03 - Steam Refunds

Developer diaries about creating Devastated Dreams.
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matt
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03 - Steam Refunds

Post by matt »

Steam's new refund policy is a great thing for consumers, but I talk about what it means for developers.

-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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evilkinggumby
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Re: 03 - Steam Refunds

Post by evilkinggumby »

First off, Good Customer Service is not talking about problem child customers in a public forum and inserting your opinion (good or bad, but especially bad) so they can see it and potentially feel targeted or insulted. I don't really like what you did here discussing some of the issues you had because even though not many specifics were given (obviously no names) people that experienced an issue similar or the same as what you describe for your examples will more-often-than-not put 2 and 2 together and assume you are talking about your interaction with THEM and take it to heart.. usually to bad effect.

that aside...

I think you are right, initially customers will abuse Steam's return policy until they come up with a metric that is " we will allow a return BUT..." and add some language to it so they avoid Steam becoming a digital rental service. Like having a sort of "processing fee" attached that is not refunded if a game is played for more than x hours, or if the game has generated more than 2 achievements. Then if the game doesn't run at all, it'll be evident by the lack of play time and 0 achievements (just a logged series of executing the game and then the game closing). I'd say this kind of shift is inevitable.

Does the new policy say anything about posting # of refunds for a game on the game's profile? That in itself could be very damning but also a fair benchmark for a game's quality. I am sure it would have incidents where it ends up screwing small indies unfairly, but especially for larger games and ports to pc, it could be a big warning flag (like games ported by ubi or Activision that lack proper compatibility, bug fixes and optimisation)
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matt
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Re: 03 - Steam Refunds

Post by matt »

All but one of the examples I had were my fault. I suppose I was critical of one customer of Retro/Grade from years ago, but it was a sore point to me because I believe our game actually worked. Even still, I agree that was probably something I shouldn't have shared. I'll keep that in mind for future diaries. Fortunately, not many people watch these, so I hopefully won't displease any customers.

As far as I know, they aren't going to publicly disclose refund numbers for games. I don't think they ever would since I don't think that'd benefit Steam or developers. It might drive gamers to buy the PS4 versions of games instead of the PC one if the PC one has a lot of returns. There is no guarantee the PS4 version is any better, but there isn't a number staring you in the face showing how problematic the game is...
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: 03 - Steam Refunds

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

evilkinggumby wrote:First off, Good Customer Service is not talking about problem child customers in a public forum and inserting your opinion (good or bad, but especially bad) so they can see it and potentially feel targeted or insulted. I don't really like what you did here discussing some of the issues you had because even though not many specifics were given (obviously no names) people that experienced an issue similar or the same as what you describe for your examples will more-often-than-not put 2 and 2 together and assume you are talking about your interaction with THEM and take it to heart.. usually to bad effect.
I think you're reading into something too much here, I didn't get that impression at all from the video. Matt took ownership of all the problems he mentioned, and I remember him directly contacting a bunch of people on the Steam forums and here who had problems and helping them get it sorted out.

The less than two hours thing does open up some potential abuse for short games. Gone Home and pretty much any episode of a series that's on Steam could be played through in that time period. Will be interesting to see if the rules have to be tweaked moving forward, but overall I do think it's a good thing. Sometimes you just get something that won't work or was much worse than you expected!
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