Steam Refunds : How will it effect an indie?

Skip the first minute or so.

 

I think it is a step towards a more open access policy on Steam which will eventually let anyone set up their own stores to sell games without Greenlight. Without a refund system in place Steam would personally have to deal with any complaints from substandard indie games. But now it can just let the developers issue a refund.

I think by next year Greenlight will be dead and we will all have our own Steam stores selling our indie games. About time too.

 

As opposed to not getting a sense of it at all, whatsoever? It's actually ok to have a nibble without asking for the whole cake.

 

wonder if I can get a refund for skyrim...

played for a few hours. didnt care for it. probably played over 2 hrs though damnit (like 4ish)... considering how long the game is, I should totally be allowed to get a refund.


I can see why they are doing this though. Crud developers releasing crud software burning players.

 

I'd like a refund on starforge. I have less than 2 hours on it, it is unplayable, and the developers left it work on 'reign of kings'. When I went to through the refund process, right at the end of it when I submitted the final step it said steam community is unavailable right now in red text on dark blue background. Ow.

 

If I remember correctly you can beat Skyrim in two and a half hours or so. If that refund period were a bit longer you could totally buy Skyrim, beat it, and return it.

 

lols

 

Yeah but I pretty much guarantee you that no-one has ever beaten Skyrim in 2 and a half hours on their very first attempt. And really that's the only important metric, someones' first experience, not a speed-run.

 

Someone equipped with an extensive walkthrough might be able to pull off something resembling a speed-run. I dug up the article I mentioned earlier. Turns out it was 2 hours, 16 mins, 10 seconds.

http://www.geek.com/games/skyrim-completed-in-2-hours-16-minutes-by-determined-game-testers-1430075/

 

But that's basically saying 'Steam refunds are bad because look, these 2 game testers could game the system for this 1 game'.
The focus should be the majority of consumers, and most people are not going to do that.

It also sorta ignores the point that those 2 people were Bethesda game testers... So that 2 hours 16 mins run was almost certainly not their first attempt!

 

Plus, are you really worried about losing sales to, specifically, an extreme minority of people solely out to prove they can get a refund?

 

Beware of artificial sales. Now you can refund, people are much more likely to either:

1. poor people and kids will just download and play for an hour to pass time then refund and get the next game to play for an hour. This is common, and harmless - these are the guys who do not buy anyway unless extreme sales.

2. refunds means that people are much more likely to try a game they wouldn't normally, and dislike it enough for a refund. I think this is pretty exciting. I like that players can give something a try.

So either of the above will artificially inflate sales, ie they could double, and then get 50% refunds. So long as the actual income, not sales, are breaking even there is no problem. If after refund policy you're getting twice the sales and many more refunds to match, it can depending on how you measure it give the impression of refunds crippling sales.

If some indies, particularly early access are getting refunds, well tough luck.

 

This is another interesting view of the situation for a slightly larger indie dev than previously posted here:

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KevinGei...perience_Majority_Outside_of_2Week_Window.php

I think time needs to be taken to see just how this works out, making snap decisions based on a few anecdotal reports may not be the best way to evaluate this.
That said I think it's a great result for the consumer and in the end should work out well for the average developer too.

 

Ah thanks for that link. It seems to align pretty much with what I was saying about the patterns and how you look at the data:

And this is during the romance period, where people are all about even trying out refunds.

 

Yeah, that's kind of why I think we just need to wait and see how this goes, I doubt they'll be having those same ~13% figures in 2 months time, for instance.

 

I would have used this to get an immediate refund for Civ Beyond Earth, which I consider a poor mod with no charisma to the leaders and a bloated tech tree that makes no sense. This is coming from an avid fan of the civ series from version 1 through 5.

So as a developer and gamer I'm pretty passionate. For me it's not about needing the money, it's about voting with my wallet.

 

The only people I can find that are whining about the refunds are small indies that have games on steam with like 5 sales a day (dropping to 1 or zero) and all of the recent reviews are negative.

