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Does the 2 hour refund limit on Steam affect game design? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I just picked up the highly hyped Blue Prince. On the other hand reviews have also called it a very niche game. I like puzzle games to a certain extent and roguelikes, but these are subjective experiences.

Anyways, I was hoping to get the gist of it and get into a groove and decide if I like it within the refund period.

The game mechanics are explained through notes in the game at it took me 80 minutes to reach a point where an important mechanic is explained.

This could have been done much earlier, I wonder why the developer delayed the explanation when it's just useful information

Other games also front load the prologue with long tutorials and cutscenes. So by the time you get into the meat of the game the refund window is out.

The other elephant in the room is if steam refunds are meant as a demo for everything or just to check technical issues like FPS and network connection issues

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[–] ImplyingImplications 36 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You can always request a refund while outside the 2 hour limit, it's just going to be manually reviewed instead of automatic.

The time limit is arbitrary. There are lots of games that can be finished within a few hours. I've heard some devs say their short games are refunded at much higher rates than longer ones and recommend ensuring a game is at least 2 hours long. It's like YouTube paying more money to creators who make videos that are 10min+. Now you have videos that could have been 2 minutes stretched out for meta reasons.

I doubt Blue Prince specifically tries to hide game mechanics for 2 hours to prevent people from refunding it. It's just a slow burn puzzle game.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago

This is the answer.. the 2 hour “limit” is just the window in which it will almost certainly be automatically refunded.. anything more than that 2 hour limit and they will actually look into your reason why.. I’ve refunded games over the 2 hour limit for reasons like “game isn’t what I thought it would be” or “just not very fun” and I’ve never been turned down over it.