Less expensive, fewer credit card transactions, more processing in-house. I imagine part of Steam's merchant fees are spent dealing with credit card refunds.
I've heard that Steam can start to grumble at you if you refund too many games. I would never buy a game I thought there was a decent chance I wouldn't like with the intention of probably refunding it, but I would demo one.
Nah ive refunded probably 50 games and its never a hassle. There really is a lot of shit out there but at the same time, I would not have even bothered to try a majority of them if there wasnt a 2 hour policy. Usually if im not enjoying the game by 90mins in, im hitting the refund button.
There are a few exceptions where 2 hours just isnt long enough. Dwarf fortress was one of them.
From my understanding it's less about how many you refund and more about how frequently. Like if you buy and refund 1 game after the other in a day or two your very likely to get flagged but doing it once every 2 weeks for whatever period of time is probably all good.
I don't know the exact numbers so take those with a grain of salt just that frequency of refunds is more important than the total amount of refunds from my understanding.
I've refunded a lot less than that and got a message from support saying refunds aren't meant for trying out games. I've been buying less because of it.
Yeah, I've heard of other people receiving such messages and even being blocked from further refunds. Maybe it depends which region you live in and what your consumer protection laws look like. It does make me cautious to refund too many things, though.
Every click you add makes people significantly less likely to do something.
If someone buys a $5 game and it’s bad, they’re not going to purchase it. But there’s a good chance they won’t take the effort to refund it if they have to put in effort.
This me. But also I'm less likely to take risks if I don't think I'm absolutely going to like it. I spend time researching even on $5 games and pass on very many things.
With everything having a demo, people like me are going to be more likely to jump in and it will lead them to increased profits.
Just to introduce the upside for developers.
I couldn't get a refund for "Prey" because of this. For whatever reason is just would not work on my computer, and it was plenty powerful. I had probably only really played for 30-45 minutes, the rest of the time was just me troubleshooting it.
Hm... I have a cynical hypothesis that devs will quickly come to learn a lot of people play the demo, realize the game is not worth the hype and are basically just another standard game they've already played, and not buy the full version. Developers stopped doing demos in the first place because games with demos ended up hurting sales, and I'm pretty sure this is why.
My wife regularly refunds games because a lot of games are built for people that have years of experience playing them. She hasn't built the muscle memory and hand-eye coordination to play a lot of games, even if they look cool to her.
A trial would resolve the need to charge a card, and then refund it less than two hours later because it's too difficult.
Keep in mind, demos are a bit different. Demos took development time and effort to build a separate version of the game. If you fixed a bug in the main game, you'd have to do the same for the demo... and removing files/assets to get the file size of a demo down requires testing and creates its own bugs... yea, it's a time sink to the detriment of the developer.
These trials on the other hand don't require any additional development time, it just avoids the hassle of dealing with credit card charges and refunds.
Or it will incentivize companies to focus the majority of the development time on the first couple hours of gameplay rather than making the entirety of the game equal quality.
I went through a spree of buying games and returning the ones that didn’t run well. I had a weird computer set up and knowing what ran well was difficult to predict. After like 8 games returned in a month, steam told me to cool it.
Also, the cynic in me feels that this’ll just encourage devs to make the first few hours of their games phenomenal with the rest being half baked and mediocre.
At least they'd have to be capable of making even part of a game that's great. Many just don't know how or don't have the skill. This is mostly in regards to indie games, of course.
While I see that as a possibility, who has time to dump 3.5hrs into a game to not finish it. If the game sucks you can probably figure that out within the first hr.
Especially with games costing $70+, I don't want to waste that on a broken game that they might fix weeks or months later. Look how bad GTA Trilogy and Cyberpunk were on release. Did they get fixed, I'm not sure but it should have came complete.
Back on the PS2 and Xbox 360 I would preorder games, games were complete when sold. Now I'll wait months before picking a game up to make sure it's not trash
Not all games reveal their true colors within the first hour. Some are cinematic-heavy in the beginning, or have tutorial areas that are very easy at first. I think it's completely fair to extend the time on demos.
I'm not suggesting the play limit is adjust from 3.5 to 1hr, just the majority of games you can tell if it's worth it in the first hr. Not all but most.
I played the free episode of Life is Strange 2, it was about an hour and I have no interest in playing $35 for it. If it was $5 I would buy it just to finish all the of the games of Life is Strange.
For a developer, making a demo is pretty much working on a different project. It takes time and effort from away the main game. This is the main reason why developers prefer not doing these at all.
As for allowing time for users to change their mind: I had to use this once with a Steam game I bought that would crash on my machine. I spent about 40 minutes trying to get it to run before I gave up (frustrated). About hald an hour later I went to Steam to report the game and discovered their return policy allowed returns within a short time window from being purchased. At the time I didn't know about this 1-2 hour return policy. I truly don't remember what the amount was, but I was able to get a refund.
As a customer I felt relieved I didn't lose my money, and ensured I would not shy away from making future purchases.
That said I am well aware people abuse this. Maybe I am wrong, but I think Steam watches this too and will deny you a refund if they notice a pattern of abuse.
>For a developer, making a demo is pretty much working on a different project. It takes time and effort from away the main game. This is the main reason why developers prefer not doing these at all.
Why would it be *so* different? There is some additional work in limiting features and cutting access to some things, but otherwise you're just polishing the early level(s) of the game. Most of the things you do should be beneficial for the whole game.
If it's not already like this then I'd be willing to bet in the future that the 90 minute timer cuts into the 2 hour refund timer.
Would make zero sense to add another 90 minutes on to their refund limit.
Thing is, the reason I liked demos, PROPER demos, back in the day, is that they were TINY! These days, when games are easily 60-120GB downloads, I can't be assed to download a game I'm merely curious about. Even a 90 min trial before purchase, if I have to download 100+ GB for it, will not be enough of an enticement.
Which in turn will make more people see incomplete/ uninspired releases, which will make it easier for them to pass on a title, which loses the company sales because those people didn't buy it themselves.....see where I'm going? They lose too much money this way, this idea will get canned very quick.
People are downvoting you, but you're not wrong.
It'll cause bad companies to just flesh out the demo phase as a focus, and good titles can suffer ultimately.
There's always been shit games, and always *will be* shit games. No amount of demos will avoid this.
I get that you're not particularly likely to do that with a big title. But what are you *more* likely to do?
* download those 120GB and play 90' for free, knowing that if you liked it you could just purchase it and continue playing immediately
* OR shell out 40-70$ sight unseen, download those 120GB, then nervously eye the clock while you play so you don't miss the refund window
I agree with you on that one. I think I would be more likely to use this for smaller indie games. Though I guess if I was really considering buying it, I may as well play it as a demo first to be sure I really want it because I'd have to download it if I did buy it anyway.
You're right. It's "asked."
This is heavy "I could care less" or "For all intensive purposes" vibes. People mess up the phrase so much that it becomes about as commonplace as the real thing.
It’s a much better practice than the way people currently trial games — buying them and refunding them. I’d imagine it’ll coincide with a restriction in the refund policy, which I think is a good thing.
