Playtime can’t be guaranteed, unless its a movie you have no control anyway. Its most likely just a suggestion. Did this game suggest a playtime that was vastly different to your experience?
Refunding a cheap (in price) indie game before the 2 hours play mark, AFTER finishing it is just a dick move. Also some games cannot be just measured by its playtime alone. Yes you can for yourself. But that would be like saying “oh I refund all 50 hours games, because I only consider a game to have a value over 60 hours playtime regardless its price”.
When a full third of your customers are refunding, that means half or more of them are finishing in below 2 hours. That means the devs estimate of 3-4 hours average playtime is bull, straight from their ass. That’s not a mistake, that’s false advertising.
Refunding a cheap (in price) indie game before the 2 hours play mark, AFTER finishing it is just a dick move.
Yeah? What if your reaction to reaching the ending in 90 minutes is ‘That’s it? What happened to the 4 hours I was promised’? Who’s the dick in that case?
Yeah? What if your reaction to reaching the ending in 90 minutes is ‘That’s it? What happened to the 4 hours I was promised’? Who’s the dick in that case?
I can’t find where the developer “promised” 4 hours of playtime. Also don’t make the mistake that playtime does not equal to finish the game once. I ask again: I want to see the part where it did false promise. Searching the Steam page for words like “playtime” or “hours” didn’t bring anything up.
Yes, that’s it basically. If you think the game is too short, I think this does not give you right to refund. I’m not talking about the policy, but about what I think is right. As I said earlier, a value of a game shouldn’t be judged by a single play through. It depends on the game off course, there might be cases when its appropriate, but I don’t think there is a general rule we can dumb it down to certain amount of playtime. It depends on how fun it it was, what it provides other than playtime (like good story or weird game mechanics or whatever), game modes and challenges to replay in example. So playing the game once might give you 60 minutes and you see the ending scrolling, but that might not be the full picture. It might have wonderful graphics and a beautiful soundtrack that increases the value (for me). It depends on the price of the game too.
And no, I’m not a fan of this particular game here, never played it, and it does not look like for me. I’m not defending it because “being invested and take it personal” or something like that. Just clarifying my position here.
Yeah, I’m using them as an example of an underwhelming product that nevertheless has a market at its price, which millions of people regularly purchase knowing how shit it is because the price is tolerable for a guilty pleasure.
Measuring the time in percentages here doesn’t make sense. A 1 hour difference on a 3 hour game can easily be chalked up to variance (even the estimate of 3-4 hours has a 1 hour range) but 10 hours off a 30 hour game is enormous. If we also made it $50 instead of $5 and argued for time per dollar as a value metric, sure, those would be equally misleading, but time per dollar is less important as the total cost decreases. Nobody would say a 2 cent movie ticket is half as worthwhile as a 1 cent ticket. They’re both approximately as valuable as the experience itself because the cost is negligible.
underwhelming product that nevertheless has a market at its price
So if we agree that this game is an underwhelming product, why are we surprised it’s getting refunded? Unlike the big mac where you probably know what you’re getting in advance, this one is being misleading with spuriously inflated play time. Very spurious, since it seems likely half or more of players are finishing in less than 2 hours.
Damn they all forgot the lesson to only fuck over the big corpos 😞
If a game I bought finished within 2 hours, I’d be the one feeling fucked over
It’s $5 full price and advertised as typically 3-4 hours long. A big mac is over $6.
It’s not like big macs are value for money either.
Yes, if a game advertised 20 hours of gameplay and finished in 10, wouldn’t you feel they padded the estimate? That’s the same percentage here.
Playtime can’t be guaranteed, unless its a movie you have no control anyway. Its most likely just a suggestion. Did this game suggest a playtime that was vastly different to your experience?
Refunding a cheap (in price) indie game before the 2 hours play mark, AFTER finishing it is just a dick move. Also some games cannot be just measured by its playtime alone. Yes you can for yourself. But that would be like saying “oh I refund all 50 hours games, because I only consider a game to have a value over 60 hours playtime regardless its price”.
When a full third of your customers are refunding, that means half or more of them are finishing in below 2 hours. That means the devs estimate of 3-4 hours average playtime is bull, straight from their ass. That’s not a mistake, that’s false advertising.
Yeah? What if your reaction to reaching the ending in 90 minutes is ‘That’s it? What happened to the 4 hours I was promised’? Who’s the dick in that case?
I can’t find where the developer “promised” 4 hours of playtime. Also don’t make the mistake that playtime does not equal to finish the game once. I ask again: I want to see the part where it did false promise. Searching the Steam page for words like “playtime” or “hours” didn’t bring anything up.
Yeah mb, I got confused with the part the dev said he aimed for 3-4 hours playtime. And another commentor above said they advertised it as that.
Doesn’t really change my point, what if you reach the end and your opinion is just ‘that’s it? I paid for that?’
Yes, that’s it basically. If you think the game is too short, I think this does not give you right to refund. I’m not talking about the policy, but about what I think is right. As I said earlier, a value of a game shouldn’t be judged by a single play through. It depends on the game off course, there might be cases when its appropriate, but I don’t think there is a general rule we can dumb it down to certain amount of playtime. It depends on how fun it it was, what it provides other than playtime (like good story or weird game mechanics or whatever), game modes and challenges to replay in example. So playing the game once might give you 60 minutes and you see the ending scrolling, but that might not be the full picture. It might have wonderful graphics and a beautiful soundtrack that increases the value (for me). It depends on the price of the game too.
And no, I’m not a fan of this particular game here, never played it, and it does not look like for me. I’m not defending it because “being invested and take it personal” or something like that. Just clarifying my position here.
Yeah, I’m using them as an example of an underwhelming product that nevertheless has a market at its price, which millions of people regularly purchase knowing how shit it is because the price is tolerable for a guilty pleasure.
Measuring the time in percentages here doesn’t make sense. A 1 hour difference on a 3 hour game can easily be chalked up to variance (even the estimate of 3-4 hours has a 1 hour range) but 10 hours off a 30 hour game is enormous. If we also made it $50 instead of $5 and argued for time per dollar as a value metric, sure, those would be equally misleading, but time per dollar is less important as the total cost decreases. Nobody would say a 2 cent movie ticket is half as worthwhile as a 1 cent ticket. They’re both approximately as valuable as the experience itself because the cost is negligible.
So if we agree that this game is an underwhelming product, why are we surprised it’s getting refunded? Unlike the big mac where you probably know what you’re getting in advance, this one is being misleading with spuriously inflated play time. Very spurious, since it seems likely half or more of players are finishing in less than 2 hours.