Steam Refunds : How will it effect an indie?

Steam have announced that they will be allowing refunds. Obviously this is great news for consumers, and as a consumer of games I am happy, but as a developer of games I don't quite know where to stand.

In some regions boxed PC games cannot be refunded - a player could have burned the contents of a disc, returned it and in effect got a free game. Once a game is downloaded, users of Steam are capable of making a copy of the game and not playing it on the Steam client. This means that even if a user does get a refund, they may potentially have a copy of the game - free game.

There will be conditions on the new rules Steam have set out - A user cannot have 2 hours or more playtime on a game and the purchased game must have been brought within 14 days of requesting a refund. At present I am concerned about the first part of the rule. I know from using Steam that if I turn a game on without using the Steam client, the recorded time on game does not increase. Someone can play a game for this 14 day period for any amount of time, if the developer has not implemented a way to force players to need Steam open to accomplish what they want in-game - A positive way to encourage users to play games on Steam could include Steam Achievements or online multiplayer (but not every game is online, works online or should be online). Another concern I have is that some games can be completed within a 2 hour period. This 2 hour period Steam have effectively made up undermines some games by allowing someone to complete a game in let's say 1 hour 50 minutes, getting a refund and having a free gaming experience, which they enjoyed - why should these games be penalised for Steam's arbitrary 2 hour period?

Understanding some fundamentals of consumer law, a purchasers contract is with the products vendor, not the products manufacturer. This to me would mean once a developer has taken commission from Steam, a refunded or non-refunded game will not affect their income whatsoever - I am however unable to get this verified. Steam apparently pays developers at the end of every calendar month the commission they are due, so a purchase and refund within a month may (probably will) equate to a developer receiving no money for the sale.

On the upside, the public announcement of allowing refunds could expand the trust in Steam and provide even more customers - What is there to lose buying a game on Steam if it can be refunded? Users could be happier to buy titles they otherwise would not, if they do not like a game they can get their money back.

I'm really hoping to ascertain varied opinions on the matter of Steam in the community to widen my own knowledge and get a better understanding of whether this is something we developers need to worry ourselves with or not. I'd also like to get some other links. Apart from Steams announcement on their client, when I turned it on this morning and the link I put above, I have not read literature on this.

 

Consumer rights vary by region, but where I live I'm certain you can return PC games.

What's the policy on Steam's refunds? Do you need a legitimate reason or is it a no questions asked / if you change your mind kind of deal?

 

I have just looked here and it is interesting:

Games and pre-ordered games have the 14 day and 2 hour grace time period. From my interpretation of the text - if you pre-order a game, wait for release (which is over the 14 days), play it and do not like it, then because the 14 days elapsed you are not entitled to a refund.

Steam mention at the end under "Abuse" that repeat offenders of asking for a refund in order to "get free games" might lose their right to refunds.

Sorry, I should have thought of other regions. I'll amend the starting post - I don't want to misinform anybody.

Legitimate reasons to request a refund will include:
• Accidental purchase of a game
• Did not enjoy a game
• PC does not meet hardware requirements

A matter which is raised on the first source I have read is that if someone wants a refund, they may give a game a poor review. This review could be insincere, as the reviewer has an ulterior motive of getting a refund after playing the game. A chain of negative reviews could appear on a game, lessening its chances of making other sales. Personally I don't see this ever being a huge problem, the majority of users will probably not harshly review something unless they are sincere about it.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds

I like the new rules as a player. There have been several games for me that have been mega buggy, performance has been bad or were not as good as was hyped.

Then what does it mean for developers? well now your game has to be even better experience at least for the two first hours. It also means you should always integrate Steamworks in a way your game always requires it. The support is better for players too.

I'm pretty sure Steam has analytics of which games are short, who abuse the system and etc.

 

Hopefully it will reduce the number of developers putting up early releases that are practically unplayable.

 

This is a good first step towards some type of quality control on steam. I think it is a good development.

It might mean that some indie devs make less money because they have to deal with lot's of refunds. But that's a good thing, it means your game is not up to par and you need to change things.
The semi scamming we see going on at steam greenlight will surely be driven back with this

 

If you are going to cheat the system, you can generally find a pirated torrent of a game much easier then you can download the game and deal with steam's refund process. So I don't think this is an issue.

It might effect quality a little, as more gamers return poor games to the store. But I doubt it.

