How has steam refunds affected your profits?

News & General Discussion
1

Thoughts?

2

If the game is good why would anyone refund? I think its a good thing for the gamers though. Allow them to refund games they dont like, thats if they dont abuse it.

1 Like
3

There are tons of people buying games and refunding them just before the 2 hour mark.

Don’t assume people are just buying as they used to, O am curious if 3000 copies of a game is sold whats the estimate on the refunds?

4

Not at all. Then again, I’m currently a middleman. I don’t sell games directly. I help other people make games to sell.

5

Thanks to refund program I have made purchases I would have never made, so it can work in a positive way too.

3 Likes
6

If they don’t want to play the game for more than 2 hours, (IMO) they’re entitled to a refund.

7

Isn’t it about the time where you stop worrying about the state of the industry and go make a game? Steams policies don’t really matter until you have a game up.

Anyway, on the question, in pretty much every area of retail having a solid refund policy actually increases sales. Consumers buy knowing they can change their minds if it doesn’t work out. They are more likely to make riskier purchases. And thus end up spending more money. This typically outweighs the few people who abuse the system.

5 Likes
8

Steam has a limit for how many times you’re able to do this over a period of time. I don’t know the limit off-hand but I have seen mention on Reddit of people who have hit this limit and lost the ability to make further refunds.

1 Like
9

As a developer? Not at all. As a consumer? Now when AAA publishers push out a potato, I can protect my personal profits. There’s a lot of p’s in that sentence.

10

Even though there’s a refund policy, most people will be too lazy to actually go through the process. There are some people that still have Journey of the Light in their accounts, even though Steam has offered refunds for anyone scammed into buying it.

1 Like
11

@darkhog I have a few games in one of my accounts that are no longer playable because they were online only games that had their servers shut down. Breach is the only one I remember by name. What a disappointment. But they’re really old and I’m really lazy, so I simply cannot justify the effort :stuck_out_tongue:

People probably get less motivated as time goes on since you’ll recoup those losses if you’re employed.

12

Here’s some experiential data from Early Access:

  1. Low sales will skew your refund rate due to small sample sizes.
  2. Monthly refund rates settle around 3-5% depending on whether it was a sale month or not (based on $100k+ gross month), but WILL vary by game
  3. You may see a slightly higher return rate during sales due to reduced audience suitability (speculative purchases by non-core audience)
  4. If you can’t engage the player for 2 hours, your rate is likely going to be higher
  5. Product quality likely has a role to play (fewer frustrating bugs = good)
  6. If players can’t see the potential of an SEA title, your rate may also be higher
  7. Steam Refunds is a strong positive for the industry - far more speculative sales due to reduced risk

Hope this helps.

9 Likes
13

I haven’t heard word of abuse of the refund system for some time now. I’ve never used it myself as if I didn’t like a game I probably would be too lazy to get it refunded anyway.

Personally I think this is still a fantastic addition to Steam because it allows players to test if their PC even runs a game.

14

I have around 5% of refunds and from what I hear that’s a pretty common percentage among games that are not horrible. I would say that refunds are not really relevant, in fact they may be good because people take more chances and also unhappy customers (at least in my case) just refund and give me some shit in the refund notes instead of doing it through public reviews (well, most of them).

15

Is it even possible to abuse a system that only lets you get a refund if you’ve played less than 2 hours or the game is reported broken by a majority of the community? Nothing against short story games, but who wants to pay for a game shorter than a movie? :face_with_spiral_eyes: Maybe low priced short games shouldn’t be refundable unless they don’t run on the hardware.