Is it possible for you to provide "updates" or "free DLC" for your two games that are less than 2 hours to make them both longer than 2 hours? That is what I'd do in order to protect myself. Just throw in some extra content so the games don't become free to play for people without any morals. Make it so if someone rushed through both games, each game would take him or her, 2 hours and 1 minute to finish, basically. For example, add cut scenes that can not be skipped to extend each game to over 2 hours. Unfortunately this means, you are going to have to work for free just to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of douchebags. But I can think of no easier solution. On the bright side, the extra content might make your games look more appealing and you will have more sales. :) So maybe in the end, you won't have to work for free in order to protect yourself.

Arbitrarily inflating game time (especially if it degrades the experience) is going to harm more than it helps. The runs the risk of alienating actual customers.

Using the same halfassed logic as DRM does is not the way forward. You don't focus on the shitbags, you focus on the legitimate customers.

There are shitbags, there are good customers and there are people who are in between... And if the extra content doesn't degrade the experience then why not?

Okay, now that I think about it some more, unskippable cutscenes is a bad idea because a lot of people complain about them. And I agree that making the story longer will degrade the experience if that is what you mean by "padding". But it's still possible to add content without degrading the experience like adding easter eggs, different endings and mini games...

It really depends on the genre and the title. Most the really short games I have played have been really narrative and experience focused, which tends to be hard to extend without harming things.

Genius idea. Not being sarcastic.

Well that escalated quickly. :)

Look, I didn't intend to be offensive by my statement, my apologies to you if it came across that way. It is pretty common for people without experience as small business owners to have a consumerist-centric perspective -- which is the reason why I wanted to engage you in this discourse. If you try running your own business for a year or so you will fully understand what I'm trying to convey.

First of all, if you look at my other posts in this thread you will see that I agree with you that Valve's new refund policy probably isn't going to cause that much trouble for smaller devs and publishers. On the contrary, I actually think there is a chance it helps them out and can give them more exposure.

Now the reason why I responded to you is because of your misconceptions with respect to consumer rights and your accusatory tone against small business owners who are simply expressing concerns which affect our meager livelihoods. I think you are unclear about what types of refunds are legally afforded you as opposed to what sorts of extended service refunds big businesses often give you and which have perhaps conditioned you to think is within your legal rights. At least in California, a business is not legally required to give refunds unless the product is defective. You can see for yourself here:

http://oag.ca.gov/consumers/general/refund_policies

Beyond that, it is up to the business to set their own policies with respect to refund, and when a consumer agrees to the TOS and creates a legally binding contract when purchasing something they have legally agreed to the terms. So if a business says they do not accept returns, refunds, or exchanges unless the product is defective, they are well within their legal bounds to deny you a refund if the product works as advertised.

The problem here is that these days, most major forms of payment for small businesses in the USA come down to credit cards, PayPal, and monopolistic aggregate storefronts like Amazon and Steam. Even if a business states clearly in their policies that they do not accept refunds unless the product is defective, they are still at the mercy of their payment processors and large storefronts like Amazon/eBay/Steam because fraudsters and consumers in breach of their purchase contract can initiate chargebacks and the payment processors will almost always side with the consumer since they know they can bully the small businesses into making do and being compliant with the system. Again, the huge corporations do not feel the effect of these lost sales and higher expenses since they are still building brand loyalty at the expense of the smaller businesses which have fewer resources to absorb such financial hits.

Now I'm also not saying that this needs to be changed, as any successful business owner also knows that you need to be able to be flexible and play within the system that is currently set, no matter how much it may seem to be stacked against you.

While these laws do exist to deter criminals from the initial act, once committed there are no laws that allow businesses to recuperate their losses due to fraud and theft as opposed to the relative ease with which consumers can just initiate chargebacks with their credit card companies. Regular consumers that have been conditioned to think that all businesses should have a no-questions-asked refund policy take advantage of this fact a lot, and if for whatever reason a consumer feels justified in doing so, are usually able to get their money back no matter how ridiculous the complaint -- sometimes even feeling justified in committing "lite" fraud by giving false reasons for requesting the refund. Big banks and payment processors profit a great deal from this, and have very little incentive for helping small businesses recuperate their losses.

Again, as a small business owner I've accepted this fact and adjust my business strategies accordingly. However, as a philanthropist I dislike the way it breeds entitlement and arrogance amongst some consumers who can justify their "rights" to just about anything.

It's true that refund policies change depending on the country you purchase the product from, but in the same logic then steam should give better refund policies for everything sold in EU

They don't, even after the EU commission told them that they MUST, steam as a company still refused

Sure a contract is binding, but it must respect the additional law that country/region impose, otherwise i can contest it no matter what their tos says

Wouldn't be surprised if the new refund service of steam has something to do with that

Actually that makes a lot of sense as a potential reason for the change.

One thing that was a cultural shock for me when moving from the USA to Japan was the very different attitudes with respect to refunds and returns. While it is changing somewhat in the past decade or so, Japanese sellers have historically been much more conservative with respect to return policies.

As someone who is currently working at Walmart (not willingly, of course; I'm a college student with a summer job), the most costly theft and "shrink" results from the theft of fairly cheap items. Just yesterday, we had one customer try to steal $450 of shirts that were priced $2-10 each. Today, we had a person try to make up price matches for a cartful of items, with each lie potentially saving her at most $1. And these people aren't even poor, needy people. They're well known in the community as upper-middle class people who try to cheat stores out of their merchandise and then resell it all. It's become such a big problem in our area that there's a police investigation going on about it.

Even back in the days of pirates, pirates didn't steal gold and valuable crap like that. They stole cheap merchandise that could easily be resold without raising suspicions, like flour. If there's a loophole, people will use it.

That said, those people are a vast minority, so I really doubt that Steam's refund policy will cause much harm (if any) to devs of short games. For what it's worth, I bought The Music Machine on itch.io just now for $10, simply because I enjoyed The Moon Sliver.

I get what your saying, but the other thing to consider is there is really only one way to steal a physical product (and it is possible to profit off it). Digital products are a different beast with many many ways for people to steal it and very very few ways to actually profit off the theft. I probably shouldn't have compared retail earlier, truth be told.

With digital products there isn't a whole lot of different between stealing a 1000 dollar one versus a 3 dollar one, and with exploiting systems you have a limited number of exploitations before you run out of "goodwill". Most the unethical would-be-exploiters are more likely to be thinking "fuck yeah CoD for free" and not think "oh man this 3 dollar indie game is mine for free".

Edit: What type game is The Moon Sliver? Been meaning to check it out after seeing other posts of jefe's, but never really got around to it. Might be interesting in picking it up though (depending), when I stop being fucking broke.

Well, there are actually multiple ways to steal physical goods. ;) But you're right, the comparison doesn't really work.

Refunds should have been available from the start. Now they should add resale.

If your games aren't worth keeping beyond 2 hours, then you really don't deserve the money. At least this helps stop developers from exploiting people on mass.

People regularly pay $10 to go to the theater, to see a less-than-2-hour movie, once. Why does this whole "2 hours of entertainment doesn't deserve any amount of money" thing only apply to games?