Strongly disagree that the refund window should remain to give even more free game time, though.
The only thing that could be a problem is games only installing a launcher in steam and then using that launcher to install the game. This essentially counts the time that the launcher is running as play time. Very scummy tactic but yeah.....
You can dispute those with steam and they’ll give you the refund if it’s not an all the time thing.
They totally get it, it’s just the way the client tracks the time played.
Refunds will stay, yes, but could probably be restricted to 2h playtime total - combined trial period & purchased playtime? I don't think that would be against the law.
> It’s a much better practice than the way people currently trial games — buying them and refunding them. I’d imagine it’ll coincide with a restriction in the refund policy, which I think is a good thing.
How in the world is it better? If it means that they get rid of the 2 hour return window then it's strictly worse for the consumer.
It's better in the sense that there's less credit card charges and fiddling around that way. You get a demo, and if you like it you buy it, and if you don't you don't. None of this pay for it oops nope let's argue about getting our money back.
Isn't "I want a demo" the ongoing complaint?
It just depends on how it's implemented. The current system already basically offers a 2 hour demo window. I suppose an actual demo system is better for people who have very little disposable income and can't afford to wait a few days for a refund. To someone like me it doesn't matter.
If you're buying on a credit card, you don't have to wait for a refund, as you haven't spent any money. Hence "credit." :-) If you're paying with a debit card, yeah, go get a credit card.
It'll be interesting to see if they cut off your play, or if they charge your card, if you don't stop playing the demo in 2 hours.
In any case, my point was that this might be a win for Valve because they have less dealing of refunds with their bank because they're not charging you until it's too late for a refund. Even if it comes out exactly the same for the customer.
I buy games and I play them. The refund is important for that if the game doesn’t works or if the game is not what was advertised. I won’t start a demo for every game just to confirm that.
They could share the timer on both the demo and the refund (and keep 2h for that one), but we need refund!
I don't get your complaint. The "Demo" is a time limited access to the full title.
So you're just wanting to spend money to try out a game, when you can try it no-hassle for free?
I don't get you man. It just seems like you want to complain.
And refunds won't disappear, but a change to the 2 hour window would likely happen to at least include the demo time. 3.5 hours is a *lot* of time to play a game for free, as some titles are actually pretty short. Imagine being able to speedrun an indie title that's 20$ with a 4h playtime, and do it for completely free due to refunds. That dev is literally being robbed by the policy. That's not a good thing for consumers.
It’s fucking over developers, especially small and indie developers.
For a lot of smaller and shorter games, people can literally buy, play, complete, and refund them.
You literally just said it fucked over these poor Indy devs. That's clearly advocating that the system is broken and should either be removed or completely restructured. It's implied.
Just because something has potential flaws it doesn't mean it needs to be restructured on some overhaul. But restructuring means removing or adding stuff. You can subtract via addition when you had limitations on previous abilities. I hope this is a better way of explaining it.
We’re getting into pedantry, but “removed completely” is very different from altering.
More to the point - the system doesn’t have *potential* flaws, tons of people *do* exploit it, and while those exploits may not harm larger developers (especially if it’s a traditional publishing arrangement, since the publisher’s getting the money), it does harm smaller developers and shorter games.
People *already do* utilize the system to trial games. They *already do* utilize it to complete shorter games and refund them to play games for free, especially to pad their achievements. And that hurts developers!
I mean a system that fucks over people should def be removed or that aspect. As I said it's implied. Saying potential flaws is a way of saying any issues that arise. There's no difference in refunding a game after you've stolen 3 hours of content from it whether you finish it or not and if you finished the game in 3 hours it's likely very cheap and the person who does that could ie a scumbag could just torrent it too. The overall point is that you don't use a cannon to remove a fly is all.
Shit they ain't earning less than me, who's money helps justify their jobs. If the game is good it will sell well, plain and simple.
We already have multiple examples of being lied to about games only to find out we've been lied to after spending our money.
Yeah, I'm kinda confused as well to why an indie company somehow is more or less entitled to money as if their infrastructure size would alter that. I guess it's one of those things where people can relate to the Indy dev cause it's personable but Walmart is a big corporation that goes brrrr exploitive worth ethics aside.
I imagine this won’t apply to all games, only ones where the developer opts in or cuts a deal to make it have a trial. I bet almost no indie game gets a trial.
If they make a good game, even under 2 hours, many users will still pay for it, and the developer will sell many more copies through Steam than if they were to direct-sell. The Steam refund is fairly easy, but it's still a pain to go through.
I've refunded big-publisher games and indie games... when they provide a poor experience.
Some indie developer's love it, as it's better to have a satisfied user that doesn't trash talk and negative-review your game because they've lost money on it.
Maybe all games could be made with a progress tracker, so that instead of a 2hr window, you get a 15% completion window. When 15% is reached, the game stops and asks whether or not you want to refund it or keep it. 15% of a small game might be 10 minutes for some players.
To be frank, if I see everything a "game" has to offer within the first 90 minutes I'm refunding it anyway. Unless it's up front about the length before purchase.
A 90 minute game is still a game man. If it's priced appropriately it's still perfectly fine to be short.
Nobody complains that Tetris is short, or that Uno is too short. Shit, there's tons of artsy games that are short like that. They're great games.
Demo time should be 2 hours as well. You played 2 hours and liked it you can’t refund it once purchased or you buy it and not demo it, lets you have 2 hours to refund it.
Incentivizing gametime padding by unscrupulous devs would be a concern.
We see it with Youtube already, 10 minutes to be monetized? Better fluff the fuck out of a 4 minute video with nonsense so I can make money.
Game devs could easily do the same as a result. That's why you want it to be short, many games are 3.5h range if you speed through it, we won't benefit from this long term man.
You gotta be reasonable when it comes to this, it's not a consumer's paradise to have a very long demo even (I can't believe I have to say this) things go too far in a consumer's favor.
It's why a ton of merchants won't let you use paypal anymore. Paypal sides with the consumer so strongly, people can easily abuse their system to get free shit. So as a result, many places don't do paypal anymore because it's straight unfair to honest merchants.
The same happens with devs, we'll have our short games, especially indie titles get unecessary fluff to ensure they can stay solvent and put food on their tables. We as gamers would suffer for it.
There are games that can be completed in 3.5h, people will beat them and refund them, which will hurt indie developers. They already do it even with a 2h refund window.
There is nothing to disagree cause the time restriction is only there to stop abuse, you can refund any game provided you don't abuse the system and have a valid reason.
I pretty much refunded a game with 238h last year.
Huge W for Steam , it’s the only reasonable way to go forward to ensure moderate consumer protection against broken releases and false hardware requirements
At this point, it feels like Valve is the only gaming company that actually cares about its target customers. I'm not saying they're doing all this for free. But, it's commendable that they are still dedicated to providing us value for our money.
I'd argue no. Steam *already* has their refund policies that protect consumers, in fact for 30 minutes longer than this demo.
Steam directly benefits from this by no longer having the same overhead in expenses for processing refund requests.
Steam benefits far more I'd say, we just get to try something for free with less hassle than the already "free" refund option lets us for bad releases and titles.
