if you've refunded it. It's all tracked, and this is how Valve is able to hold certain accounts at fault who abuse this, and quantify data.
Yes, there are people who have positively reviewed a game and refunded it.
This is actually a very common tactic among users on steam nowadays. Plus, there are people who DO state that they've plyaed a game in their reviews, and it says: "This user has refunded the title".
It's kinda out there for everyone to see, and can even be put onto a spreadsheet since it's tracked by Valve.
@@japcloud i read reviews every day and ive never seen that, its not happening
Steam refund policy is without a doubt one of the best in gaming, it's very generous and forgiving in time and the acceptable reasons for refund.
It's sad to see people abusing such a good pro-customer policy.
Yeah, I bought the base game of DMC 5, but 2 days later it was on sale,
Steam has a reason for refunding as "the game went on sale" so I said that and they gave me a refund.
I then bought the deluxe edition and can now use Mega Man's gun.
what evidence do you have its being "abused"? what if it only has a positive rating cause the people that don't like it went "well i can get my money back so i wont leave a negative review"? especially considering not 1 review i could find was marked as "refunded" lmao
@@imalittletoxicjustalittle because the train told him it's being "abused"
i think there should be a section that if you pass, you don't get refund.
@@ivanleon6164 If that's controlled by the developer, then they can establish loading the main menu as that checkpoint.
Valve themselves can't reasonably implement it themselves due to the massive number of game engines and code that they'd have to work with, and that's besides games made from scratch on custom engines.
The 2 hour refund is a godsend for encountering shitty games that need a refund. It should never be abused.
Exactly. I think if they reduced it for short games there are some devs out there that will take advantage of that and basically make tiny crappy games. Which there are enough of already.
even if you complete the game and refund it thats a right customers have
and you trying to remove it means you can fuck off
@@justawarlord Playing it through knowing it is short, planning to return it is fraud/theft.
But, if you play a game and they then change/ruin a game, even if you have played 500 hours, you deserve some right to refund or protection of what you purchase from being fundamentally altered.
Agreed. The refund policy is awesome. I'll grant you it took the Australiian government suing them to even get a refund policy in the first place - the US laws don't give a crap about consumers.
@@Oblithian Then reset the refund period with every major update.
Overall Steam's refund policy does FAR more good than harm, but Valve does need to look into edge cases like this where it is being blatantly abused. All Valve really needs to do, is have a different policy for games that are less than 2 hours by design. For the vast majority of games, the refund policy is fine, and this is truly an edge case.
exactly. this is another case of the good of it never gets reported but every bit of bad does get mass news.
its a hard thing to fix. if you add a way for devs to select a less playtime before refund then all devs are just gonna pick that option no matter how long the game is and open the door to abuse by devs of the system.
but if you dont add a it opens it for players to abuse.
it would need to be done by human review of each game that requests a smaller refund time. and that might end up being too much with the sheer amount of short games added to steam.
and the last option is steam change the overall refund time to a lower time.
but that opens up the issue of games that have issues making them unplayable and such where people might spend over an hour just trying to get a game to work. and that would stop them being able to refund. and in my opinion thats a worse issue and its why the 2 hour time is needed.
and if you look in refund threads of game like that alot of people even ask for a higher time for refund.
Yeah, something like sending in a request if it's 2 hours or under would make it so Steam doesnt have to play every game, and instead just have to check the games that are sent in for that
I agree they could simply scale it to ~10% of the average game time as designated by the average time played from the user statistics but to a maximum of 2h, so an 25h game cane be refunded before 2h, an 80h game also has 2 but for a 2h game you only have 15mins
I'm in agreement with this statement. It's one of the harsh realities that kick in when peoole that finish games quick are able to benefit by refunding after. It's a scummy tactic, but people so what people do.
Just like what WeeJet also said, implementations of other systems can be solutions but they also have their own problems as well, nothing is perfect. Hopefully Steam has something up their sleeves to help combat this.
THIS is true of EVERY system. Like police WHO destroying it fixes nothing you must FIX IT not just have it or dont. Steam could fix this easily but ppl are poor and selfish
Be real, dude. If you let the devs to decide how long the refund period is, you bet they'll abuse it. Suddenly you'd see giant aaa titles that claim that can be finished within an hour to avoid giving refunds.
And the _buyers_ of this game have done the same sort of abuse. Everything has some sort of cost.
Exactly. Devs shouldn't decide the refund period.
@@absalomdraconis Except the developer of the game is charging for an experience... the length of free games or the TUTORIAL of a 60$ game. Literally PT, a playable teaser, is about the same length if not longer with more lore and depth for FREE. A game well known for how amazing it was... so people would've paid for it.
If people are refunding... maybe their game wasn't good?
@@Buglin_Burger7878 ah, so you're comparing a playable teaser for an AAA game funded by Konami to the indie game made by a single guy, got it. sigh
@@Buglin_Burger7878 it got most positive reviews though and some of them still refunded
"his games are loved by his niche group" then they should have fucking kept it. As someone who is now trying to create my own art I can see how important it is to have fans who are loyal. It's pretty much everything to an independent creator.
Indeed, it ticks me off personally that this person literally quit making games simply because he can't due to selfish people exploiting the system. It's just not cool.
It's called failing, if people didn't keep the game it's more on the developer and the game than anyone. Just because you finish a game, doesn't mean you enjoyed it. But it's okay they played the victim and now they are social media famous, and now they'll keep making games. MMM Marketing, sometimes it happens in the goshdarndest of places. I bet we see this guy taking a nice healthy check from Timmy Tencent in the near future...I mean hey at least there there isn't any return policy.
@@DerivitivFilms Tencent gives less shit about indie game devs than steam does, wtf are you on about.
Also you are not allowed to complain about a exploited system? Guess you are the kind that rob a poor man's house then tell him to hire better security
@@DerivitivFilms So you're saying it's on the developer for having their creative freedom?
Whether the people enjoyed it or not, regardless of whether or not the dev did this for publicity, the fact is that their game is allegedly getting returned within the policy window to save money to buy the next game in their list and so on.
It's their purgative on how they want to use their money but it does hurt the game maker financially. There are a lot of Indie games out there that last 2hrs or less. Journey is one such game. Abzu is another, Entwined too.
But you seem dead set convinced that this person literally just did it for the attention when all the guy did was announce he was gonna take indefinite time off of game developing that just somehow ended up getting a lot of attention.
@@DerivitivFilms who hurt you? Lol. It's ok dude she wasn't worth it you dont have to go down the incel path and start shitting on people lol
It occurs to me that this guy might try repackaging all of his games as a collection in one client and charge $15 or whatever for it, as all his games together exceed the 2 hour mark comfortably.
Well, you can still buy, finish one game from the collection and refund the rest.
Steam is the biggest pc platform for game developers but that doesn't mean it's the only platform, diversifying his game releases (especially considering they are not sequals) could really help this dev in future cuz this won't be last time something like this will happen.
I don’t think such an obvious option has escaped him, I imagine he’s more disappointed with his player base than anything else
But is it possible to do that with the money and resources? I'm sure if it were that simple, he would've tried it right? But then again a developer shouldn't have to bundle his/her games just so it can pass the 2hr limit. I see that as an artificial solution that just doesn't help anyone. I prefer the scaling idea Yong proposed.
@@EstellammaSS other than epic (which has its own issues) I don't think theirs a platform with a split that's as favorable.
It’s a real shame this happened. Steam’s refund policy is great, but it sucks that some people essentially use it to basically rent shorter games. If you feel you deserve a refund, go ahead if you’re eligible, but there are people finishing and enjoying games and still refunding them which is just a shitty thing to do in most cases.
That's just consumer freedom. Steam kinda assumes games should be longer than 2 hours, or at least replayable. If it isn't, then you're just doomed to fail in the beginning. People will abuse anything that can be abused.
I've been refused a refund on games that have literally been unplayable due to steams launcher not opening it and also on a devs failed upkeep of said updates... Cough Anthem and outriders cough
It's not even rent, it's borrowing.
That's not even renting. The dev makes no money.
Steams refund policy is not great if this can happen, idk what you're on.
Maybe Patreon could be a good option for them. I've seen many indie devs who release short games every few months and they get supported via Patreon.
Given some of the invasive behavior that Patreon has had in the past, I'd point at one of it's competitors. Still, it would be good if Valve added a "tip jar" for developers.
@@absalomdraconis wait, whats up with patreon?
Yes, for niche games and markets this might just make more sense.
