- 3 hours
Honestly that game looks pretty fun, especially as a two player game. Just keep it after you beat it and play it with someone else. Or play it again at varying levels of inebriation.
- DevDave@piefed.socialEnglish3 hours
Some gaming consumers are just easily directed cattle for rage stampedes about whatever. No time for comprehension, just get the pitch forks and go burn some shit down!
Similar theme but different story was that guy who distributes a VR “mod” for various games, including Cyberpunk 2077. The nuanced part is a big chunk of it is in proprietary libraries that are independent of the games it provides VR support for. Just look at what PrayDog had to do to get VR support for just Unreal games https://github.com/praydog/UEVR/tree/master and that other guy has made a toolset that works with multiple engines. Charging at most a one time patreon fee for an unlocked copy doesn’t sound that greedy.
Another one was the more muted whining that Valheim’s Iron Gate has cheated everyone by doing “the bare minimum” to be Early Access and are abandoning an unfinished game with Valheim’s 1.0 release. Personally I think those people are fucking insane.
Forty years ago I was at a cross roads that would have led to me being a programmer in the gaming industry. Really glad I didn’t choose that as the game industry culture is absolutely exhausting.
- TheJesusaurus@piefed.caEnglish9 hours
If you refund an indy game that you completed, you’re a sociopath and there’s no helping you. There isn’t a structural system that’s going to prevent that, some people are complete human garbage
- buddascrayon@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
It’s not just the playing it, enjoying it, and then refunding it. It’s the bragging about it on the fucking platform. Kind of asshole who does that. Well, that’s gaming culture these days.
- Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
But what if it sucked? You can easily rage-complete a bad game within the refund window.
- draco_aeneus@mander.xyzEnglish1 hour
It’s only a 2 hour window. I think very reasonable that you might play a game for 90 minutes and then at the end say “wait, that’s it‽ That’s not worth $x!”
- GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
Who keeps playing a game they don’t like? Why would you do that to yourself?
4 hoursThere’s nuance here. If it’s ‘bad’ as in like the meat is still raw, or there’s a lump of the chef’s hair wadded up in it, then yeah it’s refund time.
If it’s ‘bad’ as in they made it properly but you didn’t like it, just suck it up and don’t order it next time. It’s good to try new things, but you can’t expect all of them to be a banger. The number of people I’ve seen punish the restaurant for giving them exactly what they asked for is kinda bonkers.
- yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish5 hours
rage-complete
This is the sociopathy.
This is the sociopathy.
- 3 hours
I’ll confess I did this once – with Duke Nukem Forever. My old best bud and I played the fuck out of Duke3D back in the day (including building our own levels) and 3DRealms cockteased everyone for well over a decade with their supposed ‘ultimate’ title. So when it finally released I HAD to play it. And of course there was no way it could live up to the hype. It was an inconsistent mess and I powered through it in under 2 hours. I guess I’m glad I played it but it wasn’t even remotely revolutionary… At beast or was like a collection of fan mods bundled into an ‘official’ title. Not at all worth the asking price. I have no desire to revisit any of it so overall I don’t feel like I ripped them off; if anything I feel like they disappointed me majorly as a fan.
I played it so others don’t have to. Yeah, that’s how I’ll spin it 😂
- bajabound@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
If you try a new flavor of chips and hate them do you take them back to the store for a refund? If they were stale, sure. If the game was buggy as hell and didn’t run right I’d say submit for a refund.
- Albbi@piefed.caEnglish6 hours
A lot of products used to say “satisfaction guaranteed”. So you could literally return products you had consumed. I don’t know how many people did that though.
- atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish5 hours
Most of those guarantees involve mailing your receipt and the proof of purchase to the company along with a letter explaining how you were not satisfied before they will get around to mailing you a check for the $4.73 in 8-12 weeks.
