Steam's refund policy has come under question by one indie developer who has found multiple players refunding their game after completing it in under two hours. Paddle Paddle Paddle is a co-op challenge game, where you and another player control one oar each on a canoe and have to overcome a series of dangerous obstacle courses to avoid lava spilling in on either side of you. The game is meant to be difficult, but it's also quite short for some, who've been able to beat it in the two-hour time limit before Steam no longer allows refunds.
Currently, Steam allows you to refund a game if you've had it for less than two weeks, and if you have spent less than two hours playing it. Developer Zoroarts wants this to change. "Would be cool if you could finally do something about your refund policy... Got dozens of reviews like that and 21% refund rate even though the Reviews are 90% very positive," he writes on Twitter/X.
<social>https://x.com/Zoroarts/status/2073802226485572080</social>
Paddle Paddle Paddle isn't an expensive game, currently costing £2.99 due to a 40% off Steam sale. It also has a cheap DLC adding a bit more content to the game. It could be argued there's a case for Steam's refund policy to change when it comes to games that aren't meant to be played for a long period of time, but then there's the counter that this could be used to dodge refunds altogether. "Dev thinks Steam should further restrict consumers rights and eliminate the 2 hour gameplay window for refunds. As someone who has actively been screwed out of refunds for even less gameplay or AAA studios padding their tutorial, I think Mateo is extremely out of touch and emotional because his own game isn't long enough," wrote one Steam reviewer (who hadn't actually refunded the game).
"There just isn't enough content, game looks like a browser game, and was made rushed/in a short amount of time (the dev admits this himself). And yet the dev has the nerve to cry about refunds on X when he is trying to sell a browser game to you," reads the top review on Steam at the time of writing.
It's clear Zoroarts' comments haven't done much to please the Steam user base, but do you think Valve should change its refund policy to avoid situations like this?