@@fitzviandraduivenab2790 there known to ban creators and steal what ever money theyve not had a chance to collect
I had two thoughts on this, first (and I'm not accusing this developer of doing this) shortening the period to scale with the game length could encourage bad actors to declare their poor, unfinished games to be "short format." I think giving bad actors such an obvious work around to the consumer protections only throws the baby out with the bathwater, and there's no real hope of Valve actually doing human policing of this.
Here's the thing that really gets me, the developer's own comments makes the solution obvious. He compares his own games to short stories, but I've yet to see anyone try to sell short-stories individually to the general public. Usually they are packaged in magazines that have multiple of them per issue (like "Asimov's Science Fiction" and "Analog Science Fiction and Fact") or, usually later, in anthologies of an author's short-format works. This approach is used because even in the world of the printed page a single short story was not enough to make the reader, who may have enjoyed the story, feel that they've really gotten their money's worth. Collections of stories have been published since at least the 1800s right up to this day as a solution to this problem. I propose working with other developers interested using the short-game as a format to publish multiple as a single unit that has the duration to solve the problem steam has, without the problem of artificially inflating the play time as the best solution. Ideally releasing the gamazine at a set interval.
I would rather compare it to short films - that indeed could be watched and bought individually - Don't get me wrong, I get your concept and for this particular case it might be an option because they already had multiple games finished. However, writing a story is cheap - a piece of paper and a pen cost what, a dollar?.
Making Games can be very expensiv. I know, that with Indie productions like this it might not be as obvious as with games like GTA V but if you are working alone and not such a multi talent that you can do all the coding, 3D modelling, Sounddesign & Music, Textures, Lightmaps, UVs, Normalmaps etc etc by yourself you need to buy Assets, Sounds, pay royalties for music, maybe purchase script templates etc. Furthermore, even though Unity and Unreal Engine are free to use, there is so much extremely expensiv software, more often than not in a subscription model that take away from your budget every month...
The way Indie Studios keep themselves alive is by making a cheap game, hopefully getting some profit and immediately putting that profit into a bigger budget for the next game until they reach a point where they can start taking some of the profit for themselves. That's why it's usually impossible to wait until they finished up 3 or more Games to make a Bundle and that's why one failed game - even one failed Trailer - can kill an entire studio.
I do like your Idea of a Gamazine, but I don't think that this is financially feasible. First of all, from every game purchased on Steam (that has made less than 10 million dollars so far) Valve takes a 30% cut. So If your game was 9$ you make 6$. Now, let's say you publish your game in a Gamazine with, I don't know, 4 other creators. So you have 5 Games in 1 - how much can you charge for it? Individually all the games would have been sold for 9$ so do you sell it at 45$? It's a reasonable price, however, I think that this will alienate the majority of the audience. Because in my personal experience, the main selling point of games like this is their price. I am shopping on steam and see this little charming indie Gem for only 9$ - For that price I am willing to take the risk - if it's awesome than I have made a great deal but if it's boring, unimaginative or doesn't work so well, I haven't lost that much money. And so I am much more likely to enjoy the games because my standard is "That's pretty good for a 9$ game" However, if I buy a Compilation of 5 Short Indie Games for 45$ the enjoyment I get out of it has to compare to whatever else I could have bought for 45$ - which is the price of a cheap AAA Game. And if I don't enjoy it, it leads to a much more negativ experience because I have lost 45$, which is a lot of money for me and many other people.
So, let's say the gamazine sells for like 25$ - that's 5$ per game, a little more than half the original price. Valve takes 7,50$ so that leaves 17,50$. However, now the Gamazine Publisher probably wants their share as well - let's say they are VERY generous and only take 10%, then we are left with roughly 15$ that get split between the 5 Devs leaving everybody with 3$ per sale - that's half of what they would have earned and the same amount of money they would get now if half the people that played it returned it. We don't know exactly how bad this return problem so I can't say if this is financially viable, but honestly I doubt it...
However, i honestly like your idea, it's probably the best, definitely the most creative solution to the problem I have read in this comment section and I really WANT it to work... But from my experience with the industry I sadly don't think that it would solve this particular issue...
Yes. Charging $13 for a 1.5 hour WALKING SIMULATOR is OUTRAGEOUSLY overpriced. THe dev is the problem, not the customers.
@@GeorgeMonet Then don't buy it. It's fine to not like everything, not everyone does, but playing the whole thing, admitting you liked it then refunding makes you a dick.
While I don't think asking steam to change a highly consumer friendly policy to help short format games and risk truly unscrupulous actors taking advantage of it is reasonable, those abusing the policy are just dicks.
Let me “update” you (I used quotes because this is old and the developer got over this a long time ago), Emika Games thought this got out of hand once this story went viral. He even told people not to buy his games out of pity.
Bad for this developper but honestly the refund policy as been a godsend for crappy half cooked games.
imagine going on steam but all the good games are not buried under mountains of trash
@@mcsmash4905 Sort by popularity...
@@Josie.770 regardless there is still tons of trash allowed on steam , trash that will never blossom into something good and just takes up space on my screen
@@mcsmash4905 One gamer's trash is another gamer's treasure.
You wouldn't need it if you actually read the reviews on the Steam page or looked up video reviews for the game. After Colonial Marines I learned to do this for everything.
This kinda reminds me of the guy who bought sonic forces and beat in under 2 hours while streaming it. He got the refund plus money he made from his stream. A real stonks moment.
Nice.
Yeah, but that was Sonic Forces...
Sega isn't an indie dev and Sonic Forces is a AAA game sold at AAA prices. I'd refund it too because that's unacceptable.
@@Zinkolo exactly.
This indie dev is just a collateral
I remember that, but I think it was just over 2 hours, and he was still refunded.
Changing rules for one extreme case, that just asking for disaster.
My thoughts exactly
yea for sure but in today's day in age there's a weird hardon for having to be as accommodating for the most special cases or you're a monster. also, these "games" he's putting out don't seem like games to me with them being below 2hrs of content.
@@Zinkolo
The thing you say about AAA games is literally a non issue. The vast majority of games have an award fir beating it, all they'd need to do is share the data for time it took to get the reward
@@ankh-ef-en-khonsu3274
When you don't accommodate for those who need it, you accommodate for those already in power
@@wyattmilliken3320 but...how do you know if what you do is accomodating the ones need it? how do you know if changing this 2 hour refund policy for special cases is not accomadating those all ready in power at all?
Sadly, people whom abuse systems will always find loopholes to abuse systems. We see this across multiple industries not just gaming. I hate seeing an Indie Dev get hit like this. My Policy has always been if you like a game, keep it. Longer does not always mean a better game.
Mass effect andromeda: will give refounds until 9hs of playtime
Me: took me almost 4 hours to step out of the ship
lol yep.
Steam's refund policy is one of the best on the market. This episode of Emika Games is so unique that I can't imagine a simple solution or one that won't impact the whole way games are marketed on the platform. I don't particularly know the developer and his games, but I would hardly invest $13 in a 120 min game, but it's sad to see how unscrupulous people use these systems to take advantage of small developers... it's a mad world out there!
Looking on how much people spend for Cinemas to visit a 2 hour movie, I think the money even for a 2hr game is fair enough.
If you consume media especially in its entirety, then you have no right to ask for a charge back. It's literally piracy at this point.
@@gehtdichnichtsan2418 you could say it's stealing.
the solution is simple - if people do refund very often, they need to be banned, either temporarily or permanently (in case of multiple bans).
And the dev shouldn't have "quit", because of trolls on the internet. If the 2hrs refund policy wouldn't have been there, the number of purchases wouldn't have been there either.
I'm pretty sure that they would've gained the same or quite a similar amount of money if there wouldn't have been any trolls with their refunds.
@@otanim "you are pretty sure" when you have no idea how long it took for them to make the game, how many hours, if it is their only job. You know nothing.
@@otanim Steam does do that know. not banning but they do warn you when you refund too often. Hell I gotten that warning and I only refund 4 games in a 3 month period(Christmas holidays) they were all strategy games I wasn't jiving with.
I find it hard to believe it's to a degree that would impact their revenue.
wouldnt be surprised that this was an over reaction just so more people buy it cause they felt bad or some shit lol
I mean if it’s a niche audience, then absolutely it would.
Well, it's a niche indie title with 30% of the revenue going to Valve. The margins on those types of games can be quite slim. The refunders could be his entire profit margin.
You are not a game developer are you?
