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Comment by pfisch | Hacker News Reader

Well you certainly can't return other similar media products in this way.

I'm not even saying it is wrong necessarily, but in a system that allows around 90%+ of returns to have nothing to do with the product being defective I am just confused why people are saying the policy is draconian.

Also valve has stated specifically that the return system is not meant to be used as a demo, even though it is very clear that everyone is.

I mean does amazon allow you to return movies after watching them for 2 hours?

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> I mean does amazon allow you to return movies after watching them for 2 hours?

I don't know what Amazon's return policy is, but most games are longer than 2 hours.

Looking at https://howlongtobeat.com/stats_more.php?s=Most_Submissions and the top 10 games, all of them are much longer than 2 hours. Some are on the shorter end of the scale, but in general a 2 hour playtime return policy seems to be about right.

I would also bet that if your game is only 2 hours long, you would have coffee-level pricing, and users probably wouldn't bother refunding if it's that cheap. Maybe I'm wrong about that though.

>I would also bet that if your game is only 2 hours long, you would have coffee-level pricing, and users probably wouldn't bother refunding if it's that cheap. Maybe I'm wrong about that though.

You are very wrong about that.

> Well you certainly can't return other similar media products in this way.

Counterpoint: Amazon offers ebook returns. Barnes and Noble offers audiobook returns. It's not wholly true that media products cannot be returned to other sellers.

> I am just confused why people are saying the policy is draconian.

Very short return window.

I think you're looking at this backwards. "If only Steam would prevent returns, I would keep 10% more sales!" No, if Steam prevented returns, you would never have had those sales in the first place.

>I think you're looking at this backwards. "If only Steam would prevent returns, I would keep 10% more sales!" No, if Steam prevented returns, you would never have had those sales in the first place.

I never said that. Honestly I'm not sure what I think about it, but I'm certain that it helps valve more than it does developers. Those people will end up spending the money on some game so valve wins either way. Also this policy makes it harder for devs to sell steam keys so they don't lose 30% to steam, because steam keys are not refundable.

14 days is really not very short. Also returning an ebook only has a 7 day return window.

The australian refund policy covers defects and software incompatibility. Steams software policy covers anything within 2 hours of playtime or up to 14 days.

pfisch claims that the refund rate is higher than the defect rate.

In other words the steam refund policy is less draconian than the australian refund policy.

Refunds make customers less risk averse. They are more prone to buying on impulse to try something new. Good game developers like pfisch profit off of the impulse buys while bad developers will see high refund rates even from non impulsive customers.

Overall it's a win win situation.

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