Some of them went over the top the try to ‘make it right’. Dude I went to highschool with did this shit almost like it was a hobby. He’d call the customer support line and complain about whatever bullshit he could come up with - gummy lump in his drink, hard flake in his bag of chips that 'might have been a fingernail!… they’d take his number and address, and that was usually the end of it.
Then occasionally a box would randomly show up at his front door with like 50 bottles of soda or candy bars or w/e, and a letter apologizing for the trouble lol.
Manipulative little shit. And that was when we were like 14 years old… dude’s probably running his own organized crime ring nowadays. xD
- dom@lemmy.caEnglish8 hours
Depends how bad. But I wouldn’t complete it if it was bad enough to return
I swear to Glob, another one that compares this situation to eating food. We’ve had that in another thread already. You could compare it to watching a movie maybe, but how are you people always going for the food comparison?
- Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
Most stores around here don’t accept food refunds unless they’re unopened or completely covered in mold.
- Seasm0ke@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
One time I returned a single coconut because the inside was completely moldy and the lady behind me accused me of drinking the water and returning the flesh… I was like lady I have a job i don’t even care about the 2 bucks. I just figured how else are they going to know that they got a bunch of bad coconuts if I don’t come leave a record. Im not trying to run a scam for moldy fruit water.
She actually said that makes sense and dropped it but I was shocked… like you really think someone laundering coconut water one fuzzy nut at a time?
- TheJesusaurus@piefed.caEnglish7 hours
If it aucked and you experienced that whole piece of art you don’t get your money back. You don’t get your money back for a bad movie my guy.
Art gallery’s don’t give refunds and they ALL suck.
OPERA IS A REAL THING
The people who legitimately do this are the ones who make the rest of the gamers look bad.
If you bought a game, especially for $3, played it from start to finish over the course of an hour and a half, and then bragged about it when you refunded it. You fully deserve to have your refund capability disabled.
The thing is, though, I don’t really know a way that this can be implemented without allowing publishers to game the system. I do personally think that Two Hours is a little generous for the overall story because I will generally know whether or not I’m going to like a game within 35 minutes of playing.
I think a good alternative to it is have your refund window be based off of the current sale price of the game.
So for a game that’s less than five bucks, you would only have somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour of a refund window.
Then for your typical indie window, which would be like fifteen to thirty dollars, you have an hour to hour and a half then your AAA title pricing of ~60, you have two or three hours.
I can understand refunding a game if it’s broken on your system or just trash, but it feels real sleazy to me to spend money on a game, play it to completion, and then refund it anyway.
- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish3 hours
This might sound dumb but why not have it so that if you get the achievement for beating the game you can’t refund it?
- scratchee@feddit.ukEnglish48 minutes
I suspect a big goal of this refund policy is to make steam self moderating. Valve don’t want to have to police individual games more than absolutely necessary.
If devs can game it by giving players the completion achievement the moment they launch the game, suddenly valve has to step in to solve the problem, and they are far too busy enjoying their enormous profits to actually do work
- Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish6 minutes
I feel like only the really dodgy games would do that, it would be a very blatant exploitation of the system. Just have a section in the refund request that says “the game gave me the achievement erroneously” or something and then you can look into it if there’s enough reports. Yes Steam has to step in occasionally, but that’s inevitable unless you’re happy with one side or the other getting screwed.
Like would any real game by a publisher do this? It’d tank their reputation by a huge amount. A lot of gamers care a huge amount about achievements so to get the 100% achievement on boot would actually really annoy them too. I just don’t see it happening.
The only other solution I can think of is for developers to just never release a game that can be completed in under 2 hours. Which is just silly.
- Alexstarfire@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
It largely depends on the type of game. There’s are plenty of games I’ve played where you’re still in the tutorial after 2 hours. Hell, I don’t think I knew if I liked EU4 until I was like 50+ hours in.
You don’t need 2 hours to figure out if you like Super Meat Boy though. You’ll know in less than an hour. Probably less than that.