Wasn't the policy implemented due to low effort, short shovelware? How can Steam differentiate between that and good, short games? How does Yong's solution prevent those shovelware developers from taking advantage of his proposed policy change? I feel for Emika Games and it sounds like they're making good, short games but I don't think there is a blanket policy that will be able to separate Emika from shovelware.
Additionally didn't Emika know about the policy before ever publishing on Steam? I'm pretty sure it's been around long enough that they should have
Valid point. My two cents is that some developers (especially indies with one developer) don't have the resources nor time to make a long game.
You can tell shovelware in minutes so I don't think it would be an issue. 2 hours is a long time with a terrible game.
Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading.
I was under the belief Steam implemented a refund policy because the Australian Consumer Commission
(aka, Australian government) took Steam/Valve to court to force it to comply with Australian law, as any company
who caters to Aussies, even by digital means must abide by our consumer law or stop selling to Australians.
They also received a 3 million dollar fine. Case ran from 2014-2017 with Valve making appeals but inevitably losing.
From memory and some sources, Steam had no formal refund policy at that point. Valve was essentially forced,
although I imagine their PR team spun it in to them doing something for gamers out of their 'good graces'.
Although buggy, low effort, short shovelware was rampant, they were making their cut, Valve didn't care.
@@rileyrenger2795 then they MUST declare that it is a 2 hour duration game up front. I bet they didn't do that and many players came to the end of the game all of a sudden around 2 hours in. I would have refunded if I were them too.
Just like how I refunded FTL style game with stupid time limit that they never declared it upfront on the descriptors
This is awful to hear. Being an indie game dev is hard enough, especially if you’re doing it solo. But having people enjoy your work and then taking their money back anyways? That’s just soul crushing
thats disgusting
@@Scyclo at that point it's your money. They bought a game, got to enjoy it for many hours, then just got it back because reasons. Imagine getting back the money of a ticket for a movie after.
Lol it hilarious
1 hour game is basically a demo, demos are free
@@bsherman8236 Completely false, but ok.
This is really unfortunate. I wish this developer the best of luck moving forward.
Hes flipping burgers now, thanks gamers...
@@GodhandPhemto squidward is the most relatable character
thats fine cuz all devs know about 2h steam refunds long before they starting creation of game
@@forthegod that doesn't justify the a*sholes refunding the game after they beat it. That's like saying people shouldn't start a business because they know there is a risk of not becoming successful. The dev even reduced the price based on length yet these a*sholes are too cheap to support the developer are they enjoyed the experience.
@@nabawi7 2h refund policy actually justifies those who you call a*sholes
and this dev should put more effort into respecting 2h rule instead of just releasing on steam 3 very short games in less than 2 years
To be completely honest, any form of freedom will come with the consequences of certain people abusing it, that's just the very nature of it. There isn't any possible way to create a system that only angels can take advantage of, on eaither end. The real question you should be asking is if a frindge case like this is enough to offset the good the current system does for consumers, which personally, I dont think it is, as much as I feel for the developers here. This industry has gone on for far too long without any checks, and 2 hours is a perfectly fine compromise to make sure a game is both free from technical problems and that that devs aren't taking advantage of the consumer, which they already proved they will, in any way they possibly can.
The refund policy is necessary to make sure comsumers aren't exploited more than they already are, and if a game cant accommodate to that, then maybe steam isn't the best platform for it, that's just the way it has to be at this point.
Yeah at first I thought maybe they could implement some kind of percentage meter where if you reach a certain point the game is no longer refundable, but that would still leave the customer at a disadvantage. I think the 2-hour system is possibly the fairest way to implement returns, and this is sort of the exception to the rule. I think the problem is that Indie games are being held to the same standards as triple AAA titles which have naturally surpassed many hours of gameplay.
@@grayfox6518 in a few circumstances on Indie games like this, you are right, however there are tons of indie games that can last well over 2 hours, even story ones like Night in the Woods and Spiritfarer.
Lol and plenty of AAA games have been padding out their tutorial to be 2 hours long where you can't save or skip.
So no matter what, the consumer is always at risk of just losing
For every case where this happens I can show 2 cases where devs waited until the purchases peaked then abandoned their game.
Example?
@@NoHandle44 Litteraly most of the reales I point to that game where you make the raft and travel to diffrent island look alike zelda. ABANDONED. SO BLOODY MANY
Both of them are equally scummy, doesn’t make either of them right or justifies either of them.
While I feel for this dev who is being taken advantage of, I feel having a refund system being based on individual games, will lead to people being taken advantage of. By having a system that applies to all, it lays out the rules and risks before releasing new games. It's not perfect but I'd take that over different rules for different games.
yeah, we will miss it most of the times I think. Not knowing if the game has a different refund window or not, and just kept playing, thinking it was 2 hrs instead.
@@necishax610 yeah, because we have value as human being, we have common decency. Unlike the one refunding it while saying the game was good...
@@fajarn7052 have it in the description where the important stuff like the system requirements are and list it for every game even if its the standard 2 hours. then if someone misses it it would need them to not read the desricption. as long as valve does not secretly introduce it only the idiots would miss it
You can't say he was being taken advantage of when he knew exactly what the refund policy was. He could have made longer games. Or bundled games together. Or made games that weren't walking simulators.
He chose to made short games people thought were bad.
He chose to put it on a store with a 2 hour refund policy.
Nobody forced him to do anything.
He put himself in that position willingly.
@@Trakesh He himself said if it was because it wasn't good, or the customer didn't like it, or they have technical issues with it, its fine.
He took offense in someone who deliberately said it was good but short. That they enjoyed the entirety of it but demanded their money back. There is no excuse of refunding it by being short. The description page stated that it would be short. They would know it would be short. Why would they complain about it being short? Just be honest, they played it because it was short in the first place, so that they can get their money back.
Of course he knew the refund policy, would that make it okay to refund it still after you enjoyed it?
He just trusted in the decency of others. And somehow that is wrong in your eyes.
>System to let Devs submit the average playtime
>Acti-bliz and other shovelware devs „claim" their games are less than 2 hours long.
It is unfortunate that this person has been screwed over, but we can't let what is ultimately an edge case situation to dent what little consumer protection there is on Steam
Or anywhere for that matter.
@@ZeroL0 Which are so hard to figure out.
As a game dev you know the steam refund policy from the start and if you make a game with shorter then 2hrs of gameplay then you know this refund can be a problem.
If they change this for shorter games then i also want a longer time then 2hrs for longer games.
This isn't a point that favors the current refund policy, it's a blatant example of why the system needs a rework.
@@robadc Maybe for developers but the policy is good for consumers.
@@LPLimbos Not saying it needs to be removed. I'd argue that would be unethical. But there needs to be a way to deal with edge case scenarios fairly.
Allowing developers to set the length of their game and essentially the refund grace period will definitely get abused by the developers, especially those asset flipper devs. Steam refund policy is the best out there right now, as far as I know, changing this policy will just make things worse for consumers.
Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading. I know I've been spamming this in the comments but it needs to be said until people understand.
Perhaps Steam is the wrong platform for such a short game, regardless of the supposed benefits?
Gamepass would be a much better platform. Developers get paid, the game gets exposure.
@@joshsamuelson1793 we dont know how much GP pays on top MS has to consider adding it as devs have no say in this.
He should drop the price and put them on mobile.
Steam is by far the biggest platform though, it’s hard enough to make a living being a niche indie dev as is
They could publish their game on itch, but there's not many customers
The issue is that the two hour period for returns includes technical issues, so shortening it ends up screwing over people who buy a game and can’t get it to run in a decent manner. Or the two hours is them encountering bugs and glitches there aren’t willing to keep dealing with, or the realise they don’t like something about the game. In the grand scheme of things and compared to physical store returns, it’s not that long.
If they see you have clocked 1 and a half hours on the game without unlocking the first achievement that implies a very different set of circumstances compared to the person who clocks 1 hour and 59 minutes and has 70-100% of all the achievements already. There's other ways to check for actual game activity too so in the event something is buggy or not compatable then someone actually reviewing those cases can likely tell if it was due to a technical issue and not just some cheapskate trying to play everything as fast as possible to then get a refund they don't actually deserve.
@@caldw615 seems like they should include the steam achievements in the refund process then.
If you want a return in under 2 hours, but you’ve really completed an indie and the indie has it set up where you easily get 70% to 80% achievements, use that as a reason to reject the refund. The game is too far into completion to refund.
@@marwynthemasterful6369 That would be an aweful idea, publishers (you can bet big ones like ea/activision too) will simply let you earn most achievements in the first hour then so you can´t refund anymore.