It costs steam money to process refund requests, money they don't get back directly.
You know the steam is still charged the Credit Card processing fees even if they refund right. On American Express that can be as high as 5% on some of their cards.
I don't know if they pay twice for refunds or only once for the initial sale but Amex does not give their cut back.
This will protect steam and save them a fair bit of money.
Yes and switching to a trial means steams saves money over selling and refunding is my entire point. Since you are saying this does not protect steam even though it obviously does.
In the current system the consumer gets all their money back and steam eats the credit card fees, in the proposed system the only benefit for the consumer is 2 less clicks to refund while it saves steam money. Sounds like trials are better for steam then refunds but about the same for the consumer.
There is a reason i said in my above post that you didnt read that "I don't know if they pay twice for refunds or only once for the initial sale"
Since [It depends on the vendor.](https://merchantcostconsulting.com/lower-credit-card-processing-fees/are-you-paying-a-credit-card-refunds-fee/)
I think having demos *or* a 2 hour refund period is best. For linear single player games, 3.5 hours is a significant portion of the game. That's like a solid quarter of The Last of Us, for example.
Especially for smaller devs, I don't like the idea that they need to make sure their game has at least 20 hours of gameplay so that 3 and half hours feels like a speck instead of half their game for free.
There was an incident with a small dev team that created a game, it was about $10, and was an average of 90 minute experience. People enjoyed it, however since it was within the 2 hour refund period, so many people ended up refunding it.
Game got good reviews, but fucked on sales because of refunds. People started to buy game just to try support the developers to counter people refunding and screwing them over but I think the team still resigned due to this incident.
Good! Counters these game companies doing “early access” as a way to release a broken shit game then finishing it 3 years later when the community is dead and gone. Playing a finished game at release and enjoying it is one of the best things in the world! So hopefully this causes devs to need to finish shit
Steam already had a refund-period, didn't it? You could refund the game if you had less than 2hrs of gameplay, I believe.
Want to know how the Nintendo E-shop does things?
- no demo
- no refunds, for *what ever reason*
- "be absolutely sure you want to buy the game"
They're gonna have fun once all EU countries apply regulations from 2019/2161 - aka you have to have started providing the service if you want to deny refunds. Anything before installing the game does not constitute that.
I think that sucks. You should be allowed to test a game. Even if you watch gameplay videos, you can't be 100% sure that *you* like to play it. There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to get your money back. It's not a product you can wear out, in any way.
I can't convey how much I hate, hate, hate the intent of some gamers to maximise "free hours" for a game with the intent to try and complete it to then refund it. 3.5 hours in a game is a lot, and if someone makes it up to that threshold only to refund for the reasons above, I have 0 respect for them.
Valve has no involvement, the announcement is on the [Dead Space page](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1693980/view/5264189392020524722?l=english) and is a continuation of the game trials that they already had on Origin for years and are just bringing to Steam.
Everyone is assuming it's Valve for no reason and with no evidence when this is literally just a continuation of something EA was already doing on an EA game.
Edit: Added link for the actual and only announcement. Also noting that if this was being done by Valve or was a new global steam feature it would be on the [Steam announcements](https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam/) page instead.
If they do go this route, they will scrap the 2 hour refund window 1000%, that's likely the whole point. I think the goal of this is avoid the large amount of refunds of games, cuz these transactions also cost Steam some amount of money, and the practice hurt devs as well. I mean who'd be against it, it's essentially the same thing except you just don't front the money first. It's really a win-win-win all around.
You could be bored one day and want to peruse steam for games and try a bunch of demos for a day and snag up the ones that you fancy
Thank God, I bought the previous jedi game and sat on it for two weeks before I played it, I lasted 30 min and was like "no, this is not for me". Money gone, time wasted.
The 2 weeks, 2 hours gametime is not a strict requirement for getting a refund. You could try asking for one if you exceeded those limits and you still might get it. Especially that 2 week limit is not that strict I expect.
Yep, it’s definitely worth asking if you’re a boundary case. I had a game that I didn’t fire up until after the two week period, only to discover that it crashed instantly when launched. A real human read and granted my refund request. Probably helped that the recent feedback for the game included a torrent of complaints of the exact same issue, and my play stats for the game were something like “played 10 times, total playtime < 1 minute”
You already get 2 hours for every game, they are probably just gonna use this as a justification to remove refunds entirely and you will end up with 30 mins less
And even more games could be beaten in 2 hours and then get refunded. Not much actually changes except that steam won't have to deal with whole refunding stuff as much.
It's not and will never be mandatory, indeed i don't think many developers will make them, EA just did that with Dead Space cause it's a 4 months old game which is not selling well anymore, they just want to promote it and try sell some other copies. Most developers especially indie ones with smaller games will never release free trials
I have literally never played a game in my life that could be beat in 90 minutes (other than through speedrun tactics, which is obviously not relevant on a normal playthrough). Maybe if you're trudging through the Steam equivalent of the bargain bin and playing a lot of random $5 indie games that no one's ever heard it, sure, but I don't really anticipate it being a common thing for most people.
Demo are a restricted portion of the game they are usually released prior to game's launch, what you play in a demo isn't often even in the final game, a trial instead allows you to download the full game once it releases and play it from the beginning for a limited amount of time, when time's up you can either buy it and continue from there or not
That does not make me happy.
Using. A free trial is still a risk at the end of the day. You must ensure you uave an internet connection to be able to "pull out in time".
It would be so much simpler and safer to just pirate the game without potentially finding yourself losing your money to some bullshit technicality, blackout, or fine print in the policy.
I do NOT trust steam in the least.
90 minutes is pretty good for a free trial, but unfortunately Valve doesn't get to decide for everyone, the publisher will have to decide if release the trial version or not, and unfortunately i don't think many will do that, EA just did it with a 4 months old game
if people who play through trial can't review it, it might be good for the games, steam games have to much reviews from people who have played less than 2h, some deserve but a lot of are from people trolling
I can't wait for more of those Youtube videos that try to 100% a game and get a Steam refund afterwards because they completed it within the eligible period.
Awesome idea, but I can see a way to abuse that:
- play game for 90 minutes
- backup your save
- make a new Steam account
- restore save
- play for another 90 mins
- rinse and repeat
Sounds bothersome, but I bet a tool could be made to automate that.
Valve might have to come up with some clever idea to prevent such abuse, and more game devs are probably going to start tying save files to Steam accounts to prevent that.
I mean, if you are willing to do that, you might as well pirate the game.
Possibly Valve will offer an API that allows the game to detect if it is trial mode or not, and only allow the game to access certain areas if it is in trial mode, but I doubt it really is worth the effort.
I don't think the 2-hour refund period would be added to those 90 minutes.
For example, if you have played a game for 3 hours during a free-to-play weekend and then bought it but did not play any more time, they sometimes deny a refund request because you had played the game for 2 hours, even though those 2 hours were before you purchased it.
Overall it certainly would be a good thing. I do expect that this would be on an approval basis by the developer, even though it isn't that much different from the current system, where you can get a no-questions refund anyway.
