Developers express worry, appreciation for Steam’s new return policy

Last week’s introduction of a concrete refund policy on Steam was an obvious win for consumers. Valve used to issue refunds for Steam purchases only in extreme situations, but now there’s a blanket policy offering a money-back guarantee for any game purchased in the last 14 days and played for less than two hours (Valve will also “take a look” at refund requests placed outside this window).

But for developers, the idea that players can return games for any reason is a little scary. In the week or so since the policy was introduced, many developers have complained publicly about sky-high return rates on their games. Others worry about players trying to game the system; Octodad developer Kevin Geisler, notes that the vast majority of returns for his game so far have been outside the prescribed two-week window.

It’s a bit early to know if these trends will continue or if it’s just a reflection of previous pent-up demand for refunds (and the attention the policy is getting in the press). For what it’s worth, Steam Spy’s estimates show a slight uptick in total game ownership across the Steam library since the refund policy was announced (though some individual games have shown downward sales trends according to the tracking site).

Short games beware

Regardless, it’s enough to have some developers worried about the long-term impact of the bulk of their digital sales no longer being final. Among other complaints, casual game designer Andrew Pellerano noted in a blog post that certain games seem more likely to be subject to frequent refund requests than others.

“It suddenly makes sense to change your early game progression in order to incentivize a two-hour binge,” he wrote. “Refunds are going to hit harder on genres that can’t work these protections in, like intentionally difficult games, level-based puzzle games, or retro style arcade games. It may even be so bad that certain types of games suffer ‘refund death’ where they are simply unable to lock down players by motivating them past the two-hour mark.”

That’s a design concern shared by some other developers we talked to. “The two-hour refund policy definitely signals you shouldn’t create two-hour-long games,” TinyBuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik told Ars. “Most people won’t play games for longer than two hours, and this refund policy incentivizes [developers] to show really great moments in the first two hours.”

In practically the same breath, though, Nichiporchik seemed to acknowledge that the change isn’t a wholly bad thing. “Often you hear game developers screaming that ‘there’s this moment 30 hours in, you just need to get there,” but come on—we live in a society where hundreds of things are happening at once. Gamers get distracted constantly,” he said. “You need to have really great content in the first hours (and through the whole game, of course), and I think this will help game developers think about a more quality experience.”

Other developers expressed similarly mixed feelings about the two-hour ceiling for no-questions-asked returns. “I do think this has the potential to be hard on really short experimental games like Thirty Flights of Loving, where you can play through the entire game and the commentary and have it crash a few times and still clock in less than half an hour total,” ZeBoyd Games’ Robert Boyd told Ars. “[But] if it encourages developers to make their games fun right from the start instead of padding the beginning with boring unskippable tutorials, that’s great too.”

Some developers, though, think that game designers are going to use the same tricks and forms regardless of the new refund scheme. “It’d be sad if certain games wouldn’t be ‘safe’ to sell on Steam anymore,” Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail said, before adding that crafting games to draw people in early “has always been something developers do. If you can’t grab people within the first twenty minutes of your game, people won’t like it and review it negatively. The shift to consumer-reviews has already done that.”

Developers I spoke to seemed less worried about unscrupulous gamers trying to abuse the refund system by constantly asking for refunds on games they actually enjoyed or finished (though Valve says it will be looking out for such abuse). “It’s already trivially easy to pirate my game so anyone who’s willing to break out their wallet is already good people,” Papers, Please developer Lucas Pope said. “The extra refund protection will hopefully create more of those kinds of people so it’s likely a net win.”

2D Boy’s Ron Carmel agreed that there are bigger things to worry about than gaming the system. “It’s easier to torrent a game than to buy and then ask for a refund within a limited amount of time, so a better exploit is already available,” he said.

How returns benefit developers

Despite the kind of overall wariness that accompanies any major change, the majority of developers I talked to about Steam refunds were optimistic about the overall impact of the change. Most expected the refund system to give consumers the confidence to try a game they might be unsure of and that they’d rather not keep money from unhappy customers in the long run, anyway.

“97 percent of the six thousand people who’ve reviewed Gunpoint liked it,” developer Tom Francis noted proudly, “but more than 99 percent of Steam users haven’t tried it. Those 3 percent who didn’t like it, I’d rather not have their money. I can live very happily on the 97 percent of players who are glad they paid for our game. And I’d much rather have a happy noncustomer than a non-happy customer.

“Even if your game is much more popular than mine and one percent of Steam users buy it, and even if one percent of those people request and get fraudulent refunds, ‘people not trying your game’ is still a problem 9,900 times bigger than ‘people abusing refunds,’” he continued.