So to me, it seems to be working fantastically.

Can't blame an uninteresting game on a new refund system. It just so happens that now since refunds are easier people are actually going to use them.

 

Yeah if you sell it at a cheap price or a sale expect to get a bunch of impulse buys and therefore abunch of refunds.

 

I'm just giggling in glee that the gold rush is somewhat shot in the throat. Because it means people who are putting effort and time in to make a great indie title will succeed. I wouldn't ever dream of getting a refund for FTL for instance... and you can complete that in well under 30 mins.

Author is clever though. He gave it tonnes of replay value

 

Yeah I'm glad they are refunding, this is what months of beta trials, demo's and test scenario's are for. To make sure the games good out of the gate..!

Plus it cleans out the dregs, gives real indies that put tons of time and passion into their game a fighting chance.

 

I am also interested in how this will affect AAA devs. So many AAA games came out the past couple of years that have been riddled with launch problems.
Will UBI be able to pull another AC:Unity launch?

 

There's no way you could finish FTL in under 30 minutes unless you're doing some kind of super optimized speedrun style strat!

 

I do play it a lot I no longer read the text since I know what it is, and use keyboard commands. I don't pause either. Depends on mood. Maybe it's 45 mins? regardless it seems to take no time at all, and certainly, I realised I loved the game before leaving the first sector the first time I bought it, so I would have seen it was worth the money in very little time.

 

This is sort of a good point, because uPlay doesn't accept refunds for any reason other than in the situation that they can't give you the game (no keys maybe?). So in that situation, buying on Steam now actually gives you a bit of a safety net, something you don't get from other platforms (except Origin, which has a pretty restrictive policy).

 

It could be followed with AAA withdrawing from steam, which pretty much tallies with what AAA need. Why pay a % if you don't have to? currently, it's about selling where the customers are. However, if it turns out refunds cause a 30% drop in revenue vs selling from their own portal, there would be no real reason for them to stay.

This would dramatically weaken steam's position.

 

I just did my first refund: Plague Inc (port of some award winning mobile game about being a plague). I bought it a few months ago but they granted the refund.

I almost requested a Beseiged refund as well, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Too much bad indie dev karma I think.

 

I think that will depend on the publisher, EA already withdrew from Steam. Ubisoft have a kind of half and half approach at the moment and Blizzard have always done their own thing.

Importantly though, there are a lot of 'AAA' studios that don't have a choice other than publish to Steam to reach the target market. GOG's new client, Galaxy, would be a good alternative, but they actually offer a much much better refund policy already.

In short, Steam are still the primary target for publishing games, and refunds aren't going to make a dent in that.

 

LMAO, poor people most assuredly will not be buying games to play for an hour and then ask for a refund.

The truer scenario with refunds is those leech sites can now download your app and get a refund to create some AppAnnie clone, App review site clone, or some Warez pirate site. Otherwise, a lot of refunds % wise is sure sign of poor quality.

Refunds will be asked for if someone buys a game that they don't like. No other business that sells tangible products expects that consumers can't return the product for a refund in X number of trial days.

Look at it this way, unless the game or app was unusually expensive, people rarely ask for a refund even when they don't use the app. A lot of refunds is a sign of poor quality for sure.

 

All interesting games are cracked on release day. I don't think you're making much sense here.

 

Beyond gravity looks fine to me if you like that type of game and its steam ratings are very positive. So I dont buy the idea "A lot of refunds is a sign of poor quality for sure." thats bullshit man

 

While not a game of poor quality in visual presentation, it appears to have very little substance, especially for a PC title. Speaking from anecdotal experience, PC gamers hate mobile ports, too.

Of course, whether the people who refunded the game actually enjoyed the game but still returned it anyway for the money, we cannot tell. But you know what, that's a consumers right*, and has always existed in regular retail too.
I personally know people who have bought dresses, worn them once, then returned them to the shop..
That's kinda how refunds work.