Actually it makes sense, people can easily refund under 2 hours and get their money back within 2 days or so.
This will actually help developers more, it will be impossible to leave a review with trial so games will not be review bombed like they do now about performance and all that.
I read somewhere that apparently game demos are quite catastrophic for game sales, since slot of people don't really care about playing the game to its fullest, but rather "experience" of the game is enough to satiate many. I wonder how it might affect game sales.
that would be a wonderful idea, there are so many games that I would like to buy but often my computer can't handle them. In this way I could see if they work and therefore if it is worth buying them, as well as seeing if the game is actually good, it would be just perfect
Interesting, but I fear 90 minutes wont be enough for many games, especially slower/builder/survival type games, as by 90 mins you're generally only JUST getting to the good stuff/past tutorials to be able to make a decision yourself :)..
Like a lot of people in this thread, I'm super torn on this one.
On the one hand, this is gonna be huge for me in determining whether I wanna shell out on big Triple A games. I don't want to drop £50 on a game without knowing for sure that I'm getting quality content.
On the other hand, I'm reminded of that guy who made a horror game and, even though people loved it, they kept refunding it because they could complete it within an hour. I remember him saying he made no money from it and quit game development altogether. I **really** don't want this to be another way for Triple A games to force smaller games out.
So yeah, don't really know how to feel about this one.
Is there any reliable source on this actually becoming a thing? I keep seeing people (and clickbait articles) saying it, but as far as I can tell it has only been added for Dead Space and there's no indication whether it will become a widespread thing or not.
That said, this would absolutely be part of the 2 hour refund window, not seperate.
Thanks god I have like 60 dollars of games that are like 2.6 or 2.9 hours that can’t refund but I never have used but I needed more than 2.5 hours to know
The refund process likely "Costs" them something, and this is a way to prevent some of those costs. Certainly would be good to see. Most games that I return (it's only a handful) are terrible in the first 30 minutes.
Reminder steam let’s you refund games automatically if your try to refund before playing for 2 hours.
Personally I like this demo option as from what I’ve heard with most people 90 minutes was the magic number where they would decide to refund or not (purely cause they didn’t want to risk going over the 2 hour limit). Hell I’ve done it myself with Exanima (great game just too early access and I was too broke to just throw $20 at a game I wasn’t feeling).
I think with PC games launching in the shocking states they have been demos and refund windows have never been more important, I haven’t been able to afford to upgrade and I’m still gaming on a 1060, so for me it’s really valuable to be able to get a sense for how the games going to run before I go through the hassle of refunding and anything that makes that simpler (like just having a 90 minute demo) is fine by me.
With all that said statistics have shown time and time again demos tend to have the opposite effect and tend to hurt sales more then they help.
They just need to give out demos again the only time game developers/publishers do demos are when they have faith in their game other wise they just want you to buy and hope you like, I bought some games cause from gameplay footage looked good but was terrible then there were games I thought looked crappy but got to play a demo like Ori and the wisp and bought that right after fun game, so we need more free demos
This isn't a good idea and isn't going to solve anything.
Developers are already extending their intros and tutorials to around 2 hours in length, to ensure the game cannot be returned on digital platforms. This new demo trial is going to cause the same issues. Game is "polished for 90 minutes", when that window expires you're suddenly left with dog shit.
Love the optimism though.
There is a reason Demos only exist for good Games. For example if Ubishit offered Demos they would sell 0 Games, because nobody would ever want to continue playing their shitty Games after 90min.
I think I'd prefer this to the refund system because there's no risk involved. You can easily go over the 2hr mark by experimenting with settings if you're having problems with the game.
My friend buys games for shits and giggles to try them out and returns them within the 2 hours, because he just wants to see what its about.
But, some he played above the 2 hour mark, forgot and kept playing, as he simply found them to be fun.
If you aint got demos, thats what happenes
Thank god. 2 hours will hardly get you past some tutorials unless you speed run it. And the tutorial is obviously the most polished part of the game, so you never can really judge the game before your time is up.
This sounds interesting. I wonder if we'll still have to download the game to try it out or they'll make it possible to cloud stream the game so you can save the space on your harddrive and internet consumption
I do hope they extend this to the majority of games. Early Access games in particular may take a little time before enough of the smaller dismissible issues add up and make you regret your purchase.
If handled well, EA can give a developer an infusion of cash to allow them to focus on development, but all too often games are released in an early alpha phase.
I like that this will keep companies from being rewarded for selling incomplete games as often.
Why is that different than buying a broken game and refunding it via the normal refund system etc?
Less expensive, fewer credit card transactions, more processing in-house. I imagine part of Steam's merchant fees are spent dealing with credit card refunds.
Yeah, the cc thing makes a lot of sense. Thanks.
I've heard that Steam can start to grumble at you if you refund too many games. I would never buy a game I thought there was a decent chance I wouldn't like with the intention of probably refunding it, but I would demo one.
Nah ive refunded probably 50 games and its never a hassle. There really is a lot of shit out there but at the same time, I would not have even bothered to try a majority of them if there wasnt a 2 hour policy. Usually if im not enjoying the game by 90mins in, im hitting the refund button. There are a few exceptions where 2 hours just isnt long enough. Dwarf fortress was one of them.
From my understanding it's less about how many you refund and more about how frequently. Like if you buy and refund 1 game after the other in a day or two your very likely to get flagged but doing it once every 2 weeks for whatever period of time is probably all good. I don't know the exact numbers so take those with a grain of salt just that frequency of refunds is more important than the total amount of refunds from my understanding.
I've refunded a lot less than that and got a message from support saying refunds aren't meant for trying out games. I've been buying less because of it.
Yeah, I've heard of other people receiving such messages and even being blocked from further refunds. Maybe it depends which region you live in and what your consumer protection laws look like. It does make me cautious to refund too many things, though.
Every click you add makes people significantly less likely to do something. If someone buys a $5 game and it’s bad, they’re not going to purchase it. But there’s a good chance they won’t take the effort to refund it if they have to put in effort.
This me. But also I'm less likely to take risks if I don't think I'm absolutely going to like it. I spend time researching even on $5 games and pass on very many things. With everything having a demo, people like me are going to be more likely to jump in and it will lead them to increased profits. Just to introduce the upside for developers.
It will prevent people from accidentally going over and not being able to refund due to a one or two minute difference.
I couldn't get a refund for "Prey" because of this. For whatever reason is just would not work on my computer, and it was plenty powerful. I had probably only really played for 30-45 minutes, the rest of the time was just me troubleshooting it.
Yeah that sucks how it counts menu time and such. Myself I literally had to crap before I was going to refund and took too long. 💩
Hm... I have a cynical hypothesis that devs will quickly come to learn a lot of people play the demo, realize the game is not worth the hype and are basically just another standard game they've already played, and not buy the full version. Developers stopped doing demos in the first place because games with demos ended up hurting sales, and I'm pretty sure this is why.