For those who wonder how you could play a game for 50+ hours and not know if you like it; it’s a grand strategy game with lots of functionally. A full game can easily be 50+ hours depending on how fast you let the game run, and your first game is definitely going to have a lot of pausing trying to figure out various functionality. First game is or two is just figuring out the basic gameplay.
- GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
If you play a game for 50+ hours, you liked it. You don’t spend that amount of time being undecided.
- Alexstarfire@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
You’d be wrong. Though you could say I didn’t hate it at least. But I certainly hadn’t made up my mind yet.
I played the first game with a friend. Which is largely why I even finished it. It’s pretty overwhelming because you’re left to figure out a lot on your own. Second game I played on my own. After that is when I knew I liked it, or at least toward the end of that second game.
I can’t think of anything other than grand strategy games that I’ve been that indecisive over. Everything else has been within like 3 hours. Some barely even 20 minutes.
- 6 hours
Oh I get you there.
I played The Witcher 3 for over a hundred hours and didn’t realize I didn’t like it until I went to have a threesome with Triss and Yennefer and instead got left with blue balls.
I would have returned that game right then and there if I could have.
- HeyJoe@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
Maybe have a new rule for shorter games, like if its reasonable to complete the game normally in under 5 hours then the 2 hour window should be 1 hour or even 30 minutes. Idk how games are submitted but it should be an option at that time on how long the game is or a question about if its over or under x hours long so they know how to treat the game for this policy.
That’s where the abuse comes in, because how can you be sure a developer won’t make a short game and list it as 20hrs to complete?
A dev that is abusing the system is going to be delisted by Valve real quick, methinks.
- 6 hours
I mean databases like howlongtobeat.com do exist. Steam could also come up with their own numbers by looking at the average playtime when players get the achievement for winning the game.
Issue with both is, the game needs to already have been released and beaten a few times.
- Dudewitbow@lemmy.zipEnglish8 hours
keep in mind, its partially overblown because according to the acheivements, only 7% users have actually beat the game of the people who kept it. the people who refunded shouldnt be that different than the average.
most of the people refunding are more likely people who rage quit more than people who beat the game in 2 hours
not saying its not an. ass move to refund but the people who refunded arent statisically the people who beat it.
- GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldEnglish2 hours
Apart from the people saying that’s exactly what they did, which is what this is about.
I have never refunded a game on Steam. But then, I usually wait to buy a game until it’s been out for a while and usually on sale.
- Icedrous@lemmy.caEnglish3 hours
We do that with physical media all the time, dont we? If I finish a game and for some reason I’m able to get my money back, I’ll get my damn money back.
Realistically need a better solution for refunds, especially for indie devs. 2 hours just isn’t enough time for shitty games to reveal themselves sometimes, but its also more time than some absolute gems take to beat.
People mentioned achievements, but thats unreliable as even I can spoof achievements on steam last I checked.
Valve can’t be expected to manage every refund request thoroughly, and devs can’t exactly be trusted to respect those requests if they were in charge of them being its literally losing money, but theres gotta be some way to reliably refund a customer without it being abused to harm an innocent dev.
- ms.lane@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
Agreed, if the 2 hour timer was reduced, we’d just see a bunch of nasty developers take advantage of it with games that are front loaded and then nothing as we have in the past.
It sucks for honest people on both sides of the equation.
- realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish7 hours
Well, the dev is absolutely right. It’s really unfortunate for him that some trash subhuman scum abuses it in such a way, but overall I’d still argue that the refund policy benefits people more than it harms.
I think the only sensible solution for devs would be to make games that are longer than 2 hours. Add some additional content that drags the game across that line. You already got a working game - take another month, add some more content.
- 3 hours
Bloating and padding a game unnecessarily is likely to increase the amount of refunds if anything.
I think locking refunds after a certain achievement unlock is a decent way to address this unless devs are scummy and do it after one achievement. Though proper disclosures can fix that too.
- realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish8 hours
unless devs are scummy and do it after one achievement
Well guess what will happen.
This is something which will never have a solution that makes both players and devs happy. Someone always gets shafted.