The main reason for the change will be continuing to sell games in markets that have consumer laws that force refunds. Most governments are promising tighter controls on ecommerce within their borders, and steam stands to be cut out from a few markets if they don't comply with local regulations. Sure they have given it appositive PR spin. But there are other games afoot.

 

Thanks for the feedback so far. I'm not as concerned as I was when Steam notified me this morning of the change. I'm not sure that I feel that a user should be allowed to enjoy the experience, only to then get a full refund and spoil the revenue of Developers. But I guess it will be a small minority that will exploit the hard work of us Devs. As BoredMormon points out, torrents exist and if someone wants to steal a game they will be more likely to take that route.

 

Is it? Really?

For starters, a reasonable refund policy is something they should always have had. If you sell stuff you should be willing to support it, and on the odd occasion that means giving a refund.

Secondly, good "quality control" means keeping the quality high from the start, not letting low quality stuff through and then offering refunds later.I sincerely hope that's not been a part of the considerations behind this.

Thirdly, this could be a good thing in that it might increase customer confidence in making a purchase in the first place. Think it looks alright but aren't sure? Now you can buy it and find out, rather than teetering on the fence and then perhaps moving on to something else. Then, if the game is good, it might have a better chance of keeping a sale than it might otherwise have had at getting one.

So, if they're serious about not letting people abuse the system then it could be beneficial.

 

I think its a good move - consumers absolutely need a way to get a refund. The 2 hour condition just seems so arbitrary, it needs a little more thought to address any casual abuse.

Perhaps linking it to the price (RRP not eternally-on-sale price) of the game, with a few price tiers, would help protect smaller developers while still allowing genuinely unhappy customers to get a refund. A 30min refund window on a $5 game still seems pretty reasonable.

You'd probably need to exclude early access games from this reduction, but that probably isn't a bad thing. I'm fairly confident that's the biggest problem area from Valves point of view - there's an awful lot of oversold-never-to-be-completed shovelware hanging around there.

 

Seems straightforward and fair. If the user played more than 2 hours or owned it longer than 14 days then he isn't eligible for an automatic refund. Not really sure what there is to dislike about that, users have a fair window and developers are protected from refund-abuse.

If someone played my game for less than 2 hours and decided to ask for a refund I don't see why I would have any reason to be opposed to them getting it.

 

I think this is a great thing for indie developers.

As a gamer, buying any indie title aside from the most covered breakout hits is always so risky. And often I've even regretted some of the better reviewed breakout hits like beiseiged in early access.

Being able to just return a game after you look at it for 15 minutes just allows way more 'adventurous' purchases. And for just about every developer who might post on these forums, that's a pretty good thing.

 

I see this as a bad thing honestly, a games worth shouldnt be valued by how long you play it for, but rather how fun it actually is. I've played Nidhogg for in total about an hour and a half, yet its one of my favorite games, I've just completed it enough times now and Im bored of it

I do believe players are entitled to a refund, but only if the game is really poorly made, different than what the store pics show, or broken (even if just for certain PC's).

 

Read again:

 

Thank you, that's a good thing for consumers.

 

Will this encourage longer title screens? Unskippable intro sequences? Interminable initial loading screens?

 

Like all things it will be good and it will be bad. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see headlines appear High Refunds Drive Established Indie Game Developers Away From Steam nor to see Average Steam Game Sales Increase Slightly After Offering Refunds.

I would think the pirate community is aware and now they'll have a great way to get all of the latest games. Of course, they'd always get em sooner or later anyway.

 

The refund policy will probably dramatically increase sales, since it will make consumer feel like there is less risk. It will probably be especially true for unknown indie titles, because those are the most affected by lack of consumer confidence. A few trolls will abuse the refund policy, but overall this will be a huge net benefit for everybody.

 

In theory it might not be abused too much since Valve says they'll deny refunds to those who are abusing them, but what is to keep people from creating new accounts to get around this? The part that worries me also is the 2 hour limit. It's very possible to play a game that's less than 2 hours in length and enjoy it.

 

If you enjoyed the game would you go for a refund then? Seems to me that people doing that would otherwise have pirated the game and nothing changes.

 

Yeah, the 2 hour limit is perfect for some games and completely wrong for others. It is a good start, though. Maybe Valve will continue to tweak the refund policy now that they have one.

 

What if developers could choose between a few different options? For example one game might have a 45 minute time limit, but customers would know that before buying.

 

Better games.



Screw Air Control...

