I’ve had it happen with standard release games as well, it is just more common.
Really short games are an interesting edge case for Valve’s policy for sure. I don’t personally buy games that are that short, but as long as they are priced accordingly, it feels awfully petty to refund a game that is a few bucks. I just don’t see how much less time you can have to actually try a game and see if it isn’t total garbage. I’ve had plenty of games that didn’t reveal themselves to be completely broken until I was further along (time wise) than that and I was unable to get a refund.
Now with this specific game, I’m not sure it’s an ideal poster child for changes in policy. The game clearly states that it was made in a month and is intentionally “rage inducing”. Maybe the game absolutely sucks, is buggy, or maybe people though “rage inducing” just meant difficult, but in fact, it makes you angry because it is terrible in some other way. This isn’t a shot at the dev, we simply have no way of knowing. All we know is that the dev says he received a review that said they beat it in under two hours and they refunded it after “beating” it. That would indeed sting to read and it seems needlessly petty to even post such a review. The dev himself said that he isn’t necessarily asking for Valve to change the policy.
I think that would be solved by making early access games have the normal refund window regardless of length. That seems reasonable as well.
I’ve had it happen with standard release games as well, it is just more common.
Really short games are an interesting edge case for Valve’s policy for sure. I don’t personally buy games that are that short, but as long as they are priced accordingly, it feels awfully petty to refund a game that is a few bucks. I just don’t see how much less time you can have to actually try a game and see if it isn’t total garbage. I’ve had plenty of games that didn’t reveal themselves to be completely broken until I was further along (time wise) than that and I was unable to get a refund.
Now with this specific game, I’m not sure it’s an ideal poster child for changes in policy. The game clearly states that it was made in a month and is intentionally “rage inducing”. Maybe the game absolutely sucks, is buggy, or maybe people though “rage inducing” just meant difficult, but in fact, it makes you angry because it is terrible in some other way. This isn’t a shot at the dev, we simply have no way of knowing. All we know is that the dev says he received a review that said they beat it in under two hours and they refunded it after “beating” it. That would indeed sting to read and it seems needlessly petty to even post such a review. The dev himself said that he isn’t necessarily asking for Valve to change the policy.