@inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
Indie dev defends criticism of Steam refund abuse amid review bombing of his game: 'It's wrong to refund a game after having fun with it and completing it'
2026-07-10 22:02 UTC
Replies (9)
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@TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 2026-07-10 22:24
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
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@Icedrous@lemmy.ca 2026-07-11 03:32
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.
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@Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 2026-07-11 04:14
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.
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@ChaosSpectre@lemmy.zip 2026-07-11 00:57
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.
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@Pika@sh.itjust.works 2026-07-10 23:00
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.
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@Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 2026-07-10 23:08
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.
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@Bonje@lemmy.world 2026-07-10 23:04
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.
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@Cybersteel@lemmy.world 2026-07-11 08:27
Is the dev naive or young or something? Here in the US, people abuse public utilities, free services, etc all the time. It’s just the way it is, it’s in our nature as humans after all, to get the most of everything and leave nothing in return.
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@BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 2026-07-11 17:41
Were they not aware of the refund policy when they listed their game for sale on the platform?