 

I wonder about reviews posted by people who request a refund.. would the reviews stay visible after the refund or not?

Because some people are in the business of abusing reviews (funny reviews or otherwise).

 

I expect it'd do the opposite. You have to do a lot of user-annoying time wasting to eat up a significant portion of the two hours. On the other hand, you know you've got a maximum of two hours for your game to "consolidate" a purchase.

Looking through my library of games there's loads of stuff I've played for less than two hours. They're not necessarily bad games, but I've got a lot of games, and only the ones with the most compelling starts suck me in to get played for a second time instead of checking out something else.

So, hopefully this will get people thinking about what they can do at the start of their game to make it the most compelling, user-grabbing thing possible. About what they can do to not only keep the player in their seat now, but also to make them boot up that game next time they sit down as well.

 

Best news ever. It's the death of early access scams and shovelware. Digital spam, really. Bye!

As for indies, it's fine. Make your game fun for more than 2 hours.

 

Since Valve is making refunds for "didn't like it" a valid thing I think it's perfectly reasonable for reviews to stick around post-refund. I mean, that's a form of putting your money where your mouth is, right? "I did not enjoy the game, to the point where I'd prefer to have a refund/buy a different game instead of keeping it in my library."

 

This is my issue, really. If that's a part of what this is about then on one hand it's good that they're putting consumer protection measures in place and I appreciate it, but on the other hand I'd really prefer that they just had some quality control on what they choose to sell in the first place.

 

Yeah it's a tricky business. Thing is, valve's realised that people like goat sim, and are in a bit of a state of confusion. Who are they to judge in this case? It's basically another step toward self governance: the market can no longer be scammed by large or small developers. This may be all that is required to clean up an open store.

 

@angrypenguin they're also considering refunds for special cases. It's a long shot, but I hope I can get a refund for star forge. It had a lot of promise, then it became a mess, then the devs abandoned it entirely to go make 'reign of kings'. I hope this brings a swift death to garbage on steam, haha.

1886 got lucky this happened after their game was already out for a while. That was a short game.

 

The entire game "Dear Esther" took me less than two hours to play. That says nothing about the quality of the game. While I agree that this could be a good deterrent against digital and visual spam, It seems like there's also a lot of potential for abuse as well.

I'm sure Valve will not be hurt by this decision or by the potential(inevitable?) scamming of this system, but I'm sure a lot of small game makers could be.

 

Maybe they should base it on game completion & achievements instead of playtime. Or maybe developers can put up the expected playtime of their game. 2 hours is a weird number. It should be some small % of a game.

 

this also can encourage user to buy more games if they have the opportunity to be protected against bad developer practise, its good for the serious ones

 

I'm wondering if Steam will also show the ratio of final purchases vs refunds of a particular game.

I'm also curious to find out if this will lead to more free desktop games with continual in-game advertising.

Refunding a free game would be an interesting way to show disapproval.

 

The goat "simulator" is a unique product which (from a casual glance) seems to be of reasonable quality for what it is (that being a fun gimmick, by my impression).

 

Maybe Steam could implement a system where if a product is refunded, then the review of a user is removed. That could protect a developer, but really removal of someone's opinion could be seen as underhanded - taking away poor reviews may mislead potential customers that those people did not enjoy it, would not have paid for it and for people to not spend their time on it. If I review products poorly on most other E-Commerce sites, get a refund and the review remains.

 

The right to a refund is a standard consumer right in a majority of countries. This should have been in place from the start.
In the UK this fits under the Consumer Rights Bill, which states a digital product should be:
- Of satisfactory quality
- Fit for purpose
- Meet any description

If it is not, you're entitled to a repair or replacement, failing that, some money back.

Personally, it's a good thing this is happening, but it should have happened long ago.
As for how it affects developers, just don't make S***ty games

 

Yeah that's just it though. A lot of these games coming out will have tonnes of ue4 and unity post effects now, disguising the turd below.

So it becomes much harder for a company like valve to guess what is good and what is not. What you probably can't do is judge a book by it's cover. Refunds can send a powerful message.

I want the quality bar for all developers to go up. I do not want little johnny's S***ty game on the same store as I am on. This is because I do not care about entitlement or whatever. I only care customers have great games and they're all worth that customer's time to make a purchase and not be stressed out by the waste of their lives.

When a person downloads a game, they spend a little bit of their life clicking, paying, downloading, playing and then getting a refund, which is a sour experience that probably consumed 25 mins of their time on earth, reduced their fun and so on.