@@marwynthemasterful6369 That would just lead to dishonest devs creating achievements like "You opened the game", "You pressed W" "You moved the mouse!" and make a game that unlocks 85% of achievements the moment you start it so it can't be refunded. There are games that give you achievements just for pressing buttons on the keyboard and that have no gameplay.
Not a solution, sadly, unless Steam were to actually curate games and they will NEVER do that. They will never be able to do that with the sheer amount of dross that gets dumped onto their storefront, there aren't enough eyes on the planet to look over so many games.
So it would require Steam to overhaul their submission and publishing systems and this is a dance that they have danced for years and have never been able to find a balance between quality and quantity because they make a shitload more profit out of quantity while relaying quality to user reviews and scores, wash their hands of it and rake in the profits.
Steam's rotten at the core in this particular regard, I'm afraid.
Devs should just make the game 3 hours or more even if it's just filler so they don't get screwed like this guy did.
Completing a game should be an automatic dis-qualifier for refunds.
That could be exploited by devs (e.g. a "speedrunner path" that lets you beat a game in 3 minutes, accidentally, without leaving the tutorial, by just experimenting with extra boxes or switches or something), so some better system is needed.
Sounds like the problem is the prices. He's charging an insane amount for an hour of content. I'm perfectly fine with short games, but I'd never buy any of those for those prices.
Exactly what i was thinking.
I wouldn't even look at a game like this.
The playtime/price ratio is just, haha NOPE.
Kinda my thoughts. I will start with saying that this is absolutely not my genre and that I have not played the games.
However I looked into them and my first impression was that they all look very much alike so not much development changes in the background. To me it just looks like AAA behavior of cutting up a game into DLCs to sell it for more. Even putting it all together is still considered a short game for quite the price.
"Creative freedom" and "creators vision" only goes so far in my opinion. Tbh kinda shortsighted vision if it only lasts 1-2hours especially since this genre can be considered slow paced by default..
The whole refund thing is still stupid of course but I feel like hes just not entirely without fault.
I disagree. 10-15 dollars, unless I'm mistaken, is about the price of a movie ticket. Same price for the same 1.5-3h of entertainment, plus you get to "watch it" as many times as you want. Sounds pretty fair.
@@LucianCanad lmao, no. For the length of these, I'd be happy paying $1-2. Keeping in mind the $10 games with hundreds of hours of content, or *free games* with the same, he really has no excuse for the prices. As for the movie ticket thing, that's completely off topic.
@@LucianCanad I agree. Some of his games are like $7.
This is disturbing. Thanks for bringing it to light Yong. Hopefully some changes are made to help out indie devs creating great games. Perhaps some minor adjustments for much shorter titles
Yeah "great games" that is totally why people refunded them. Look I think Steam has its problems but most of the issues coming from indie devs when I look into them can be explained by the fact the game they made wasn't even that good.
Instead of it being a time based thing make it a percentage based
@@UsingGorillaLogic IT WAS BECAUSE IT WAS SHORT AND THE CONSUMER HAS TO MUCH POWER DUMBA**
@@UsingGorillaLogic Unlike yourself, I looked at the reviews. As of when I typed this, "Find Yourself" maintains a "Very Positive" review with 222 reviews in total.
And no, a game's quality is not always related to why someone refunds it. You never traded a game in after completing it? I dunno about you but when I'm done with a game and have nothing left to do with it, then I trade it in.
The game can be completed while also conveniently falling under Steam's refund policy. Put two and two together and prove you're cognitively functioning please. It's not a matter of the game sucking, in this case at least. It's simply players being pragmatic, whether by ignorance or intention.
@@dream6562 very very difficult to do. What would the percentage be? Main story? What if it doesn't have one like Rust. The 2 hour policy is very fair. The better option might be a 'short form game' option of like 30 minutes. And have that submitted with an average playthrough time which steam would be able to checo at any time.
Both sides can exploit the refund system, so Steam needs to be very careful on what they do with their refund policy.
Exactly.
Now that devs know this they should make games 3 hours or more even if the last section is just filler so they don't get screwed like this guy.
@@Toastcat890
If that's the case they should really leave game development and go make mobile apps.
@@meleemastermaa1449 Nah that would be a way to get around the refund policy maybe if people weren't c÷#%s they wouldn't have to extend their games.
@@Toastcat890
If you're crafting your artsy game and all it's in your mind is a way to get around the refund police, then you clearly don't care about your narrative to begin with.
Either leave game development or change genres.
There is this truly shocking plan... Make game longer. Bundle several stories into one game.
YIKES, that's a bad take. Artificially pad out the story and compromise the actual quality in favor of minor reforms to a broken system, sure...
While it is sad to a developer severely affected by this, I think allowing any exceptions would degrade the system to nothing. The only reason why more scummy developers haven’t gotten through this system is because its flat and universal. Adding any ability to alter the refund window would open up the system to endless misuse.
He should regroup all of his games into a single game and just add new games into it as dlc chapters or whatever .
Someone suggested similar and I think that's just a bad idea. Conceptually good but bad in execution. That also requires resources and whatever else, and it's hardly a solution as no one should have to bundle their games just so that way they can keep people from exploiting the 2hr minimum play time. You're basically exploiting the thing you don't want people to exploit just to help your game and people will see right through that.
Technically you can refund DLC if they fall under the two hours, unless they changed that from when I last looked.
🤔This doesn't solve the Dev's issues, but the Dev could try a separate external funds, such as Subscribe Star & Patreon.
that's a pretty good idea actually. 😂
@@TheGravityShifter Left for Dead 2 actually combined a lot of campaigns in a single bundle and also campaigns from the first game which made it the definitive version to play, it's not a bad idea as long as you make it consistent and the transition from one game to the next doesn't feel jarring or disorienting.
I'm sure the "30 minute time limit for short games" will never get exploited. Don't cry when scammers find a way to make it impossible for you to refund their shovelware.
make the first 30 minutes which includes startup and such good then let the rest of the game be crap. Easy.
@@TGPDrunknHick
Fill the game with big corridors or lots of backtracking, there are also repetitive fetch quests and big open world with nothing in it. So many ways to pad gameplay.
People are already doing that so what's the problem?
@@Masaim6 I think the problem is with a 30 minute time limit it'll be easier to scam the players
What exactly stops you to return a gane after 29 minutes of initial delay?
Too many people abuse the system to return games just because they didn't like it. There is a difference between returning a game that doesn't work properly or is not what advertised, and returning it because you didn't like it.
If you go to a restaurant you are in your rights to not pay the bill if they give you a soup with a fly, with rotten ingredients, spoiled, or advertised as vegan but having meat. That is very different to not paying the bill because you asked for a soup, the soup is perfectly fine, but you personally don't like tomatoes, the soup have tomatoes, and you didn't ask for the ingredients. Tomatoes are perfectly fine, there is nothing wrong with the soup, and if you didn't like it, bad luck, but the restaurant paid for the ingredients and did nothing wrong. Next time do your research and ask for the soup without tomatoes.
I must say that 10USD for a 1.5 hour game is quite steep. I read that the estimated play time metric was only recently added. If you don't know that the title is only 1.5 hour and you're done all of a sudden (and paid 10 bucks) I do think you should be able to return.
@@chasejackson7248 That doesn't hold up. If you find out after 2000 miles that the car is only good for another 500 and you weren't told that when you bought it and it wasn't reflected in the price, I would say you could make a case against the seller of the car.
2000 miles vs 1.5 hour of gameplay also doesn't hold up. 10 USD for 1.5 hour gameplay is closer to a couple of hundred miles tops, which would make it eligible for a full refund imo.
@@LaurensPP Cars are a terrible analogy, you're ineligible for a full refund as soon as you drive it off the lot.
I mean 10$ for multiple hours of his work seems very worth it
@@3Rayfire I didn't start with the car though.
@@Jerry-ey5zi Uhh the developer isn't getting 10 in total, they're getting 10 for each player. 10 bucks for 1.5 hour of gameplay is hefty, period.
If developers would be able to claim that their game is 2h experience to prevent people from refunding it, this will be abused by asset flipers and other scources that plague the steam, so No this is not a solution for this situation.
Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading.
A game that says "10 hours of gameplay!" isn't misleading because you can, in fact, play the same game for 10+ hours. It's not lying.
@@Hauntaku Have you honestly never been dissatisfied with a purchase and have never returned anything you've bought in your life? Or perhaps returned a gift someone gave to you. How can anyone argue a restricted refund policy will be better than 'for any reason'
Maybe Valve could spend some of that 30% they get from billions in game sales on curation.
