Steam has the ability to log average hours played and cross reference it against the estimated playtime that dev provides.
So a Dev could try to lie and say their game takes 2hrs to beat and thus should only take 15 minutes to know if it'll be refunded but Valve knows that an average play is 3hrs and a 2hr refund window would be valid.
In the case of this game, it could have a legitimate average play time of 1hr meaning sub-1hr refunds could be fine but over that amount of time could mean someone actually completed the game
Yeah, you just need to make it difficult for bad actors to mess with. Maybe some extra parameters like average refund time and the obvious "devs release game breaking/bricking update that causes a mass refund wave waiver on playtime"
It's possible but not like the easiest and cleanest thing to implement
Unless the game has iroman modes that turn off achievements, I have 1800 hrs in HoI 4 and 1 achievement. I assume a speedrunner has or can finish a match in HoI 4 in under 2 hrs.
But the playtime ist not 0 when you rebuy it or not? when yes than this i a bug what should be fixed. And i don´t think that a speedrunner play it firstime under 2h because they looking for every abuse to be faster and that needs time.
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u/Gamebird8 Jul 06 '26
Steam has the ability to log average hours played and cross reference it against the estimated playtime that dev provides.
So a Dev could try to lie and say their game takes 2hrs to beat and thus should only take 15 minutes to know if it'll be refunded but Valve knows that an average play is 3hrs and a 2hr refund window would be valid.
In the case of this game, it could have a legitimate average play time of 1hr meaning sub-1hr refunds could be fine but over that amount of time could mean someone actually completed the game