To make things simple : if the game is not broken and the advertising is not misleading then I woudn't count refunded customers as customers :) From a business POV, it's even more interesting as the "remaining" customers are more likely to be your fanbase and give some useful feedbacks as they're more "in tune" with your work. It even becomes more interesting if you can convert those steam customers to direct sales customers with exclusive extra bonuses (to take my personal case, I'll keep the OST and the special edition of my upcoming game for direct sales through Humble only). The old way was to have direct sales first then going to steam, now it's time to do it backwards :o)

Also (because I have trouble with the forum multi-quotes ^o^) for the price bracket thing, yeah you can get the original Binding Of Isaac and other famous indies games for 4.99$ or less but do these games will give you the same feeling than playing Space Harrier on 3DS (old, ugly, super-short, no replay value, I want a refund!!!! ^o^)? Strictly business speaking, if your product is sufficiently different enough than the others then pricing is irrelevant ;)

In this whole matter, taking things with a capitalistic approach is more productive than asking for internet kindness to indie devs, business is survival of the fittest afterall... If Kongregate/Newsground would up their upload file size limit (50Mo/100Mo), that would be cool for short arcade games which aren't in pixel art.

I appreciate that.

(Again with the assumptions on what I’m unclear about?)

I am well aware of lemon laws and the lack of protections consumers have - that was after all - the point of my post. A refund policy after this many years of Steam not having one is hardly considerate of the consumer. And as my response to Jefequeso points out there doesn't seem to be a lot of outcry about how much money consumers have lost to buggy, broken, or incompatible software in the last 10 years on Steam that wasn't refunded. Something that is real and sizable as opposed to the exaggerated speculation of refunds. The better question to ask is why isn’t Steam (a monopoly) bad for developers in the first place? I don't see a lot of hand-wringing over that by developers or the press.

1) If you are convicted of fraud you will be liable for what you steal, and it will likely be attached to your prison sentence. Conversely if you are sold an inept or malicious product that gives you cancer - good luck getting your health back.

2) If you initiate a chargeback with Steam say goodbye to your account.

Conservatives love to throw the entitlement word around, always used in a downward way as you do here, 'the entitled public' not 'the entitled elite'. You of course don't mention these kinds of entitlements - the entitlements of industry, monopoly, finance, deregulation etc. If talking about this kind of entitlement, you are talking about something of such a vast and pervasive scale it is treated as nearly invisible by virtue of its overwhelming presence. Famed designer Bruce Mau once wrote the height of good design is to be so abundant and commonplace as to be rendered invisible to a user.

Not to be flip but you are living in a country that has had two wars costing upwards of 4 trillion dollars now, a financial collapse caused by deregulation costing over 10 trillion in bailouts, and losses, the Libor scandal, currency rigging by the banks so on and so on – all without anyone going to jail or new laws being passed - but you really get bent at the thought of someone connivingly returning a used pair of jeans as some sort of an entitlement problem. I don’t know what to say other than you seem unaware of what real entitlement affords.

It's probably quite easy to mention an estimation of the playing time (45minutes - 2 hours maybe) in any review about the game. So people can easily know this before buying without having to test the game. And then a testing period of 2 hours would be quite a big part of the total game for short games.

I guess in this case he should be allowed to cancel the trial period and say that the game is bought as is and you have to rely on reviews and such if you want to know more about it before.

For larger games (maybe AAA) I like the idea of a two hour testing period.

Just wanted to say that although your post aforementioned regulation as a good thing, other then the epitome of corruption that grants the "giants" its leverage on consumers (mainly via tilting legislation in their favor - which wouldn't be possible if laws wouldn't regulate the "industry") in the first place, I still liked it very much. Liked your previous post in reply to jefequeso as well. Very good points. +1 on both and all
And who do you think profited the most out of both the wars AND the financial collapse? Hint, it was never in terms of the interest the public.

I believe this idea has been posted in this thread, but I'm too butt-ass lazy at this moment to read up on it all. One thing you can do is to include trading cards for your game. Did you know that the developer gets to set the drop rate for the cards? Set the drop rate each for the cards to near the maximum, so if whoever wants to take advantage of trading cards..etc.. will be past the time limit for the refund rate.