The problem with changing a good system would be that companies will take ANY chance they get to screw costumers to squeeze a few more pennies so it'll be a slippery slope.
this!
Except we have, you know, reviews visible right there all the time. If they take advantage of a potential new system and lie about the length of their game, the reviews will reflect that.
Heartbreaking to see those costumers are of the same mindset, when it comes to screwing developers.
@@mickeyd1999 Well not developers who dedicate enough time to make a game last more than 2 hours
@@FunSizedDragon I'm sure EA and Activision care a lot lol.
The problem with your 'solution' is that there is nothing stopping a scummy developer from abusing that 'lower playtime' claim to drop a turd in paying customer's laps and then laugh their way to the bank. Realistically, I don't think your solution is ANY less abusable, it just swaps which side of the transaction the potential abuser is on.
I think a better solution, would be, in cases where there is mass-refunding going on, to assign manual reviewers to the refund process and add a line about valve reserving the right to 'suspend or reverse the 2-hour refund period if there is suspicion of ill-intentioned abuse'. Then do a quick forum, reviews, and social media check to see if there is credible evidence of an actual issue that would trigger that mass refunding. They could even do something so simple as have developers making these short-form games stick in a 'game completion' achievement of some sort, and have Valve weigh it's status in the decision. Or simply bake a flag into the save file or an .ini about game completion status and have valve cross-check that.
Of course, Steam Achievement Manager could be an issue there, but it would cut down on the refunds that aren't actively malicious but are just flippant people being ignorantly malicious.
The problem here is Steam isnt assigning manual resources just Emika games doesnt get screwed. Steam isnt a charity they are a corporation they arent gonna bend over and dedicate resources for a couple of small indie devs.
Its up to Emika Games to make his game longer. Maybe add some filler to bump up that playtime length, everyone knows the 2 hour refund policy by now why not adjust to it instead of setting yourself to be screwed by unscrupolous people?
@@roslolian11 Exactly this is a him problem, it wouldn't be that hard for him to spend more time developing an extra level that's high quality, and that makes the game 3 hour's long, plus it also justifies raising the price tag from 13 to 15 or 17 dollars.
@@roslolian11 That's a dumb take. I don't agree with the length of the game, but he shouldn't have to change the design of his game because of a crappy policy that doesn't take the game's short nature into consideration. Valve is literally supported by Steam; they don't make hardly any games anymore. They have the time and resources to handle smaller abuses like this that slip through the cracks. They run a storefront; it's up to them to cover all bases.
@@AmericanAppleProd He could have chosen not sell on Steam. I mean, the refund policy is not an obscure feature that no one knows about. He probably signed a deal agreeing with the refund policy to have his game published on Steam.
@@AmericanAppleProd Agreed. I'm amazed at the Steam/Corporate Simps, attacking the developers.... Don't they realize that there's a difference between what you're obligated to do and what you SHOULD do? Apparently, the idea of trying to do good instead of harm offends them.
I wonder how things are going with a better company, GOG, that has a more generous refund policy? Their policy theoretically puts all games in the crosshairs, though its userbase might be less slimy about it.
I sincerely believe that the system shouldn't change. There are thousands of cases of shovel-ware games on steam that would immediately take advantage of the system if it is changed rather than making an experience worth the cost. I also have my doubts that the number of people getting refunds for these games is substantial enough for it to be the only reason the developer is having trouble. If this was a major problem, Portal 1 would have demonstrated this issue because the majority of players can beat it in less than two hours yet this was never the case.
It should be considered that many of these titles take more than thirty minutes to even configure correctly or to show if there are game-breaking bugs. Specifically with older titles having memory issues that cause the game to become unplayable. We should also consider that many games have artificial padding and make accessing it intentionally difficult to get over the two-hour refund (I.E Customization, Cutscenes, and tutorials.)
The best solution is not to change the system so it is favoring developers more but rather that the developers provide enough content to actually warrant playing the game for more than two hours. It is intrinsically the fault of the developer, not the player, if they can't create an interactive experience that engages players for more than two hours.
Steam was just a baby when Portal 1 was released and it was also originally exclusively in The Orange Box (bundled with 2 other games) on Windows (not Steam, it was an actual disk), Xbox 360 and PS3, and sold 3 million copies in its first year, so play time wasn't going to be an issue. It didn't become a stand alone game on Steam until 2010 (3 years later) and the refund policy didn't become what it is now until 2015. By that time Valve had enough FU money to not give a crap about their own IPs anymore anyways.
Going to strongly disagree with you here on your Portal example. There was no refund policy on Steam until 2015, so you could not refund Portal - most players bought it before that. Before 2015, you could only get maybe one refund in your account over it's entire lifetime and your reason had to be really good.
The developer could try and put the games together into one, and every new one is then a bought as a DLC.
This. Make it an “anthology” or whatever with selectable levels, sell for $10
@@selfishteammate Example is "book of demons"
I’ve actually seen quite of few people play Summer of ‘58 so this is surprising.
Me too.
Having shorter refund times for specific games is even more abusable than the current system in my opinion, and also unfair to the consumer as well.
The refund time isn't just to see if you like a game or not. It's also for figuring out technical issues and trying to find out why a game isn't running properly, or running at all. Those technical problems don't always show immediately right on the game's start up, either. The Steam version of Cube World for example is inefficiently optimized, which you may not notice right away, but when there's a bunch of NPCs on screen, even high-end CPUs may struggle very hard and that's something you may not notice until nearly two hours in when you go to raid a dungeon or something and is in my opinion, very refund worthy, as it's a critical flaw with the game, a major one, that severely negatively impacts gameplay to the point basically being unplayable.
And technical problems like above are not as "edge case" as you may think. They happen all the time. All computers are built differently, so almost someone always has a problem with even the most basic game.
Ultimately, a shorter refund time would mean I would give the game less of a chance (or no chance at all), because I have less time to see if I like it or not, and so it makes it a bigger risk to buy, and if a technical issue crops up, I have to basically know the solution immediately as I will not be able to afford any time at all to troubleshoot it, thus I would just have to chop it off as "game is broken" and just refund it right then and there. That may cause even more refund issues than before, because it could lead to a situation that the dev has a game that many people could be reporting isn't working, but doesn't know why because nobody has the time or patience to troubleshoot it, and those people aren't going to give the game another look, because, well, why would they? Half of their time is already spent and they aren't willing to risk not being able to refund a game that doesn't work. I sure wouldn't. I don't have income to throw away like that.
Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading.
No time limit is needed. Only proof of purchase and someone from the platform to review the request for a refund.
As much as I sympathize with the dev, as many have said already, developers must not be given exclusive control over the refund policy as this will quickly turn into an anti-consumer way to trick people into buying 10-minute asset flips with 5-minute refund limits. This has to be curated, but no one has come up with a viable solution yet.
Closest to a viable solution would be to provide refund time limits based on the price of the game up to a max of 2 hour playtime. $5 per 30 min playtime.
2 hours is already incredibly short. In most industries they have refund policies of at least a couple of days. I'm sorry but some indie dev using bought assets (at least the monsters seems like it) getting screwed because they made a low effort walking simulator should not be a reason for us to give even more ground regarding an already bad policy.
The 2 hours is to give someone time to see if and how well the game runs on your machine, not as a way to 'demo' the game. The only game I ever refunded was due to it not running in a playable state on my more up-to-date system.
@@JMcMillen Which is something that favors the devs far more than the consumers. A lot of people pirate games for this exact reason, to test out if a game is worth it or not. Piracy is also far less riskier and much easier than it has ever been but they removed demos because they knew a good bunch of people could figure out if they liked a game or not from that and that could lead to less sales.
As I said, gaming is the only industry with a refund window this small and no trials. It should never be the consumers job to ensure the devs earn money. If that is your belief you might as well join a multi level marketing scheme because it's about the same mentality.
Preach brother!
This guy is just complaining that no one wants to pay an excessive price tag for his 1.5 hour walking simulator. Those games do not take that much time or effort to make. He wants to make money that does not match the cost of production.
While trying to protect the small people you have to think about how the big assholes will abuse it. Otherwise the small people end up worse.
A 30 min refund policy for shorter games could result in short game indie dev's being flooded out by seas of less the 2 hour game garbage from wealthy studios looking for easy money which we know is a huge driving point for them. Exhibit A is epic game exclusivity deals from companys who don't even need the extra money. Basically they will fuck over consumers if it means a quick buck and we know this from the past.
Yep dev will just have to pad their game to 3 hours or more to avoid the assholes.