*The proviso is that the consumer didn't 'enjoy' the product, but who's going to argue that they did or didn't?

 

Pirate groups usually get the retail versions when possible since they are available days before official release date and usually with less extra stuff to get rid off. Also if they happen to use online shops it's most likely with stolen/hacked cards if they don't want to keep the game.

High refund rate might not have to mean poor quality but more people trying out things they didn't before. Those small games just ain't for majority of desktop gamers. If I would have bought Angry Birds for desktop I would have had a refund request sent in less than 2 hours. However I love it on phone/tablet. Same thing for Beyond Gravity, it looks polished and fun too but after some time I would personally get a refund for it if I somehow would have been lured into buying it for desktop.

 

I still think it will be a mixed bag. I can see perhaps some gamers buying more games and / or more often.
And I can see gamers making a habit out of refunding. And not just Indy games. Or just "junk" games. But just games in general.

Honestly, I think a lot of sales are just impulse buys, curiosity seekers and maybe even "peer pressure". I think people have been buying many games they don't really like or want. I don't think all of these people are true gamers at least as far as what that term means to me.

I think a lot of people would be perfectly content playing this game for 30 minutes, that game for 50 minutes and so forth. And they'd much prefer to just play a whole bunch of different games rather than own a few games they devote a lot of time too. So, for these people the refunds are a perfect thing. They can basically recycle their $20 or $50 over and over and over to "buy" many different game play experiences.

During the past week I came across some interesting reading in my travels. When you want to know what is really going on you check out the communities. Go to the source and see what people are actually doing not what one or two developers are saying.

Here is an interesting glimpse into the consumer market.

 

How can they recycle their cash over and over again if they will get rejected for abuse when the stats are beginning to look bad. It's not much different from real retail stores that some even ban these type people from even entering the building.

 

TotalBiscuit has investigated things again and has some more accurate info from several devs...

http://devsonsteamrefunds.tumblr.com/

 

Beyond Gravity is not a game that will be naturally successful on Steam. It's style is better catering to casual gamers, mobile/tablets.

 

That was actually pretty coherent.

 

Why do these videos always have exactly one comment?

 

He disables comments

 

Anyone desperate enough to run refund scams on Steam just to get a few games is probably already just pirating every game they want. Most pirates aren't going to use a credit card on the game world's most successful DRM platform and commit actual monetary fraud just to get free games when they could more easily download them anonymously through some torrent site.

 

I know it's a bad argument, but I like it:

"People who will pirate / return your game aren't lost sales, they're sales you would never have anyway."

 

I'm actually far more likely to refund a AAA title than an Indie one. Indie titles usually cost me $1-15, if it sucks well not a huge deal I just move on. AAA titles can cost me $60 - if it sucks I feel a little burned and would want my money back.

 

That link is very interesting. There are plenty of examples of users getting refunds with more than 2 hours of play and more than 14 days after a purchase. I'm sure a lot of those exceptions are because the refund policy is new and there is currently a transition period, but it is strange to let users refund games they have owned for 6 months. Things will probably settle down after the initial transition.

I do think you might be onto something regarding casual users often buying games just to dabble with them for a little while. Some people were happy to pay a few bucks on each game to play it for 30 minutes, and now those people will get to try a bunch of games for free by recycling their payment through refunds. The refund policy could result in lost sales revenues from people in that group.

I still think that the refunds will be a net benefit for everybody. Reducing risk for the consumer will mean consumers feel more comfortable trying new games.

 

Well, it may affect indies in bad way, but only bad indies IMO. What's bad indie? Basically any who tries to sell games of "quality" of games like WarZ/Infestation, Slaughtering Grounds, Big rigs, etc.

I don't think it will affect indies who sell good games because people are basically lazy and won't ask for refund unless game is really terrible. When the refunds were announced, I had one or two mediocre games that in theory qualified for such refund, but didn't bothered because games weren't terrible and I've planned to play them more in future anyway.

