GravityMan
Member
I guess Gabe (I think it was him) was serious a few months ago when he stated that Valve needed to get their act together on customer service, and had some ideas on how to accomplish that.
I've been harsh on Valve sometimes, and will continue to be. But this refund policy is a very good move on their part. Kudos. I do hope they thought this through very carefully, though. A refund system is something that a company needs to get right, or at least in the ballpark of right, on day one.
You are always going to have a small percentage of jerks who will try to game the system, no matter what policies are in place. And there may be a few tech-savvy customers who might be quite successful at doing so, managing to evade Valve's systems to detect abusers. There is no such thing as a flawless refund system. However this percentage should NOT impact the revenue developers receive in any meaningful way. In other words, the contingent of people who will request a refund on a 90-minute good game will be small enough that I doubt that the game's devs will care. Most people aren't assholes and appreciate being treated well, folks. Good games will still sell just as well as before.
That said, I am curious to hear what devs such as Fullbright, Telltale, Dontnod, etc think of this policy.
What will adversely impact dev/pub revenue is games that release in a broken/unplayable state, or games that aren't clear with their system requirements, or games that are just plain shit or boring. And that's a GOOD thing. This will hopefully "encourage" devs to test their games more thoroughly to make sure they're reasonably polished prior to release. I doubt this will encourage multiplatform AAA devs much (Ubisoft will still release hunks of junk), but indies are a different story.
If this works well, it should benefit consumers, Valve, and developers/publishers who put out decent games that work properly..those devs might actually make MORE money. And deservedly damage those that release a pile of crap. Hopefully Valve will internally keep track of "refund rate" and if the percentage exceeds a certain threshold, the game gets de-promoted on the Steam store.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo need to implement similar policies ASAP.
I've been harsh on Valve sometimes, and will continue to be. But this refund policy is a very good move on their part. Kudos. I do hope they thought this through very carefully, though. A refund system is something that a company needs to get right, or at least in the ballpark of right, on day one.
You are always going to have a small percentage of jerks who will try to game the system, no matter what policies are in place. And there may be a few tech-savvy customers who might be quite successful at doing so, managing to evade Valve's systems to detect abusers. There is no such thing as a flawless refund system. However this percentage should NOT impact the revenue developers receive in any meaningful way. In other words, the contingent of people who will request a refund on a 90-minute good game will be small enough that I doubt that the game's devs will care. Most people aren't assholes and appreciate being treated well, folks. Good games will still sell just as well as before.
That said, I am curious to hear what devs such as Fullbright, Telltale, Dontnod, etc think of this policy.
What will adversely impact dev/pub revenue is games that release in a broken/unplayable state, or games that aren't clear with their system requirements, or games that are just plain shit or boring. And that's a GOOD thing. This will hopefully "encourage" devs to test their games more thoroughly to make sure they're reasonably polished prior to release. I doubt this will encourage multiplatform AAA devs much (Ubisoft will still release hunks of junk), but indies are a different story.
If this works well, it should benefit consumers, Valve, and developers/publishers who put out decent games that work properly..those devs might actually make MORE money. And deservedly damage those that release a pile of crap. Hopefully Valve will internally keep track of "refund rate" and if the percentage exceeds a certain threshold, the game gets de-promoted on the Steam store.
Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo need to implement similar policies ASAP.