@@Toastcat890 yah frustratingly the best solution i can think of is "make your game longer" atm.
@@YaraUwU Steam could work some kind of flag that could be included in games like the achievements, once this flag is triggered at the end of the game you can't refund it. The only thing is that It would need human review from Steam on top so it is not abused.
@Zeen yeah sure.... Far Cry 5 has ending achievement by not playing for 15 minutes.
@@EkatariZeen
That wont work. Dev can just add an ‘end game’ achievement that get triggered as soon as you start the game. Then steam will have to check themselves that its legit or not. And at this point you will require steam checking every games that want refund time lower than 2hr. Not doable.
I think it's an incredibly tricky situation... Obviously these short form developers are getting hosed, but I don't think developers should be allowed to self identify the length of their games. If that were to happen, you'd have companies like Gearbox or Activision or something releasing a game and *claiming* it's only 2 hours long just to kneecap the return policy. Sure, Valve could monitor actual play time, but then that would be an active monitor on Valves part. This active monitor could be a good thing, but that could slow down approval time for games to end up on the system, which may turn away more indie game devs. Honestly, I think the best a dev can do is either target for a 2h10m completion time, or sell the game themselves. I think any other solution would end up getting abused by the less than scrupulous developers.
A lot of people have been saying the dev should put all their games into one larger 'game' so that it'd surpass the 2 hour mark
@@c0baltl1ghtn1ng If you can get a collection of game developers to work together and do something like that, sure! That said, the more developers in such a group, the more complicated legalities may end up being if, for some reason, someone wants to "change the deal". How? I don't know, but humans can suck, and suddenly, a simple idea can get grossly complicated.
Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading.
@@Hauntaku How do you prove any of that happened to you?
In the first case, how do you prove your not lying about the game "not working properly"? And if Valve is supposed to take your word for it, then how's that any different than the current return policy?
Hell, the game could be running just fine and your could simply be lying about it not working. Tell average gamer to go into their system log files and system messages to prove it? Even if you do know where that information is stored, who's going to comb through it? Valve? The Developer?
As for the other two... if physical harm/damage is happening, or there's deliberate misleading advertising, then that would be cause for Valve to simply yank the game all together. The developer would have much bigger issues than just a return policy. However, if only YOUR stuff is damaged, we're right back to the original argument... prove it.
If the game can be finished in less than 2 hours I feel it's already too short to begin with
especially for that price
for 1-3 dollars sure, not 13
@@feluto7172 it cost more than that to go to the theatre for 2 hours. it's only $10. not that big of a deal.
@@aperson3861 For a lot of people it is a big deal, most people wont have a lot more than that to spend on a luxury like video games
What if the game is made with speed running in mind?
@@RichterTheRat if you can beat it in less than 2 hours following regular progression then once the speedrunners brake it, it will take 8 minutes .. and probably speedrunners need to grind the game so they won't refund
I'd hate to see it picked up as "Steam hates indie devs and seeks to punish them with it's refund policy" just because some people can't behave.
The first time I read this there was a lot of complaints about the game being pretty awful and that it's damn short. What people don't appear to know is that the games length was unknown at launch. The "Average time to complete the game: 90 minutes" warning was just added yesterday. So people were never warned about the game time whatsoever. I haven't played it, don't plan on it.
Honestly he should bundle some of these games together. That should solve the issue
then something like this would happen:
-buy bundle, play game 1, refund bundle
-buy bundle, play game 2, refund bundle
-buy bundle, ...
on one hand, you should not be able to rebuy a refunded game, on the other hand, a refunded game can becomme much better (Final Fantasy erm what was it XXVII?, that mmo thing). there is no solution that covers all unfortunally.
Most bundles cannot be refunded.
@@balin1600
Yeah, MrALegend's right. The playtime doesn't reset if you refund a game.
Also refund isn't instant, you need to wait for approximately a day for a game to be refunded, plus several days for your money to come back if you paid through the wallet or over a week if you paid by card directly
Thats after the fact. Any other creator that wants to make short games would have to forcibly create a longer 1st chapter and then make their wanted short ones
I actually meant make a game that has all of them in it. Not individual whole exes, but a few games (enough to bypass the limit) are all in one collection, like a sonic mega collection for example.
The best advice I could give these kinds of indie games, is to simply make them a bit longer, personally scrolling down a steam page if I see a notice that there is only 30-90 minutes of game there, I'll just pass on it anyway, it's probably not worth the price or download regardless. If he really wants to just make short quick games, make a few and launch them all at once in one "game"
The problem is he uses the money from each one to afford to work on the next. What happens if he has writers block before he's able to finish enough to make one "game"/collection?
Dread X Collection for example, is a compilation series of small indie horror titles from different devs. A perfect way to get some bite-sized games into a one package.
that introduces one problem. not every game can go past a certian point with out dragging. the most important part of a games design is knowing length gives the game story and gameplay enough time to develop with out becoming stale. not knowing when to end a seris or game leads to messes like modern simpsons which has issues futurama never had since the creators know when to end the show
Doesn't really work with a lot of horror games. Often being short benefits horror games since they don't then drag out content which can easily become repetitive. A lot of longer Horror games either lose the fear or just become annoying, not saying they are bad games, but after a while you get used to the same scares and just start playing it like a regular game.
@@Arrusoh fnaf is a good example once it gets to the challenge night like the max night. the horror part is gone
I'm remember gamestation in the UK use to have a 7 day return policy. Was like expensive renting. Use to play the game for a week then swap it for a new one.
That's shop no longer exists.
Lmao
Sadly this is an edge case can't let this one case hurt consumer protections
Yup. Feel bad for the dev but it is what it is.
The refund policy should be 2 hours or like 50% of the length of the game. Depending on what is shorter.
Could easily be fixed with a special refund policy for games with an estimated game time of less than 2 hours. protection doesnt need to suffer if it can be adjusted
It's not as edge as you think, a number of short-form indie devs have complained about this. A solution would be to implement a refund policy that scales to a game's average length. Games that take less than 2 hours to beat by design could have, say, 30 min to 1 hour grace period, while games designed to be played for longer could maintain the 2 hour grace period.
@@drschwandi3687 You can't measure that.
Some games you won’t even have entered the first level basically by 2 hours. Others the game is already over. It should be able to be adjusted accordingly, but unfortunately I think we all know that if indie games like that could reduce the refund period maybe even remove it so would large titles.
I'd change it by percentage based thing if it can be implemented somehow like once you get through 30 to 40 precent of the game you can't ask for a refund
Sadly, removing it very well lets people scam on a bad game.
Agreed, maybe they should make it percentage based?
@@johnc._9822 and keeping it opens up the potential to scam the seller
This is my take on how the system could work.
The same baseline idea as yong's, but there should be a set minimum that you can't set your refund timer, as well as a video of you playing you game through to completion that a team sits down and watches, the team could be hired from the youtube community, you know those of us that watch lets plays. That being said, this is Valve we're talking about here, they don't like to actually support the devs unless they make the company lots of money.
They could even have it like a a volunteer thing, you sign up for a feature that will allow you to watch the entire video and report back to steam. In order to get access to this, you'd have to have 2fa set up, be pretty damn active on steam, and you would have to write a review about the game as to prevent people from bot spamming on the games.
Here's a solution: devs send Valve a request to make the game non refundable if the player unlocks a specific achievement (like a "Game Completed" or something).
That,s not a bad idea
even that can be incredibly easily abused by devs. they could just give the players the achievement early on in the game.
How about making a suggestion that would not be used *exclusively* by Digital Homicide wannabes?
@@crazyinsane500 haha
Look the only way to solve this is making a longer game. Most people don't feel it's worth wasting money on games that don't have replayability and too short
What if they made the games a compilation like the Dread X games?
People would probably just pirate it if they couldn’t refund it, I think a game like this would probably benefit a lot on game pass or something like that, it’ll get people playing it and create more income for the developer.
I think if this gets enough coverage you'll get people buying it just to support the developer.
Personally I wouldn’t usually buy a game this short, but I’d definitely be inclined to try shorter experiences if they where on game pass or if steam came out with an equivalent service that took a much smaller cut from the developers.
Indie developers should have a 15% or less cut on steam and the larger AAA games that make billions should have the usual 30% or so in my opinion.
Why not just Pirate in the first place if you're just going to refund though? You're just adding needless steps. If you don't want to support a dev then just don't support them, don't give them money then ask for it back.