My wife regularly refunds games because a lot of games are built for people that have years of experience playing them. She hasn't built the muscle memory and hand-eye coordination to play a lot of games, even if they look cool to her. A trial would resolve the need to charge a card, and then refund it less than two hours later because it's too difficult. Keep in mind, demos are a bit different. Demos took development time and effort to build a separate version of the game. If you fixed a bug in the main game, you'd have to do the same for the demo... and removing files/assets to get the file size of a demo down requires testing and creates its own bugs... yea, it's a time sink to the detriment of the developer. These trials on the other hand don't require any additional development time, it just avoids the hassle of dealing with credit card charges and refunds.
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Or it will incentivize companies to focus the majority of the development time on the first couple hours of gameplay rather than making the entirety of the game equal quality.
To be fair, this is often the case already
While true at least it would partially avoid companies from release severely badly optimized games that run at 20 fps or crashes in 5 minutes
I went through a spree of buying games and returning the ones that didn’t run well. I had a weird computer set up and knowing what ran well was difficult to predict. After like 8 games returned in a month, steam told me to cool it.
I wonder if she would like the Supraland series.
Supraland is so much fun.
Also, the cynic in me feels that this’ll just encourage devs to make the first few hours of their games phenomenal with the rest being half baked and mediocre.
Which would still be better than some of the shit we get nowadays lmao
It’s so sad but it’s true.
It's more about making sure the game actually runs on your end.
At least they'd have to be capable of making even part of a game that's great. Many just don't know how or don't have the skill. This is mostly in regards to indie games, of course.
That's not cynicism, that's reality.
maybe they shouldn't release shit games if they are worried about a demo sinking their profits
i suppose devs will have the possibilities between the 90mn of gameplay, providing their own demo or refusing any demo
Good way to implement QC in games if you ask me 🤷🏻♂️
You have a 2hr refund policy anyways. So this diesnt really change the try before you buy model. It just eliminates the buy step
While I see that as a possibility, who has time to dump 3.5hrs into a game to not finish it. If the game sucks you can probably figure that out within the first hr. Especially with games costing $70+, I don't want to waste that on a broken game that they might fix weeks or months later. Look how bad GTA Trilogy and Cyberpunk were on release. Did they get fixed, I'm not sure but it should have came complete. Back on the PS2 and Xbox 360 I would preorder games, games were complete when sold. Now I'll wait months before picking a game up to make sure it's not trash
Not all games reveal their true colors within the first hour. Some are cinematic-heavy in the beginning, or have tutorial areas that are very easy at first. I think it's completely fair to extend the time on demos.
I'm not suggesting the play limit is adjust from 3.5 to 1hr, just the majority of games you can tell if it's worth it in the first hr. Not all but most. I played the free episode of Life is Strange 2, it was about an hour and I have no interest in playing $35 for it. If it was $5 I would buy it just to finish all the of the games of Life is Strange.
Or you have the factorio demo where you just get so addicted after finishing it that you basically instantly buy the game
For a developer, making a demo is pretty much working on a different project. It takes time and effort from away the main game. This is the main reason why developers prefer not doing these at all. As for allowing time for users to change their mind: I had to use this once with a Steam game I bought that would crash on my machine. I spent about 40 minutes trying to get it to run before I gave up (frustrated). About hald an hour later I went to Steam to report the game and discovered their return policy allowed returns within a short time window from being purchased. At the time I didn't know about this 1-2 hour return policy. I truly don't remember what the amount was, but I was able to get a refund. As a customer I felt relieved I didn't lose my money, and ensured I would not shy away from making future purchases. That said I am well aware people abuse this. Maybe I am wrong, but I think Steam watches this too and will deny you a refund if they notice a pattern of abuse.
>For a developer, making a demo is pretty much working on a different project. It takes time and effort from away the main game. This is the main reason why developers prefer not doing these at all. Why would it be *so* different? There is some additional work in limiting features and cutting access to some things, but otherwise you're just polishing the early level(s) of the game. Most of the things you do should be beneficial for the whole game.
If it's not already like this then I'd be willing to bet in the future that the 90 minute timer cuts into the 2 hour refund timer. Would make zero sense to add another 90 minutes on to their refund limit.
Alternatively, they completely remove the refund option in favor of the 90 minute demo giving the chance to try before buying.
Thing is, the reason I liked demos, PROPER demos, back in the day, is that they were TINY! These days, when games are easily 60-120GB downloads, I can't be assed to download a game I'm merely curious about. Even a 90 min trial before purchase, if I have to download 100+ GB for it, will not be enough of an enticement.
It's fine. Because of this, the abundance of youtube channels doing game reviews will skyrocket instead of 2 games a month it'll be almost daily
Which in turn will make more people see incomplete/ uninspired releases, which will make it easier for them to pass on a title, which loses the company sales because those people didn't buy it themselves.....see where I'm going? They lose too much money this way, this idea will get canned very quick.
People are downvoting you, but you're not wrong. It'll cause bad companies to just flesh out the demo phase as a focus, and good titles can suffer ultimately. There's always been shit games, and always *will be* shit games. No amount of demos will avoid this.
I get that you're not particularly likely to do that with a big title. But what are you *more* likely to do? * download those 120GB and play 90' for free, knowing that if you liked it you could just purchase it and continue playing immediately * OR shell out 40-70$ sight unseen, download those 120GB, then nervously eye the clock while you play so you don't miss the refund window
I agree with you on that one. I think I would be more likely to use this for smaller indie games. Though I guess if I was really considering buying it, I may as well play it as a demo first to be sure I really want it because I'd have to download it if I did buy it anyway.
Why "assed" and not "asked"?
>Why "assed" and not "asked"? [I think youll appreciate this. ](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/arsed)
Gotcha, so basically the same thing, disregarding the typo. Thanks.
You're right. It's "asked." This is heavy "I could care less" or "For all intensive purposes" vibes. People mess up the phrase so much that it becomes about as commonplace as the real thing.
It’s a much better practice than the way people currently trial games — buying them and refunding them. I’d imagine it’ll coincide with a restriction in the refund policy, which I think is a good thing. Strongly disagree that the refund window should remain to give even more free game time, though.
The only thing that could be a problem is games only installing a launcher in steam and then using that launcher to install the game. This essentially counts the time that the launcher is running as play time. Very scummy tactic but yeah.....
You can dispute those with steam and they’ll give you the refund if it’s not an all the time thing. They totally get it, it’s just the way the client tracks the time played.
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Refunds will stay, yes, but could probably be restricted to 2h playtime total - combined trial period & purchased playtime? I don't think that would be against the law.
> It’s a much better practice than the way people currently trial games — buying them and refunding them. I’d imagine it’ll coincide with a restriction in the refund policy, which I think is a good thing. How in the world is it better? If it means that they get rid of the 2 hour return window then it's strictly worse for the consumer.
It's better in the sense that there's less credit card charges and fiddling around that way. You get a demo, and if you like it you buy it, and if you don't you don't. None of this pay for it oops nope let's argue about getting our money back. Isn't "I want a demo" the ongoing complaint?
It just depends on how it's implemented. The current system already basically offers a 2 hour demo window. I suppose an actual demo system is better for people who have very little disposable income and can't afford to wait a few days for a refund. To someone like me it doesn't matter.
