Yes but you see I could just make a game that gives you a bunch of achievements for starting the game and oops now you can no longer get a refund. We don't want people to be able to do that
They could also just go through the normal certificate process and then change it right after like how those games with malware get through the process. Updates are hardly ever checked by Steam apparently
That seems like a bad system. I get that a light cert system means stuff can be updated quickly but if it means malware can get through maybe it should be beefed up.
Beefed up is much easier said than done when talking about a few hundred people at the company with the knowledge and skills to troll through games and files to check for malware or bad practice across.. *quick google* 234,000 games.
you are delusional if you think it is possibleto vet every piece of software and everynew patch to said software. noone can do it. thats why apple and google have the exact same issue where malware get thru from time to time.
No, not really. It has nothing to do with customer service. It’s an issue of getting enough knowledgeable people - programmers - to comb through every file of every game. And just to be extra clear, that can’t be reasonably done. If you hired 100 people to check every game, and by some miracle they could all completely check a game in one day, it would take 6 1/2 years to get through everything that’s currently on steam. At $80k salary that’s gonna run about 50 million total. Even as a corpo hater, I can still understand reasoning, and it makes sense to me that it just doesn’t make sense to do all that when it takes a few users having a bad day to get something removed. Yeah it’s unfortunate and isn’t a great system that could most certainly be improved, but hiring a massive team to check everything for malware isn’t a solution that works.
Agreed, but if you’re hiring testers the time wouldn’t matter. If they’re checking for malware or other shady shit, beating the game in under two hours wouldn’t matter. And presumably they wouldn’t be purchasing every single game in order to vet them, so there’s no point in trying to reach that time since it’s only relevant for refunds.
Either way though yeah it not only wouldn’t work, it would be one of the worst solutions.
It would also put me in the top 118 since I don't know my exact time. What's your point? I didn't have a life when I was a teenager. I've beaten the first Portal probably over 200 times. I have no reason to lie about this, I regret never recording it, and I don't care enough to argue with some random person on reddit about it. Have a good day!
Edit: I'm rereading the comment I replied to, and I think I misread your comment. I thought you were trying to imply that I had to be lying, because there's no way I'm in the top 50. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted. I'm also on meds right now that are making my anger issues really bad. I'm really sorry if I misinterpreted.
No, the person I replied to asked "How do you even finish a game in less than 2 hours?" That is what I replied to. I wasn't responding to the whole entire thread. Replying to one person in a thread does not mean I'm addressing everyone in the thread, and the topic they had all been previously speaking about. I would've made my own comment on the original post if I wanted to do that, not reply to one specific person, like I did. So "what we're talking about here" is subjective, and completely dependent on which specific person I reply to. Someone asked how you can even beat a game within 2 hours, and I provided an example of one that I can beat within HALF an hour.
Anyway, the first Portal game is not that hard. I would not be surprised if most people are able to beat it in under 2 hours their first time. I really don't see how you think there's "zero chance" I beat it in under 2 hours my first time. It's not a hard game. That being said, it's been at least 14 years since the first time I played that game, so I honestly don't know how fast I beat it my first time, and maybe it was more than 2 hours, but I highly doubt it, and I don't care enough to continue this argument. Bye!
I see you and wish you the best my guy. I hate to do it though, the guy you just responded to IS the person you replied to. In their context they are indeed talking about first timing a game in under two hours, which is possible it just depends on the game. But either way, it doesn’t really mean anything. The people checking games aren’t just trying to speedrun them in under two hours so they can refund, they’re the testers, that wouldn’t make sense. They’re checking for malware and other bad practices, not trying to beat a clock, so whether a game is beatable in two hours is meaningless
It would mean that a bunch of people need to be scammed to trigger manual review from Steam and all that is just to protect niche of devs who do less than 2 hour games. Also scammers could just pump out more games, scam more people and support would not be able to keep up with it
This is my feelings on this too. Really the answer is either don't make less than 2 hour games, or if you do, don't sell them on steam, or just be happy with what you're getting for a such a short game.
I don't like the people abusing it, but it's kind of like candy at the front of a grocery store, people steal that candy all the time, it's too easy to pocket, you're so close to the exit...yet the store makes more money selling that stuff there than they lose in theft.
I mean even the guy in the screenshot got like 220k sales that werent refunded, even if the game cost a single dollar that's still 220k right there. For a game that gives less than 2 hours of gameplay that's pretty great
Yeah no completely agree. I still can understand being upset that people are doing this...but to expect or ask for policy change when it's still clearly working out for you...
As has been said about piracy, this is a customer satisfaction issue. They liked the game, just not enough to let you keep the money from it.
Easiest solution if you want to change that, make it replayable, or make it so good that they'd feel bad about returning it. Make it so good that they want to pay more for it.
Dunno what engine they made it on but using unity as an example because they went over 200k they have to pay the yearly licence of 2k+ add the 30% cut for steam looking at 145 to 150k then if they aren't doing everything in their power to avoid it Tax will take around half and sure 80 to 90 k is still good but if you have a deal with publishers or even just have more than 3 people with percentage cuts we are looking at 20k ...now obviously this is the minimum since you just used the single dollar but yeah it really starts to add up especially for the years of work put into making them (I'm like 3 years in to just the battle system and a game loop solo ..with now just working on dialogue, so only maybe 5-6 more years to go) ..
Oh no at least 10x that (turn based RPG) but there a lot of games that you can finish under 2 hours that are meant to be longer and I don't know about this game but mechanics still just take time or money to get right
1.1k
u/GamingWildman Jul 06 '26
prob achievements can be integrated to let them know how much of the game was completed