@@Puremindgames I suppose people want the easiest option and I know a lot of gamers probably don’t care about the developers. To be honest AAA games have almost made people apathetic to it I’d say, AAA companies treat us so badly and try dehumanise the game development process as a whole, I’d much rather developer blogs showing the teams who are behind the games etc, but at the end of the day, people will buy what is cheapest for them, as long as they get the product I don’t think a lot of people care. It’s only when you hear of stories like these and developers packing it in, will people start caring.
@@Puremindgames I bet its because they didn't plan to actually refund it, I dont think its abuse after all :) They just arent happy with it being so short.
@@Kamtar34 But it's not like they didn't know it was short before buying, it's right there in the games description.
@@Puremindgames safer, faster download, multiplayer/coop and latest version of the game. That's why I would think people would rather buy and refund short games than pirating. If they really liked the game they would have kept it unless it has no replay value or too expensive. Steam's refund policy is very good but it could make use of an adaptive refund timer. Strategy games like civ and endless space take much longer than 2hours to start understanding what's happening.
I don't think those people would have purchased the game to begin with if they didn't plan to take advantage of the refund policy.
Good point
or maybe they just saw an opportunity and they took it?
@@mcsmash4905 Piracy is also an opportunity, they'd probably go there if wasn't for this
@@AlyssaMcNeil i stopped pirating simply cause of convenience , so thats fine by me , especialy if you want to try a game out that doesnt have a trial version , and frankly most of the old website i used to frequent are infested with popup ads and the links are breeding grounds for viruses (they always were to some extent but its pretty bad now)
Wonder if this is actually the plan to boost sales.
I mean the dev probably didn’t think his announcement would get all this attention
Sad to see, but its still one of the best refund policies out there, can hope that Valve will look into it to give some special treatment to short games. Its a very difficult situation to solve for sure.
It's easy to solve. Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading.
My issue with a scaling time limit is who judges how long a refund period is? Yeah with these indie devs a shorter period would be good.
But just call me a skeptic because I could see some people and companies trying to abuse the shortest playtime to prevent people from refunding their games when the product is actually very bad. And in my experience you don't really get into a lot of games until after the first half hour to an hour because of all the cutscenes, tutorials etc. So really in the hour between 1 and 2 hours is where you decide if the game is for you.
I've seen on the Steam forums where people spent the entire 2 hour time limit just troubleshooting a game and trying to figure out why it won't play.
Also how do they set that time? Like can they claim a game could be beaten in a half hour because a speedrunner could do that, or a roguelike where yeah technically you can beat it in a half hour but that SHOULD take weeks and weeks of building up a character and power.
@@TheLunarLegend or lucky RNG drops
Reminds me of a lesson learned from Earthbound. There was an egg store in a town that let you pay what you felt was fair, but it would go out of business if you didn't pay for anything once you beat the town's boss.
Sadly, it goes out of business whether you paid or not. But not paying also got you into a fight with the person watching. (You could pay less and get scolded, but zero would trigger a fight. Even though it was a weak enemy, I always felt bad.) On the plus side, you can still get free money at other stores that sell Fresh Eggs, though, like Burglin Park.
I don't think youtubers should artificially lengthen their videos either. Yet here we are watching Yongyea.
I literally just bought Summer of '58 after seeing it on a sale, 'cause it looked interesting. This is sad to see.
What type of Mr. Krabs do you have to be to play a game to it’s full length, enjoy it, and then ask for your money back. People are disgusting.
It's basically piracy, with extra steps.
This same people that would just watch a full 2h playthrough on YT enjoy it and not pay for the game, seriously if game is that short and doesn't have replayability then there are just too many ways to 'scam' the dev, again why would I pay for a linear single player game if I can just watch it on a someone else's channel which may make the experience even more entertaining and I don't even need to download or refund anything.
@@Tyanus2 in this case, don't purchase it. regardless of the length of a game, as long as the price is fair and if you enjoyed it for what it is, that is no excuse to refund the game. if you prefer going online and watching playthroughs of said game for free as your way of experiencing the story, then by all means go right ahead. it's much better to do that than take part in that refund bullshit.
@@Tyanus2 That's one hell of a false equivalence, my guy. There's only one reason someone would refund a game that they played to the fullest and enjoyed (speaking in terms of this specific situation since evidently a large number of people did it): they're greedy and a nasty person. There are, however, a multitude of reasons why someone would watch a play through on yt instead of buying the game. Examples being that they can't afford the game, the game isn't available in their country/region, their PC can't run the game and they can't afford to upgrade, etc etc. So yeah, bad take is bad.
@@Tyanus2 Just like people spend 20 bucks for a 2hr movie, there is no refund afterwards, you consumed the media, period.
I actually expected this from GoG, given their more forgiving refund policy.
Shhh! Dont give them ideas.
With gog refund policy one could finish Witcher 3 or Skyrim
far less trolls on gog
AKA "Idiot dev throws a bitch fit because people aren't putting up with his greed" And "Before Your Eyes" is ALSO a 1.5 hour game where the dev is charging $10. OF COURSE it's going to be refunded. Price your games appropriately and people won't refund them.
Based af.
If they scale it they'll need to put out a huge disclaimer or something like "this game is short and must be played no longer than 30 minutes"
That would kill impulse purchases
This is the example of the old principle:
If something can be abused, it will be abused, even if it is in the essence a decent solution.
That said, Steam's refund policy is generally good, if not a bit too general and vague.
I think it should cover some serious exceptions:
- games that are simply too short to count that reasonably (unless the game info lies about the length)
- situations when bringing the game to working state may take way too long time (especially in case of older titles that may suffer compatibility issues and require ton of tinkering to simply force them to work)
- time spent in menus, tutorials, splash screens, intros or unskippable cutscenes should not count
- gamebreaking bugs appearing late in the game
You think valve would care to count cutscenes and menus time? Nope.
Games already lie about alot, from shitty indie games lying about their quality to shitty AAA titles lying about being the Bob Dylan of videogames.... I'm not trusting them with telling the truth about game length
your own solutions are ripe for abuse.
@@klaykid117 lmao the irony
Refunds should only be given out if the game doesn't work properly, causes harm/damage, or is deliberately misleading.
I think altering the refund policy would be a mistake, because you can bet that triple a game publishers will take advantage of this. We already know how greedy a lot of them are.
I'm actually surprised. I was under the impression that Steam doesn't even allow you to ask for a refund for games this short. 🤔
I hope this doesn’t make game refunds in general harder. Only two hours to know if a game is really for you is usually not enough for most games.
I think it certainly depends on the type of game. Most RPG's or online multiplayer based experiences may take a bit longer but something that's more story driven with less need for extreme mechanical skill to be learned I feel most people would get the gist of or know if the story has already invested them enough by the hour and a half mark anyway.
@@caldw615 alot of story driven games have "intro movie + tutorial" longer than 2h =\
@@forthegod Which story driven games are you playing that do that? Most visual novel or indie games that are story based can't do overly long cinematics and rely on the player just reading a lot of the dialogue. It's the trade off for focussing more on the story itself budget wise.
I dont really feel like that's Steam's fault in this case. If theyve been making games this short for a while now, they should understand the systems in place on the platform they're selling on. Sad but this seems like a case of not knowing the platform.
And they are only releasing their games in steam. So its a no brainer to make a game that will only last 2 hours.
They probably believed what many comments here seem to think: that as long as people like the game they won’t return it. Unfortunately learned the hard way many people will take advantage of an easy exploit regardless if they like your game or not
having exceptions for edge case would need manual review of the games, or else we have the opposit case that Devs can abuse those "exceptions" and sell shuffle ware without refunds
Originally I was with you about there being an ability to change the refund period, but reading other comments convinced me otherwise, I believe that making a 'checkpoint' Ingame or the period of time any shorter would lead to malicious shovelware devs scheming to make an easy buck, and unfortunately I don't exactly trust steam enough here that I'd be given an opportunity to make a case if I fell into such a trap. It sucks, and my heart goes out to the dev.
Unfortunately I don't see a best solution here, either consumers can get screwed or devs are forced to potentially drag out a game for over two hours,either murdering the pacing or murdering the short bitesized amount of games on steam.
That being said, as I am a consumer I'll side with them. I believe that if this experience actually had been worth it to people, they wouldnt have refunded the game. This means that the game experience probably wasn't worth the amount of money to them which again is a shame but I think they're within their rights to do.
Obviously people will abuse the refund system but I think in the long run it's less of a loss if consumers abuse it than if devs do. I'm not a dev though.
