Comment on Indie Dev Says Game Refunded 55,000 Times Via Steam Loophole
VerdantTome@programming.dev 1 day agoIt’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.
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
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.
bookmeat@fedinsfw.app 1 day ago
Yes, so put in thework. Duh?
terranoid@lemmy.cafe 1 day 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.
huey_m@reddthat.com 1 day ago
I don’t think that’s a good reason for a refund, honestly. If you go to a restaurant or a movie, most places won’t give you your money back if you finished the meal or movie. If you finished it, you should pay for it… if it really isn’t that good, you know before the end of the meal/film. This just feels like an excuse to be a cheapskate.
MolochAlter@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I disagree that you would necessarily know.
Mass Effect 3 is stellar, until the ending invalidates basically all of your choices and destroys the galaxy no matter what you do, because the lead writer and the director thought it right to bypass their internal review process.
Firewatch feels like it’s going to take at least some of the dialogue choices you made in the game into account but then it turns out it’s entirely linear and smoke and mirrors.
A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.