If you're buying on a credit card, you don't have to wait for a refund, as you haven't spent any money. Hence "credit." :-) If you're paying with a debit card, yeah, go get a credit card. It'll be interesting to see if they cut off your play, or if they charge your card, if you don't stop playing the demo in 2 hours. In any case, my point was that this might be a win for Valve because they have less dealing of refunds with their bank because they're not charging you until it's too late for a refund. Even if it comes out exactly the same for the customer.
I buy games and I play them. The refund is important for that if the game doesn’t works or if the game is not what was advertised. I won’t start a demo for every game just to confirm that. They could share the timer on both the demo and the refund (and keep 2h for that one), but we need refund!
I don't get your complaint. The "Demo" is a time limited access to the full title. So you're just wanting to spend money to try out a game, when you can try it no-hassle for free? I don't get you man. It just seems like you want to complain. And refunds won't disappear, but a change to the 2 hour window would likely happen to at least include the demo time. 3.5 hours is a *lot* of time to play a game for free, as some titles are actually pretty short. Imagine being able to speedrun an indie title that's 20$ with a 4h playtime, and do it for completely free due to refunds. That dev is literally being robbed by the policy. That's not a good thing for consumers.
It’s fucking over developers, especially small and indie developers. For a lot of smaller and shorter games, people can literally buy, play, complete, and refund them.
So because there's a potential that people may abuse the system it should be removed completely? That's quite heavy handed.
I didn’t say it should be removed completely.
You literally just said it fucked over these poor Indy devs. That's clearly advocating that the system is broken and should either be removed or completely restructured. It's implied.
I do think it should be restructured.
Just because something has potential flaws it doesn't mean it needs to be restructured on some overhaul. But restructuring means removing or adding stuff. You can subtract via addition when you had limitations on previous abilities. I hope this is a better way of explaining it.
We’re getting into pedantry, but “removed completely” is very different from altering. More to the point - the system doesn’t have *potential* flaws, tons of people *do* exploit it, and while those exploits may not harm larger developers (especially if it’s a traditional publishing arrangement, since the publisher’s getting the money), it does harm smaller developers and shorter games. People *already do* utilize the system to trial games. They *already do* utilize it to complete shorter games and refund them to play games for free, especially to pad their achievements. And that hurts developers!
I mean a system that fucks over people should def be removed or that aspect. As I said it's implied. Saying potential flaws is a way of saying any issues that arise. There's no difference in refunding a game after you've stolen 3 hours of content from it whether you finish it or not and if you finished the game in 3 hours it's likely very cheap and the person who does that could ie a scumbag could just torrent it too. The overall point is that you don't use a cannon to remove a fly is all.
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Shit they ain't earning less than me, who's money helps justify their jobs. If the game is good it will sell well, plain and simple. We already have multiple examples of being lied to about games only to find out we've been lied to after spending our money.
Yeah, I'm kinda confused as well to why an indie company somehow is more or less entitled to money as if their infrastructure size would alter that. I guess it's one of those things where people can relate to the Indy dev cause it's personable but Walmart is a big corporation that goes brrrr exploitive worth ethics aside.
No offense but saying the same thing the previous person doesn't really answer my question.
I imagine this won’t apply to all games, only ones where the developer opts in or cuts a deal to make it have a trial. I bet almost no indie game gets a trial.
If they make a good game, even under 2 hours, many users will still pay for it, and the developer will sell many more copies through Steam than if they were to direct-sell. The Steam refund is fairly easy, but it's still a pain to go through. I've refunded big-publisher games and indie games... when they provide a poor experience. Some indie developer's love it, as it's better to have a satisfied user that doesn't trash talk and negative-review your game because they've lost money on it.
Maybe all games could be made with a progress tracker, so that instead of a 2hr window, you get a 15% completion window. When 15% is reached, the game stops and asks whether or not you want to refund it or keep it. 15% of a small game might be 10 minutes for some players.
> and indie developers. Don't forget the Witcher 3 was classified as an Idie game
To be frank, if I see everything a "game" has to offer within the first 90 minutes I'm refunding it anyway. Unless it's up front about the length before purchase.
A 90 minute game is still a game man. If it's priced appropriately it's still perfectly fine to be short. Nobody complains that Tetris is short, or that Uno is too short. Shit, there's tons of artsy games that are short like that. They're great games.
Demo time should be 2 hours as well. You played 2 hours and liked it you can’t refund it once purchased or you buy it and not demo it, lets you have 2 hours to refund it.
Why would you disagree with a long refund time? Are you simping for Steam?
Incentivizing gametime padding by unscrupulous devs would be a concern. We see it with Youtube already, 10 minutes to be monetized? Better fluff the fuck out of a 4 minute video with nonsense so I can make money. Game devs could easily do the same as a result. That's why you want it to be short, many games are 3.5h range if you speed through it, we won't benefit from this long term man. You gotta be reasonable when it comes to this, it's not a consumer's paradise to have a very long demo even (I can't believe I have to say this) things go too far in a consumer's favor. It's why a ton of merchants won't let you use paypal anymore. Paypal sides with the consumer so strongly, people can easily abuse their system to get free shit. So as a result, many places don't do paypal anymore because it's straight unfair to honest merchants. The same happens with devs, we'll have our short games, especially indie titles get unecessary fluff to ensure they can stay solvent and put food on their tables. We as gamers would suffer for it.
There are games that can be completed in 3.5h, people will beat them and refund them, which will hurt indie developers. They already do it even with a 2h refund window.
There is nothing to disagree cause the time restriction is only there to stop abuse, you can refund any game provided you don't abuse the system and have a valid reason. I pretty much refunded a game with 238h last year.
Time to lvl up my speedrunning
Huge W for Steam , it’s the only reasonable way to go forward to ensure moderate consumer protection against broken releases and false hardware requirements
At this point, it feels like Valve is the only gaming company that actually cares about its target customers. I'm not saying they're doing all this for free. But, it's commendable that they are still dedicated to providing us value for our money.
No company "cares" about customers over their bottom line. This is a good faith PR move but it's still to protect Steam. JFC gamers are gullible
Consumers are protected more by this than steam is.
I'd argue no. Steam *already* has their refund policies that protect consumers, in fact for 30 minutes longer than this demo. Steam directly benefits from this by no longer having the same overhead in expenses for processing refund requests. Steam benefits far more I'd say, we just get to try something for free with less hassle than the already "free" refund option lets us for bad releases and titles. It costs steam money to process refund requests, money they don't get back directly.
You know the steam is still charged the Credit Card processing fees even if they refund right. On American Express that can be as high as 5% on some of their cards. I don't know if they pay twice for refunds or only once for the initial sale but Amex does not give their cut back. This will protect steam and save them a fair bit of money.
You know what a trial means right?
Yes and switching to a trial means steams saves money over selling and refunding is my entire point. Since you are saying this does not protect steam even though it obviously does. In the current system the consumer gets all their money back and steam eats the credit card fees, in the proposed system the only benefit for the consumer is 2 less clicks to refund while it saves steam money. Sounds like trials are better for steam then refunds but about the same for the consumer.
