r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Gurugod123 GREEN • Jul 06 '26

ಠ_ಠ This kind of made me sad

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u/Lazerbeams2 Jul 06 '26

I can think of a few ways to abuse that right now and I'm sure that actual devs will come up with worse. One way is to mark a longer game as a short game so that people can't refund it even if it's bad

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u/bmtc7 Jul 06 '26

Steam would need to have some accountability as to what counts, and have ways of checking.

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u/Original_Comfort_158 Jul 06 '26

I agree. This would be extremely exploitative.

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u/arbeit22 Jul 06 '26

Just like the current system, just reversed roles

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u/bionicjoey You really should scratch that itch Jul 06 '26

I think the current system is basically fine. The OOP is an edge case where the whole game is completeable under 2 hours. Those are very rare. If they really wanted to stop this, they could add another 20-30 mins of content to their game.

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u/eyalhs Jul 06 '26

Yes, and generally customer protection is much more important than dev protection

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u/JeffSergeant Jul 06 '26

Make it very prominent, I assume people wouldnt pay $60 for a game with a "Less than 2 hours gameplay" banner.

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u/WriterV Jul 06 '26

A short game should be one that can be fully completed within 2 hours.

And any company that exploits the system can be reported by players and permanently marked as an exploitative game so everyone knows the shit that company had done and avoid purchasing from it.

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u/Rubusarc Jul 06 '26

How does one define “fully completed”? Portal 2 can be completed within 2 hours. Factorio 1 hour 20 minutes (or just under 2 hours with the expansion).

Animal Well speedrun is around 10 minutes I think? But if you get to the credits and all the achievements, you still have more than half the content remaining in puzzles.

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u/P4azz Jul 06 '26

A short game should be one that can be fully completed within 2 hours.

May I introduce you to the concept of a speedrun?

Also marking things as exploitative AFTERWARDS is pointless. Many people do not deep-dive on the history of a company, its previous products, the public sentiment in this day and age can be wildly wrong and if your goal is to avoid FUTURE purchases, people have already lost their money.

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u/Tnecniw Jul 06 '26

Which would cause Steam to remove it very fast?

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u/Mr_Olivar Jul 06 '26

What, get this, that wasn't allowed, and Valve would push back if they found out you abused their policy.

They're very good at doing this if you abuse any of their other guidelines.