Should Steam be more vigilant in stopping abuse of refund policy? There is recently an article going around from a dev who has 55K refunds with "dozens" leaving reviews saying they enjoyed it but refunded because they finished in less than 2 hours

Summary · qwen2.5:32b

A game developer is calling for Valve to address the exploitative use of Steam's refund policy, after over 55,000 players refunded a short game they enjoyed but completed in under two hours. The developer suggests that Steam could better monitor and deter such abuse by allowing developers to see playtime before refunds are issued, thus distinguishing between legitimate complaints and policy exploitation.

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A game developer is experiencing high refund rates due to players exploiting Steam's refund policy, leading to potential financial losses.

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<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Here is the article <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/games/dev-tells-valve-to-fix-steams-exploitable-2-hour-refund-policy-as-over-55-000-players-refund-his-short-game-and-even-brag-about-it-in-reviews/">https://www.gamesradar.com/games/dev-tells-valve-to-fix-steams-exploitable-2-hour-refund-policy-as-over-55-000-players-refund-his-short-game-and-even-brag-about-it-in-reviews/</a></p> <p>Steam refund policy is here <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/">https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/</a> </p> <p>and it does have an abuse warning &quot;Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.&quot;</p> <p>Myself I have a short game which is has almost 7K sales but only a refund rate of 5%(of which 1 in 5 of my refunds are chargebacks, fraud, payment issues). I have always been a believer in people refund bad games not short games, just so happens a lot of bad games are also short!</p> <p>I also often read a lot of people saying they know people who are refunding a lot. I think in general the refund policy is great and lets you buy risk free, but I have only ever refunded 2 games with over 100 in my steam account. It seems like steam could start warning people a bit earlier which would reduce refunds in general and be good for all devs. </p> <p>What should steam do if anything?</p> <p>At a minimum I would like to be able to see how long people played before refunding, you would able to see clearly if they are abusing policy or not liking the game with that data. </p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> &#32; submitted by &#32; <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/destinedd"> /u/destinedd </a> <br /> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1upk9au/should_steam_be_more_vigilant_in_stopping_abuse/">[link]</a></span> &#32; <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1upk9au/should_steam_be_more_vigilant_in_stopping_abuse/">[comments]</a></span>