One intelligent indie dev has made fairly the piece of assertion artwork about Steam’s refund insurance policies: Refund Me If You Can. (opens in new tab) It is a horror recreation the place you have to discover your approach by way of a maze-like sewer whereas pursued by a monster. The trick right here is that it is onerous sufficient that it would take you greater than two hours to determine your escape: Which signifies that beating the sport would take you previous Steam’s refund window. (If you happen to do not already know, this is how Steam Refunds work.)
It is an odd, intelligent, meta-textual little bit of recreation design. If I beat the sport in lower than two hours, is it now moral to refund it? If I do not beat it, however refund it inside that two hour window anyway, am I breaking some type of implicit pact with not simply the developer, however myself?
To many builders, customers refunding video games they’ve overwhelmed deeply discourages somebody from making a recreation that takes lower than two hours to play. Final yr, a developer made a public departure from video games fully (opens in new tab) because of the massive variety of refunds on their recreation. There’s additionally that point a developer publicly shamed (opens in new tab) somebody who left a optimistic overview into re-buying their recreation.
Suffice to say, Steam’s two hour refund window has been a supply of bizarre troubles over time. Not only for indies, both: There are additionally mundane issues like MS Flight Simulator taking so lengthy to obtain that it blew previous the 2 hour window. (opens in new tab)