I'd rather that wasn't a waste.

On the other side of the coin, you'll get a really ugly game nobody sane would be interested in playing that goes on to make millions, and rightfully so because it's a lot of fun. How would a store evaluate this?

Refunds are a good curation method where you have a walled garden (ie valve can remove your access to the game after).

Pirates would probably just torrent it regardless and not bother hacking around in valve source files and going to all this effort so I can see it working well.

 

Actually to be fair at first I was against this, but putting it into this context I can see the use of it, as I feel the same

 

They did say they would use this as a form of quality control and games with a huge amount of refunds would be recognize as problem titles.

They abandoned the game to go make another one lol. I know the money wouldn't come from them because they spent it all, but I wouldn't mind $20 in my steam wallet so I can get something for my friend.

 

whats the new game?

 

Reign of kings. Maybe you've heard of it

Oh and just in case you were wondering, no, they will not offer you a copy of 'RoK' if you purchased their last failure.

 

Oh this is really bad of them honestly, not happy about this
its not even as if they abandoned the game in a decent state

 

Of the games I've purchased in the last few months, the ones I would have returned in 2 hours:
- Plague Inc; incredibly well reviewed phone game that sucked because phone games suck.
- Beseiged: because after being presented with the UI alone I lost all interest.
- Arma / DayZ: Because my computer specs are terrible and it's not playable on my hardware.

It's worth noting that none of these games were 'shovelware' all of them are extremely well reviewed sometimes acclaimed titles. They were just titles that I immediately regretted buying.

Goat Simulator I only have 53 minutes on. I probably wouldn't refund that because I actually had a pretty good time with it.

In all honesty, I am personally way more likely to 'try' out more risky indie titles that I probably wouldn't have before. Indie games will see more refund requests than they did, but I would be pretty surprised if they didn't also see sales go way, way up.

 

It was stable. They broke it. They failed to fix it. They didn't even roll it back, they just left it broken. I think they gave up on it because they didn't keep a copy of the stable version and couldn't figure out how they broke it

It is sad because the cool part of star forge was going to be that if you built high enough, you could go into space and even reach other planets. Oh well, planets^3 looks like they'll be more successful on this venture.

 

Excellent observation there, and one I hadn't considered. I think we can all probably agree that the only casualties to this would be the 'experience' games or tiny arthouse 30 min story based games. And I think that's probably actually ok and won't be a big issue purely because these types are such a minority, and the type of person playing these games are probably mature enough and rich enough to not care about a refund unless it merited it.

 

I see it as a good thing people will be more willing to take a risk and buy your game, if it sucks they can just get a refund. And Im sure at first it will be abused but eventually it will quiet down. '


Theres one game assault android cactus, now you can blast through the game in less then 1 hour (except for the last 2 levels), but because the levels are so replayable (you can get "s" rankings) Im already 5 hours in, then I realize someone else has clocked in over 150 hours.They also have an infinite mode, boss rush mode. I guess you could add on new game + if you had to.

There are some games I bought on steam that are good, I just didnt like it Im talking grim fandango, shovel knight, risk of rain, geometry wars3 (never put in 2 hours) . Fancy skulls played it found the game too hard never put in my 2 hours, I can see where this could start to go bad. I bet people will start saying well my 2 hours are almost up, its okay but im not really loving it - refund.

 

You know, this would all be okay if they offered free demos. I joined a casual game site once upon a time and most of the games had demos that you could play for free. You usually could play for 60 minutes and if you liked the game, you could buy it. I tried a lot of games, most of them I liked enough to buy them.

Free demos would mean less paperwork, no perceived loss of income by the developers because they wouldn't see refunds, and probably increased sales as well. What Steam appears to be doing is giving free demos, but you can't make the choice to buy after the 2 hours, but instead make a choice to refund. Seems backwards to me.

 

Maintaining demo version can get expensive too and is not even possible in all games. The refund system is supposed to be mainly for customer protection and not a "Test everything" feature for players. The refund page states that if you abuse it they will stop serving you.

Those less than 2 hours games are not probably expensive and if player enjoys the game they have no reason to risk it and ask a refund if they might need a real refund in other bad purchases. Like I said before Steam has a lot of gameplay analytics data and refund behavior info to detect abusers.

 

I wonder how hard it would be for steam to implement a 'demo mode' that developers could enable for their games that would give users a temporary steam key for the product.