Comment on 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'

• mohab@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  you are forgetting though that a 5$ USD game isn’t going to magically becomes < 5$ USD though.

  I am not, and that was not the point. The point is if you’re paying $5, and someone in a non-USD region is paying $5, they’re taking a bigger risk than you if the game ends up sucking because $5 is worth more in their region.

  Lowering the refund period for everyone without regional pricing means people in underprivileged regions are taking on more risk than you are; ergo, you’re punishing them for being underprivileged, and making a bad situation worse.

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  • Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    you are misunderstanding. I’m saying pick a region for the guideline, if its 5 on that region the game has that refund period. Then apply regional pricing. There’s zero reason to apply a framework for every region that’s more work then needed. the lower regional price would have the same refund period as the standard pricing as its following the same framework

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    • mohab@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      you are misunderstanding.

      I don’t think I am. The issue is not that your system won’t work with regional pricing, it’s that it will not work without it.

      I’m saying pick a region for the guideline, if its $5 on that region the game has that refund period. Then apply regional pricing.

      Yeah, that’s the issue. Some games do not opt into regional pricing, so the price never gets lowered, which means they will be paying $5 and have, for example, only 1 hour to refund the game, just like someone in the US. Their having to pay $5 is already an issue, and now they have even less time to refund it if it sucks.

      There’s zero reason to apply a framework for every region that’s more work then needed.

      I never adovacted for this. You can tie the refund period to money paid, no problem. You do not need a different refund period framework for every region, and I don’t understand why you think I’m pushing for this to begin with. It’s fine as long as you enforce regional pricing for everyone, which’s not something Steam will do.

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      • Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        At this point, I’m not sure where our disconnect is. I’m not sure how you read what I sent and somehow got that it forces regional pricing or doesn’t force regional pricing. The framework I’m talking about would not require regional pricing at all because the only price it cares about is what the price is in the chosen region.

        The system I’m advocating would work with or without regional pricing because the region’s price doesn’t matter.

        As an example, say their chosen region is the US and they decide that $5 means it’s a 30 minute return.

        But then they have another region that is two dollars.

        It doesn’t matter that it’s $2 in that region because the region that is used for the metric is $5.

        So the $2 game that is regional pricing would have the return policy of the $5 game because the region that they use for the calculations has it at $5.

        I’m not sure why it needs to be so complicated to have specific return policies for every single region. At the end of the day the value in the framework region is isolated from the framework and no changes to its price would change its return policy as it doesn’t matter

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