A tale as old as time. There’s people who buy clothing for a wedding or some other event, for example, and then refund it since you have a 14 day refund window in europe (or at least the DACH area) for basically anything you buy. Companies like zalando have a global 50% return rate across everything they sell.
Sadge, but you can’t make everyone happy. Overall, I’d argue that the 2 hour return policy for steam is overall more of a benefit to consumers than it is a detriment for developers. And then again, you can always add a bit more content to the game to make it longer.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I hate to say it, but the business model always affects the game design. The “meta” is to make a game that’s longer than 2 hours if you want to avoid this, or that the player otherwise won’t want to part with after that 2 hours is up.
terranoid@lemmy.cafe 1 day 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?
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day 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.
HereIAm@lemmy.world 1 day 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.
VerdantTome@programming.dev 1 day ago
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.
creamfresh@lemmy.world 21 hours 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.
funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 19 hours 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.