This may help cut down on the abusers (who are collectors, at least, and most people on steam seem to enjoy decorating their profile with all sorts of badges, emoticon art, backgrounds, showcases..etc, so this might help).

Good lord, you really do think I'm some evil overlord, don't you...


Well I can.
This is true.

Wel, currently this (http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/nightmares-bundle/) is going on, so that basically makes any numbers useless. Unless Steamcharts only tracks the number of purchases, not the number of redeemed keys (I'm actually completely unfamiliar with how it works).

One way to get around this is have an achievement for finishing the game. Ask Valve to deny anyone who had got the achievement because it proved they finished the game. Seems simple get around.

I completely disagree. And not as a developer, as a consumer. I regularly purchase short games, and in fact am at a point in my life where I'd be more likely to purchase a shorter experience than a longer one. What's more, the games you listed aren't anywhere near the same genre as The Moon Sliver or The Music Machine (with the possible exception of Fez). People who are interested in narrative-focused exploration/horror games might not have any interest in stuff like Super Meat Boy or Abe's Oddysee, so comparing them value-wise doesn't matter. My games are more similar to titles like Dear Esther, Gone Home, or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and you'll find that when compared with those they are actually quite a good value proposition.

Recently I purchased Home is Where One Starts for... I don't know, something like $2 or $3. It took all fo 20 minutes to finish, and I considered that money well spent. Sure, I probably could have gotten some 50 hour Roguelite or something similar for the same price, but that's not the sort of experience I was looking for.

It doesn't track how many licences are bought, it only tracks how many concurrent players there have been, so that bundle may or may not play a role. Given that the bundle has almost certainly sold a couple of thousand units, I'd actually be somewhat worried why your playtime stats aren't higher. It's possible that people are buying the bundle and just completely ignoring your game.

I actually don't know if the developer backend allows you to see how many of the keys you've issued have been redeemed, but that may be a useful piece of information to acquire.

For one you will probably see restrictions. Much like they do with the market place. Probably will have X amount of time to wait between refunds. Steam isn't a rental site, and what you just described is pretty much renting games.

@Jefequeso I would venture to guess the selling point of your games is Steam cards. If The Moon Silver is your game, and it's getting pretty good reviews on steam, the majority of people would keep it for the steam cards. Which would make sense based on the steam chart info.

Yeah, that comes with the territory of bundles. You know how it is. You buy a bundle for 3 or 4 games, and just ignore the other ones you haven't heard of.

At worst, it earns me a little money. At best, it might get extra exposure, if some people decide to check the game out since they own it.

You might be looking for that experience, but statistically, it's not a genre that many actively seek out. It's actually logical that you developed those specific games because you like that genre (conversely, I'm a fan of retro-styled platformers, which is what I'm developing right now, albeit at a snail's pace), but it is still a remarkably niche type of game.

Even the highly-publicised, highish-budget Vanishing of Ethan Carter struggled to get past 60,000 sales in its first month, and that had a passing wind in the form of media coverage and very strong visuals. Short, narrative-focused 'experiences' are not the sort of thing you should be developing to make a living on. The fact that you have succeeded is a miracle in its own right. That's not to denigrate (or praise) the quality of your work. It's a simple fact that you've been lucky in doing something that very few others manage.

And you should bear in mind that very few gamers are fixated on singular genres. Many may only buy games with very low prices, others still may only buy AAA games, but even the one-track CoD mind will vary into other territories such as racing or football.

If you don't but games for yourself but as an act of doing favors, you are not a consumer but a benefactor (and then it is charity, not business transaction).

I won't analyze your long post, but I think you have a weird way to start big explanations on simple matters that reach surprising conclusions.

Jefequeso just states that he's doing business with games (as opposed to doing that just for fun). The refund policy by steam don't cater to his business model. His point is that he can't hope for people's charity because that's not what steam is about (it's a retail service, it's not an initiative to entice people to help indie developper to make a living).

Your 'I give money to indie dev for their game so they can live' is disingenuous, the reality is 'indie dev sell their games to make a living, you buy it from the retailer'. Maybe you don't see it but there's a crucial difference.

Possibly. It's also good and possible that people will seek to trade or give away that key, but then, that's exposure too :)

Jimquisition on the subject for those who care to hear what Jim has to say on the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1-0dgDsCtw