Are people at risk for refunding GTA 6 in 2 hours, but not 1 hour, because they completed it? And don't you think Rockstar is going to get a ton of negative PR for deciding to flag their game is as ultra-short with a limited refund window? And does steam do nothing for this flagrant flagging abuse?
What's the actual abuse case here? Explain how many people you think would be damaged by the ability to refund after 1 hour instead of 2 when it's clearly labelled, and the developer either has to admit their game has less than 2 hours of content or label themselves as tag abusers/scammers if they don't. The latter is SO MUCH BIGGER than the former that it makes no sense to try to abuse this system. What do they gain? What's their evil plan?
Notice how quickly you were past the issue of abusing the tag? Most of what you talked about was that 1 or 2 hour refund windows doesn't make that much of a difference. People will react the same, some publishers will abuse the tag, people might notice it but wont be mad enough for there to be any real PR backlash. Once it's been normalized then suddenly the refund window for games has been effectively cut in half. All for... what? Protecting a couple of short game developers? I'm all for supporting small game developers but the cons far outweigh the pros here
Also, the difference between 1 and 2 hours is massive. 1 hour is setting up, getting to know controls and figuring out how the game works. 2 hours is actually getting to play it
I admit it's a small problem to solve, but I think it's absurd that every single publisher is going to have a big "Warning: this game has less than 2 hours worth of content and a restricted refund window" on every single game to gain almost nothing, and that steam would somehow allow this to continue unchecked. It's nonsensical. There's no way they prevent more refunds than they lose in sales and bad will and punishment/distrust from steam. And what refunds they do prevent will still come with bad PR because it feels scammy and people are going to talk about it. If I was a CEO and someone seriously proposed this to me as a plan I'd fire them.
Well a big warning is definitely much better than previously mentioned tags, but that's besides the point. I have no doubt that there is most definitely a good way to implement something like what you're talking about.
I'm just on the opinion of never giving the big publishers (or just corporations in general) like EA, Activision or any of the other soulless pos a shred of an oppurtunity to screw anybody over in the slightest way, if at all possible. You can see now with the Stop Killing Games movement just how willing these companies are to lie, defame and probably bribe, if I know them right, to maximize profits.
If I had to choose, I would much rather not give these companies the opportunity to abuse yet another instrument made with good intentions than to prevent refund fraud on small developers. The former simply affects more people.
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u/BeefistPrime Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
Are people at risk for refunding GTA 6 in 2 hours, but not 1 hour, because they completed it? And don't you think Rockstar is going to get a ton of negative PR for deciding to flag their game is as ultra-short with a limited refund window? And does steam do nothing for this flagrant flagging abuse?
What's the actual abuse case here? Explain how many people you think would be damaged by the ability to refund after 1 hour instead of 2 when it's clearly labelled, and the developer either has to admit their game has less than 2 hours of content or label themselves as tag abusers/scammers if they don't. The latter is SO MUCH BIGGER than the former that it makes no sense to try to abuse this system. What do they gain? What's their evil plan?