As for games that can be completed in under 2h? Well, make longer games then. This doesn't necessarily mean "drag on story and dilute it". No, you can make game longer by adding various unlockables that spawn randomly or just making New Game+ mode.
It's actually harder to make short game than to make long one, because scope creep eventually kicks in.

 

One interesting example on the Reddit link was a person who got a refund for Counter Strike: Global Offensive after 2 months with 4 hours of gameplay. CS:GO has 95% positive reviews on Steam.

 

I thought the time limit was 2 hours.

 

2 hours is the announced limit, but Valve is currently honoring refunds for older game purchases with more than 2 hours of play. I assume they are currently doing that because this is a transition for them. I don't know when they will start enforcing the 2 hour limit. Some people claim to have gotten refunds for games they purchased as far back as December 2014, which is well past the 14 day limit.

 

I would like to refund starforge. But is $20 really worth kicking an inept dev team while it's down? I think I'd rather them keep the $20 and watch them struggle a little longer.

 

The one game I totally would want a refund for is Castle Crashers. It's one of my favorite Xbox 360 games and The Behemoth was a developer I've always loved and respected, but the Windows version is a piece of S*** port and there's nothing being done to fix it. I bought it to play with a friend and I thought it was perfectly safe seeing as it had been on Steam for so long, but it was the first game I've played that was downright unplayable. There were technical issues everywhere no matter what we tried. No way were we the only 2 people experiencing these issues. We had completely different machines. We even tried it on multiple machines, but it remained completely unplayable.

I did try my first refund on Duck Game yesterday though. I got an email saying my request had been received and about an hour later I had my money back into my Steam wallet. Not sure if it takes longer if you want them in your bank account, but that was quick and painless at least. I bought Duck Game because Totalbiscuit raved on about it, but I quickly realized this wasn't a fun game to play alone. You needed friends in your room or at least on Skype to enjoy this. Having friends is too much of a hassle so I chose to refund the game instead.

I think this is a win for everyone. Less crappy Unity/Unreal asset store games on Steam because people will just refund them after initially being fooled, less crappy indie games in general. And AAA developers can no longer release their games in alpha conditions and expect gamers to take it up the ass. Now everyone will refund their preorders/day-1-purchases and wait until the game is fixed.

Good games shouldn't be affected in the slightest. I expect them to even see an increase in revenue. Now people can actually try before they buy. If 100 people buy your game now that wouldn't have otherwise and 99 of them refund it that's still one extra sale you wouldn't have had before.

There may be some good "journey/experience" games that take less than 2 hours to complete, but Steam will just have to figure out a way to handle those exceptions.

 

I'm curious about how the refund policy is going to affect prices. I wonder if the new refunds policy will cause developers to increase or decrease prices of games. For example, will some devs lower prices so there is less buyer's remorse and hopefully less chance of a refund? Or will other devs increase prices to offset the loss of revenues from the dabblers?

Before the refund policy, a developer could price a game low so the dabblers would impulse buy it. A typical dabbler might buy a cheap game that looks cool and play for a short period of time. A dabbler just wants to experience the game, but does not care to play the game long enough to beat the game (single player game) or play competitively online (multiplayer game). The dabblers just want to poke around with the game to have the experience of it, and 2 hours is more than enough time to do that.

With Steam's new refund policy, the dabblers get to sample every game completely free, so dabblers no longer contribute to sales revenue. Without any dabblers impulse buying low priced games, developers will probably need to increase prices for the serious gamers. For example, games that may have been $5-7 previously might now need to be $15-20, and games that were previously $15 might need to now be $25-30.

I am guessing that all of the cheap games will be forced into a free to play model, and all of the remaining games will be forced to increase prices to remain viable projects. What does everybody else think? Will Steam's new refund policy affect pricing of future game projects?