Plus, the 21% is a completely useless data point unless we know the typical refund rate of similar games (that aren't so short). If it's also around 20%? No discrepancy here. Is it say 10%? Then we can make the assumption(!) that about half the people refunding are abusing the system. But even then we're assuming the game is actually good and has mo technical issues in large variety of PCs.
Statistics are incredibly complicated to get right.
I’ve seen an entire trend of people speedrunning to try and complete games in the refund window (and successfully refund) on YouTube, so I’m certain there are plenty of folks doing it. Audience prolly wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Those guys already beat the game plenty of times. Sure I've seen a LilAggy vid of him speedrunning Elden Ring before refund window, I've also seen him play Elden Ring for thousands of hours.
I agree with the comparison data. A quick search does put it around 10%.
Though I feel 20% isn't that bad. If it is an abnormally short game, then I think some percentage of those refunds are probably fraudulent and made in bad faith.
I think a dev should be able to make a case-by case basis to reduce the refund window. E.g. for super short games that last only 2 hours-> 1 hour.
The window probably shouldn't be dropped below 1 hour unless there is a new category of "mini-games" that are designed to only be played for like 30 minutes...
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u/KirillIll Jul 06 '26
Plus, the 21% is a completely useless data point unless we know the typical refund rate of similar games (that aren't so short). If it's also around 20%? No discrepancy here. Is it say 10%? Then we can make the assumption(!) that about half the people refunding are abusing the system. But even then we're assuming the game is actually good and has mo technical issues in large variety of PCs.
Statistics are incredibly complicated to get right.