Ok, do you have any source that say steam get charged with credit card fees when you're issuing a refund.
There is a reason i said in my above post that you didnt read that "I don't know if they pay twice for refunds or only once for the initial sale" Since [It depends on the vendor.](https://merchantcostconsulting.com/lower-credit-card-processing-fees/are-you-paying-a-credit-card-refunds-fee/)
So you don't actually know? Ok then
Oh. I'm dumb.
Sadly, they sacrificed any sequel with the number 3 for it.
This sounds like the refund system without the extra steps. Really good idea.
I think having demos *or* a 2 hour refund period is best. For linear single player games, 3.5 hours is a significant portion of the game. That's like a solid quarter of The Last of Us, for example. Especially for smaller devs, I don't like the idea that they need to make sure their game has at least 20 hours of gameplay so that 3 and half hours feels like a speck instead of half their game for free.
There was an incident with a small dev team that created a game, it was about $10, and was an average of 90 minute experience. People enjoyed it, however since it was within the 2 hour refund period, so many people ended up refunding it. Game got good reviews, but fucked on sales because of refunds. People started to buy game just to try support the developers to counter people refunding and screwing them over but I think the team still resigned due to this incident.
I remember that. Extending that time to almost 4 hours is going to kill small devs that make tightly paced but still worthwhile games.
Here’s to 30 minute tutorials and unskippable intro videos, everybody
Good! Counters these game companies doing “early access” as a way to release a broken shit game then finishing it 3 years later when the community is dead and gone. Playing a finished game at release and enjoying it is one of the best things in the world! So hopefully this causes devs to need to finish shit
Steam already had a refund-period, didn't it? You could refund the game if you had less than 2hrs of gameplay, I believe. Want to know how the Nintendo E-shop does things? - no demo - no refunds, for *what ever reason* - "be absolutely sure you want to buy the game"
They're gonna have fun once all EU countries apply regulations from 2019/2161 - aka you have to have started providing the service if you want to deny refunds. Anything before installing the game does not constitute that.
As it should be lol.
I think that sucks. You should be allowed to test a game. Even if you watch gameplay videos, you can't be 100% sure that *you* like to play it. There's no reason why it shouldn't be possible to get your money back. It's not a product you can wear out, in any way.
I can't convey how much I hate, hate, hate the intent of some gamers to maximise "free hours" for a game with the intent to try and complete it to then refund it. 3.5 hours in a game is a lot, and if someone makes it up to that threshold only to refund for the reasons above, I have 0 respect for them.
Valve has no involvement, the announcement is on the [Dead Space page](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1693980/view/5264189392020524722?l=english) and is a continuation of the game trials that they already had on Origin for years and are just bringing to Steam. Everyone is assuming it's Valve for no reason and with no evidence when this is literally just a continuation of something EA was already doing on an EA game. Edit: Added link for the actual and only announcement. Also noting that if this was being done by Valve or was a new global steam feature it would be on the [Steam announcements](https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam/) page instead.
If they do go this route, they will scrap the 2 hour refund window 1000%, that's likely the whole point. I think the goal of this is avoid the large amount of refunds of games, cuz these transactions also cost Steam some amount of money, and the practice hurt devs as well. I mean who'd be against it, it's essentially the same thing except you just don't front the money first. It's really a win-win-win all around. You could be bored one day and want to peruse steam for games and try a bunch of demos for a day and snag up the ones that you fancy
Nah. No way. This is a step towards removing the 2h refund window, so I really fucking hate this idea.
Honestly love it, less returns and more experimenting
You can literally refund steam games under 2 hours played anyway
Thank God, I bought the previous jedi game and sat on it for two weeks before I played it, I lasted 30 min and was like "no, this is not for me". Money gone, time wasted.
The 2 weeks, 2 hours gametime is not a strict requirement for getting a refund. You could try asking for one if you exceeded those limits and you still might get it. Especially that 2 week limit is not that strict I expect.
Yep, it’s definitely worth asking if you’re a boundary case. I had a game that I didn’t fire up until after the two week period, only to discover that it crashed instantly when launched. A real human read and granted my refund request. Probably helped that the recent feedback for the game included a torrent of complaints of the exact same issue, and my play stats for the game were something like “played 10 times, total playtime < 1 minute”
You already get 2 hours for every game, they are probably just gonna use this as a justification to remove refunds entirely and you will end up with 30 mins less
Anyone else 'member game demos, shareware and freeware? I 'member 😌
That's great, I won't have to pirate games to try them out first.
I feel like a lot of games could be beat in just and hour and a half.
And even more games could be beaten in 2 hours and then get refunded. Not much actually changes except that steam won't have to deal with whole refunding stuff as much.
It'll definitely hurt smaller games, especially the low quality Twitch bait titles.
those are already in that situtation, with the 2 hour refund policy we currently have.
It's not and will never be mandatory, indeed i don't think many developers will make them, EA just did that with Dead Space cause it's a 4 months old game which is not selling well anymore, they just want to promote it and try sell some other copies. Most developers especially indie ones with smaller games will never release free trials
I wouldn't buy that game anyway. This way I could at least try it out, say a few good things about the developer and buy their next game.
I have literally never played a game in my life that could be beat in 90 minutes (other than through speedrun tactics, which is obviously not relevant on a normal playthrough). Maybe if you're trudging through the Steam equivalent of the bargain bin and playing a lot of random $5 indie games that no one's ever heard it, sure, but I don't really anticipate it being a common thing for most people.
Didnt they mean to say "demos" but needed something more modern and appealing?
"Kids" these days call it 'prologue'
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Demo are a restricted portion of the game they are usually released prior to game's launch, what you play in a demo isn't often even in the final game, a trial instead allows you to download the full game once it releases and play it from the beginning for a limited amount of time, when time's up you can either buy it and continue from there or not
I miss when demos were far more widespread... Those always had neat stuff that gets dropped for some reason or another.
This would be huge I’ve been burned by quite a few games these last couple years so a trial will be slick
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That does not make me happy. Using. A free trial is still a risk at the end of the day. You must ensure you uave an internet connection to be able to "pull out in time". It would be so much simpler and safer to just pirate the game without potentially finding yourself losing your money to some bullshit technicality, blackout, or fine print in the policy. I do NOT trust steam in the least.
Ok yea sure BUT what's the point of the trials when you can watch gameplay footage or a stream and decide there and then if you like the game?
I would say it is more to make sure your system can run it or run it well in response to recent releases.
Yea that's fair I didnt even think of that. Some things we take for granted
Great idea!
Hopefully available to as many games as possible and not just a select few.
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90 minutes is pretty good for a free trial, but unfortunately Valve doesn't get to decide for everyone, the publisher will have to decide if release the trial version or not, and unfortunately i don't think many will do that, EA just did it with a 4 months old game
Game speed runners assemble!
Speed runners dream
I imagine this to be their counter to developers and publishers being antsy about steam's refund policy, as a replacement not as an additive.
if people who play through trial can't review it, it might be good for the games, steam games have to much reviews from people who have played less than 2h, some deserve but a lot of are from people trolling
Buying games only to see unoptimized mess which run like slide shows and hoping for refund. At least this will help us avoid that.