This is going to be a hot take but, if you're a shovelware producer, which most 1 hour games are, your quantity over quality approach is not suited for Steam. Yes it's sad that people abuse the refund policy - but this is like 'taking some time gather your thoughts' after running into a rainstorm and getting drenched as a result.
The solution would have been to wear a raincoat (don't do shovelware) or bring an umbrella (choose a storefront that doesn't have a refund policy such as PlayStation).
No, playing a game for 30 minutes is rarely long enough to know if you want to refund or not.
if a game is 1.5 hour long that's 1/3 of the game. Think, Black Binder, think!
I’m sorry but a gamer doesn’t 2 full hours to find out whether they’ll like the game or not.
@@Sam-pie so? you could say it about any game. If you normally have 2 hours to claim a refund for 40+h game, you can get 38 hours of bible in pdf format. Logic is hard I suppose.
@@peacemakerpewpew how would they know how long the game is before they’ve beaten it?
@@BlackBinderGames Google. Or in case of those games it literally says it on store page, you can see it in this video. My point is: it depends on the game how much time you need to see if you like it or not. For example if you play Tetris for a 5 minutes you have pretty good idea what's the game about 😀 we talking about special cases, no-one is taking your 2h refund policy away.
I have to wonder about this story since no other developers have chimed into say they also had the same problems. This is a developer that has an overpriced game, time to price value, with very little replay value as well. Their page now promently displays the time of the game but I've seen comments say that before the developer spoke up that wasn't the case. How many played this game found out it was an extremely short game for $9 got mad and refunded the game? How many refunds did the developer actually get they were vague on that detail? They complained about a refund policy and now people are piling on to buy their games and they've changed their mind about finishing their new game. They knew about steam's refund policy when they created their game and that should have factored that into the development of their game. They should have planned for a certain percentage would be refunded, added more content or replay value, bundled several smaller games together to make a longer experience or found a different place to sell their game. I don't agree with refunding a game after completing it, even if I felt it was a bad experience. Yet at the same time I also think this developer shares some of the blame in not planning ahead on how their game was going to sell.
If steam changes their refund policies it could open up abuse in other areas with developers claiming their games shorter than they are, more bug problem earlier in games, or shorter windows to figure out technical issues. It could make larger abuse issues to help out a very small subset of steam developers who actually haven't been complaining in mass to begin with.
This is indeed an overpriced game, it is basically PT with less story and less replay-ability costing you money to demo it. Most people would refund a game like this if it didn't amaze them.
Reading up on this and people's various comments it seems far more likely this is a big publicity campaign for the developer and their games, and has very little to do with Steam or a "broken" refund policy. Just some viral marketing that definitely worked in this case imo! The sales for this game in the last week have probably surpassed all the refunds this developer has ever had before now...
Meanwhile Phil Fish is still in Fez 2 limbo...oh wait nah he quit.
That's depressing to hear. Especially since the game is apparently good.
It's a shame this ended like that, but to be fair if some of those people that enjoyed it went for a refund afterwards, they would have probably not purchased it in the first place had they not known they can play through it all and refund it after.
It's the same argument as with piracy. Piracy has negligible impact on sales cause it is mostly practiced by people that would not be willing to at all or could not afford the game in the first place.
In many cases pirates even use this to DEMO games and then buy them later. So it literally gets more sales then you'd otherwise get which is hilarious.
Man, this is gutting. I just played Summer of 58 and the FDTD demo. Some of the scariest games I’ve ever played.
It's a simple solution. Put all the games into one purchase.
If you're going to release a game on steam, you have to consider this policy and either make a longer or more engaging game.
This is the free market at work.
funny how some of the most memorable games are pretty close.
Misao and Mad father comes to mind. They can be sped run in like 10 minutes lol
Valve's refund policy is required by law in some countries. The developer should simply bundle multiple games in one installer. Seems like it is the developer refusing to adapt.
That sounds like a failing business model. How many people are gonna wanna buy a bundle from someone whose games they've never played or whose games just don't all appeal to them? Even Valve probably couldn't have pulled that off if The Orange Box had been their first release.
I can't imagine more people are refunding than not.
I think the obvious solution here would be to not make 2 hour long games and price them at $20+.
If you can get complete 60 hour experiences for the same cost, a short walking sim looks like highway robbery in comparison.
That's not a solution, all of Emika Games products are below $12. And they still got nailed with refunds.
@@doczombiex sorry a 2 hour game? I won't buy it even if it is less than $10SGD
They should not refund if they knew that it is a 2 hour game and actually completed it.
But I bet they didn't declare it as a 2 hour game upfront and I would have refunded if the game suddenly ended at 2 hour when i was expecting it to be at least 10 hour plus game
@@doczombiex His games are not below $12. They are 2 hour walking simulators that charge WAY too much for the little effort they took to create. Players saw this and acted appropriately.
Shitty take.
So I thought i'd look into this as i've seen Emika Games pop up in Steam before and that example he showed, where somone gave a positive review and refunded, makes up about 2-5% of all of the reviews on all of his games. There are hundreds of people who have left positive reviews and not refunded. So either i'm missing something or he really is trying to drum up attention for sales
Edit: Yes I realise a lot of people don't leave reviews but that only leaves a lot of assumptions and no clear data.
It's possible, but even if that's true that doesn't mean that he's not getting burned by the policy. Let's assume that the people who didn't comment but felt the same is a 1:1 ratio. That 2-5% of users could still mean the difference between earning enough to justify the time/money put into making the game and losing money instead. And even if he's not having trouble doesn't mean that someone else who does short form games isn't. I'm not interested in buying this guy's games, but I do want Steam to do something about this blanket policy. I think focusing on if he's benefiting from bringing this to attention is missing the point a bit.
@@SharmClucas Oh absolutely, I wouldn't say it's not a problem because it's a very generic refund policy to cover such a variety of games in length. I'm just not a fan of when developers make a complaint but offer flimsy evidence to support it which doesn't help anyone.
But to be fair it has raised more awareness towards it so maybe it will promote over Devs to show figures to show Steam how bad the issue is and push them to look for an alternative method.
The whole situation just seems fishy.
This may be one of those videos Yong will apologize over once the dev gets exposed as running a typical asset flip scam, especially since Yong didn't actually show footage of the games he talked about: An unusual thing for him.
@@crazyinsane500 CZcams exists and there a ton of footage and playthrough of this game online. Clearly isn't an asset flip scam. Kinda makes 0 sense to draw attention to yourself if u are the one scamming.
@@pingdragonify And yet, with all this footage available: Yong STILL didn't use it. Shouldn't that raise an eyebrow?
Also, attracting attention despite it not making sense when one's running a scam hasn't stopped plenty of scam devs. That's how we get infamous individuals like Alex Mauer and Digital Homicide. These are people who never consider just making a good game in lieu of dedicating themselves 100% to the scam, they're not people with good sense.
There's a million reasons one might return a game within that 2 hour timeframe. I'm super not convinced that an abnormally large percentage of people did it maliciously.
Right? If the game is only two hours, and the players are being charged 13 USD for it, I feel it is fair to ask for a refund if a player finished it and didn't have fun doing so.
Yong seems to have a little too much sympathy for these walking simulator devs
Sorry. No game that has 2 hours worth of content and no replay value is worth 13 USD.
plus they are walking simulators with little play value in the first place
It needs to be said that on one hand, some of this is certainly an abuse of the refund system.
But that abuse stems from the other hand which is that a 1-2 hour horror walking simulator isn't worth 10 dollars.
For a game that runs 90 mins with a return policy for 2 hours, the return time should be adjusted at most to half an hour.
And how can Steam know the game's length?
@@dustojnikhummer this might surprise you, but I'm sure the multi billion dollar corporate machine known as valve can add a box to the publishing page and then auto adjust the time appropriate.
Not exactly difficult.
Its not even "renting" since you have to actually pay for those. Here you enjoy the game then get your full money back .
and punish the people that typically judge a game after an hour or 2 for longer games? If people are going to refund the game, they're going to refund the game and any kind of developer should expect this.
@@wdf70 he obviously meant for shorter titles.
As shitty as it is, I've seen this story making it rounds so I'm sure he's going to now make more money then he ever would have otherwise.
Funds constantly being charged back isn't very good financially though and risks the banks just noping the fuck out and black listing you.
Definitely a rock and hard place.
Smaller games should have their own refund policy.
Anyone completing the game and leaving a positive review while also refunding the game is trash.
Those could be the dev's friends or throwaway accounts he himself made.
I am calling bullshit on this dev. He is doing something wrong and then blaming the players.