http://www.pcgamesn.com/some-developers-are-struggling-with-steam-refunds Some devs are crying. Maybe now devs actually have to focus on making people like the game within the first 2 hours, not just buy the game. How cruel!
That sucks for devs that are making really short mini games and actually pricing them fairly. Now they don't get anything at all.
You mean like 30 minute games? Like, there isn't a way to make it 130 minute game? See, 10 minutes longer than the refund limit! Hum. I guess it does screw the niche of 30 minute long games pretty hard. I don't want to be cruel to them even though I've never played such games and never likely will, they too deserve to exist. However, I think that it's by large a lot smaller issue than games that trick people into buying them pretending to be something they're not. So, as soon as you launch it you'll go "hey... wait a minute!" and now you actually get your money back! Without issues! It doesn't save people from games that turn out to be crap after ~2 hours but it's still something towards deceitful marketing. Imho it's a step towards a world where content is more important than marketing. The alternative is that the only thing that matters is to have great marketing so people complete transactions and anything beyond purchase is redundant, including fun.
And what about the person whose game only lasts one hour or so? What about there game. Seems like abuse to me. To buy a game you know only takes a hour to beat and then refund it, because you know.. fuck them.
Well, yea, then again that's in compliance with local legislation. They'd actually have to change the whole law. It sucks for those devs but I hope they can come up with a way to come up with something extra for their games. Like double the length somehow. It's not impossible to make a little bit longer game, though I suppose some artistic or other vision may suffer and it's possible that the whole point of a game to be that it's short and can't really be extended. Like a game that spooks you once within an hour and it's done, never to be replayed again or so. Even then you could add another second trick to it though yea, it's asking the devs to bend. I don't know, I'm really out of my reach here since I haven't played such games and I've never even attempted to design so short game.
