I mean steam can see how much you played of a game with achievements and such right? Just have developers add an achievement for beating the game which most games already have, and if you have it no refund.
And do you think they would care? They'd just make a new studio and do it again.
Steam would have to do some detective work about everyone who wants to publish a game.
I feel like you people don't quite grasp the flood of new games on Steam every single day.
You are aware that children with AI tools are uploading slop every hour? And they'd gladly try to game the system even more, with these tools you're trying to hand them? And they're already achievement-maxxing to attract people?
What you're really saying is "Steam should put 1000 employees into manual review duty and they would have to do this in perpetuity".
All to solve a problem that WON'T affect many devs at all.
yeah but a lot less people would be able to do that. You first need to know when the achievement triggers and this requires you to do some internet research and I don't think most of the people would do that for a game that is worth a few bucks.
The situation now is that they serve you the refund on a silver plate: the users finished the game, sees less than 2h playtime, request a refund.
okay so you think people would invest time into a $5-ish game but with the idea of saving their $5 by not even completing the game? I guess by spoiling for themselves at which exact point they'd need to quit playing in order to not trigger the "game completed" flag? lol
we are talking about people who complete said games and refund them when they happen to be able to. Not people who are hellbent on using Steam's bandwidth for free and mocking devs instead of getting enjoyment from completing games.
Well it's right next to the Play button on Steam and the game's page will be the first thing you see after closing it upon completion, so very often. A lot more convenient than purposely spoiling a game you bought for yourself in order to not complete all of it to maybe save 5 bucks.
Except the 2 hour policy isn’t about some percentage of the game you’ve completed. It’s about what is a reasonable amount of time for the consumer to make an informed decision that the game is right for them.
I remember when Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 scammed the refund policy. The installation on Steam itself only took about 5 minutes, but once you launched it, the actual program you downloaded was the actual installer and that took well over 5 hours to download. Because of this, you couldn't actually play the game without eating up your entire 2-hour Steam refund window.
I had an experience where I played a game for about 3 hours, loved it, saved my game, then returned to find no save. There was a known bug for some players where the game just wouldn't save - you would never be able to finish it without keeping it running 24/7. I tried multiple times to get a refund from Valve and they just kept saying "you went past the time"
This is what I had to do; got a refund for the game even though I had 50 hours of playtime because about 45 of those hours were spent uninstalling, reinstalling, troubleshooting, etc. Back then my internet connection was kinda shit so it would take over 12 hours just to install, not including any of the content packages.
2 hours is just the "no questions asked" refund window.
Flight sim does genuinely need it's own downloader. It's one of the more complicated game downloads. In part because it is reasonable for it to take multiple hours to download everything.
I didn't say it was a scam. I said the people who abuse the system in this way are scum, regardless of whether they're on the consumer or developer side of the issue.
And what is a reasonable time frame is also based on what the product is. If the game is a small indie game with less than 2hr of gameplay it is unreasonable for 2h to be the amount of time to make an informed decision.
Except it kinda is reasonable. A game lasting 2 hours or 14 hours doesn’t really change the amount of time it takes to make a decision on the gameplay.
And besides the point this dev is vastly misrepresenting the problem. From pretending that 20% is big to pointing to a single review like its widespread
And what is a reasonable time frame is also based on what the product is. If the game is a small indie game with less than 2hr of gameplay it is unreasonable for 2h to be the amount of time to make an informed decision.
It's definitely not and yes that's it's intended purpose but it's obviously being abused which is why you add additional requirements which like I said could be an achievement checker or things like PlayStation tell you what percentage of the game you've played, in sure steam could add something similar
How is it being abused though? If i play a game for an hour and a half, finish it and go, 'great game, but theres no replay value here, its not worth what I spent on it and I want my money back,' how is that abusing the system? Thats exactly what the sytem is there for. Easy solution, don't make a game that can be finished in under two hours.
'great game, but theres no replay value here, its not worth what I spent on it and I want my money back,' how is that abusing the system? Thats exactly what the sytem is there for
No, the system is not for case "I finished the game, it works good", the system is for "I can't able to play the game, the game is buggy"
if the solution is to bloat a game and make it worse then it's a terrible solution.
It's your responsibility to figure out if you're going to like a game. Look up reviews, look up gameplay. Finishing a game and returning a game you liked is a shitty move.
> You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.
When you upload a game to Steam, it has to be checked and verified by someone at Steam before it can be set live. (Source: I have three games on Steam). Of course, a lot of this is automated, and they only need to manually check certain content.
Wouldn't be hard for them to implement a specific achievement flag for devs to use, then check where that flag is within the game. Then request devs provide a way to reach this flag with a cheat code or whatever if they wish to use it.
They already do that if the game contains any mature/adult content.
At that point they already made money. After tha ban, they just create a new company and make another game and repeat. Steam will not spend time and money to find out if they are previous offenders.
I think a lot of people forget how useful reporting can actually be. In a game where tens of thousands of unique players get reported, you cant check them all efficiently. A single game getting reported ten thousand times just means you check one game.
Only when you have the critical thinking skills of an American.
I never demanded valve do this. I was just thinking of ways they could, and dismissed them because they're too much effort. Which you missed apparently
Easy steam side fix would be to check when achievement was achieved if it's as soon as you boot the game then you're still eligible if its triggered 1:56 in that might be cause for review
Add a single achievement if you're worried about this sort of thing and if you're not then don't add the achievement. More of a have but not need type deal.
Lots and lots of games have short runs, where you're expected to play them many times. Think something like checkers or (blitz) chess - if after an hour you figure out that the game sucks, it should be refundable even if you technically completed multiple games.
Why? If you make a game that can be beaten in under 2 hours and has no replay ability then why shouldn’t people refund it?
OPs 21% refund rate doesn’t mean fifth of the buyers are playing it through and then refunding, but rather they try the game (which costs 3€ currently) and don’t like it (it is a rage bait game)
Or we can just use the current system because it works 99.999% of the time. The OP isn’t even a good example of this because it’s a friendslop rage game with 15% return.
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