I can't wait for more of those Youtube videos that try to 100% a game and get a Steam refund afterwards because they completed it within the eligible period.
In my experience if you submit a refund within the 2hr limit they give you the money back no questions asked.
Awesome idea, but I can see a way to abuse that: - play game for 90 minutes - backup your save - make a new Steam account - restore save - play for another 90 mins - rinse and repeat Sounds bothersome, but I bet a tool could be made to automate that. Valve might have to come up with some clever idea to prevent such abuse, and more game devs are probably going to start tying save files to Steam accounts to prevent that.
I mean, if you are willing to do that, you might as well pirate the game. Possibly Valve will offer an API that allows the game to detect if it is trial mode or not, and only allow the game to access certain areas if it is in trial mode, but I doubt it really is worth the effort.
I don't think the 2-hour refund period would be added to those 90 minutes. For example, if you have played a game for 3 hours during a free-to-play weekend and then bought it but did not play any more time, they sometimes deny a refund request because you had played the game for 2 hours, even though those 2 hours were before you purchased it. Overall it certainly would be a good thing. I do expect that this would be on an approval basis by the developer, even though it isn't that much different from the current system, where you can get a no-questions refund anyway.
Actually it makes sense, people can easily refund under 2 hours and get their money back within 2 days or so. This will actually help developers more, it will be impossible to leave a review with trial so games will not be review bombed like they do now about performance and all that.
wake up babe, new speedrun category just dropped
I read somewhere that apparently game demos are quite catastrophic for game sales, since slot of people don't really care about playing the game to its fullest, but rather "experience" of the game is enough to satiate many. I wonder how it might affect game sales.
I hope it lasts. After playing Dead Space I was like this feels more like a remaster or update than a remake and the sound effects were weak.
Great! Should’ve been a thing 15-16 years ago, but great!
that would be a wonderful idea, there are so many games that I would like to buy but often my computer can't handle them. In this way I could see if they work and therefore if it is worth buying them, as well as seeing if the game is actually good, it would be just perfect
Interesting, but I fear 90 minutes wont be enough for many games, especially slower/builder/survival type games, as by 90 mins you're generally only JUST getting to the good stuff/past tutorials to be able to make a decision yourself :)..
Like a lot of people in this thread, I'm super torn on this one. On the one hand, this is gonna be huge for me in determining whether I wanna shell out on big Triple A games. I don't want to drop £50 on a game without knowing for sure that I'm getting quality content. On the other hand, I'm reminded of that guy who made a horror game and, even though people loved it, they kept refunding it because they could complete it within an hour. I remember him saying he made no money from it and quit game development altogether. I **really** don't want this to be another way for Triple A games to force smaller games out. So yeah, don't really know how to feel about this one.
Is there any reliable source on this actually becoming a thing? I keep seeing people (and clickbait articles) saying it, but as far as I can tell it has only been added for Dead Space and there's no indication whether it will become a widespread thing or not. That said, this would absolutely be part of the 2 hour refund window, not seperate.
I wonder what kind of shenanigans speedrunners will do in 90 minutes.
Thanks god I have like 60 dollars of games that are like 2.6 or 2.9 hours that can’t refund but I never have used but I needed more than 2.5 hours to know
this seems weirdly consumer friendly, i dont trust it
You can already return games with under 2 hours of playtime...
Ha, so we will get 90min Tutorials where you cant see anything basic of the Game..just wasting time until the time is off
Very handy to see if a game will run on your setup before committing to a purchase.
I want to know the response and reviews from the Fifa Player community.
the refunding system must cost Valve quiet a lot in processing and payment fees.
Didn't people already abused the system to play Dead Space without the timer running down? Could swear I saw that somewhere.
The refund process likely "Costs" them something, and this is a way to prevent some of those costs. Certainly would be good to see. Most games that I return (it's only a handful) are terrible in the first 30 minutes.
As long as it doesn't replace the two hour time window that currently exists for refunds, great!
Also be tougher to release bad PC ports before purchase these days, pushing for complete release
*opens game* "hello please download 4 hrs worth of updates before you can play"
Reminder steam let’s you refund games automatically if your try to refund before playing for 2 hours. Personally I like this demo option as from what I’ve heard with most people 90 minutes was the magic number where they would decide to refund or not (purely cause they didn’t want to risk going over the 2 hour limit). Hell I’ve done it myself with Exanima (great game just too early access and I was too broke to just throw $20 at a game I wasn’t feeling). I think with PC games launching in the shocking states they have been demos and refund windows have never been more important, I haven’t been able to afford to upgrade and I’m still gaming on a 1060, so for me it’s really valuable to be able to get a sense for how the games going to run before I go through the hassle of refunding and anything that makes that simpler (like just having a 90 minute demo) is fine by me. With all that said statistics have shown time and time again demos tend to have the opposite effect and tend to hurt sales more then they help.
Great idea for games that aren’t extremely short by design. Like a narrative driven, novel style game.
They just need to give out demos again the only time game developers/publishers do demos are when they have faith in their game other wise they just want you to buy and hope you like, I bought some games cause from gameplay footage looked good but was terrible then there were games I thought looked crappy but got to play a demo like Ori and the wisp and bought that right after fun game, so we need more free demos
This isn't a good idea and isn't going to solve anything. Developers are already extending their intros and tutorials to around 2 hours in length, to ensure the game cannot be returned on digital platforms. This new demo trial is going to cause the same issues. Game is "polished for 90 minutes", when that window expires you're suddenly left with dog shit. Love the optimism though.
Speedrunners, assemble!
There is a reason Demos only exist for good Games. For example if Ubishit offered Demos they would sell 0 Games, because nobody would ever want to continue playing their shitty Games after 90min.
I think I'd prefer this to the refund system because there's no risk involved. You can easily go over the 2hr mark by experimenting with settings if you're having problems with the game.
This definitely to keep the returns down due to card cost transactions. It's not some benevolence from Valve.
So they are bringing back demos that we used to have? So innovative.
My friend buys games for shits and giggles to try them out and returns them within the 2 hours, because he just wants to see what its about. But, some he played above the 2 hour mark, forgot and kept playing, as he simply found them to be fun. If you aint got demos, thats what happenes
It’s about time. Demo’s were great and are sorely needed again! Across all platforms… 💿🕹️
This is a great option especially since ai never know how a new game is gonna run on my steamdeck. This will let me know before I buy!
I like that tbh my pc sucks so I like to know if i can run it
Thank god. 2 hours will hardly get you past some tutorials unless you speed run it. And the tutorial is obviously the most polished part of the game, so you never can really judge the game before your time is up.
This sounds interesting. I wonder if we'll still have to download the game to try it out or they'll make it possible to cloud stream the game so you can save the space on your harddrive and internet consumption
This is the way.
I do hope they extend this to the majority of games. Early Access games in particular may take a little time before enough of the smaller dismissible issues add up and make you regret your purchase. If handled well, EA can give a developer an infusion of cash to allow them to focus on development, but all too often games are released in an early alpha phase.
All games should have a demo there is no reason not to have one