Comment on Indie Dev Says Game Refunded 55,000 Times Via Steam Loophole

ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

• terranoid@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  If your game doesn’t provide more content than 2 hours that’s kinda on you IMO

  And I say that as an indie game developer. Like it someone just thought it was neat to play for an hour then they were completely done touching my game… Why would I be shocked they refunded it? They might have refunded it because they expected… Dun dun dunnnn… More content?

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Eh, not every game needs more “content”. Clickolding and And Roger are, as I understand it, very good at what they do, but you can finish them both in an hour. It would probably be to their detriment to make them any longer.

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  • HereIAm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I 100% agree. I always refund every movie and music album under 2 hours as well. If they wanted to keep my money they should have added an extra hour of slop.

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  • VerdantTome@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s a fuck load of work to make a game. It is kinda ridiculous to go to all that trouble then just stop after making 2 hours of gameplay, like 2 hours total without even a good sandbox.

    Not that it’s Steam’s fault, but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.

    Yes, it’s a lot of work to make a game, but the only way to extend the play time without having to do even more work, is to water it down with low-effort filler content that reuses the expensive assets.

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    • bookmeat@fedinsfw.app ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, so put in thework. Duh?

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      • terranoid@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        … Or just don’t put it on Steam. I don’t see why this is so controversial when it protects the players far more to have the refund option.

        And just because someone finished and refunded it doesn’t mean they enjoyed it. These devs complaining about people “playing it to the end” then refunding it need to realize that part of it might be their game just isn’t that good.

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    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      but this is the same way of thinking that has led to big budget, story focused games getting padded with repetitive fetch quests and annoying collectibles that unlock progression.

      There are literally orders of magnitudes of difference between making an indie game last 3-4 hours vs a bloated AAA 100+ hour collectathon. Comparing the 2 isn’t an honest arguement

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      • VerdantTome@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        There are also orders of magnitude of difference in their staff levels and budgets. Both sides of the equation are relative. I don’t know of any techniques for creating good content quickly and inexpensively that only work for small indies and not for large AAA studios.

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  • SlothMama@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The Dark Queen of Mortholme is brilliant but takes usually no more than half an hour to play through.

    I bought it understanding it’s length, but the art of the experience was what I wanted. It’s just not objectively true that a game needs to be longer to be worth your money.

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    • SlothMama@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I was just posting about this, and I agree, it’s absolutely amazing! Sometimes I just want a short experience.

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• creamfresh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  It’s like there are less and less songs produced now that bother with an intro because streaming services demand that you should get to the chorus fast.

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  • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    there will always be exceptions and innovation. One of the things that shaped They Might Be Giants style is they used to release songs via a telephone number and if they held a note too long the phone service would think it was a dial tone and hang up.

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