jefequeso's concern is that games that are completable under 2 hours could be exploited under the refund policy, and I can definitely understand where he is coming from.

It's not a matter of whether the games are worth keeping for more than two hours, rather some games are legitimately made to be completed under two hours, and theoretically those games could be exploited under the new refund policy.

Imagine being able to buy a Spiderman comic book for $2, read it in an hour and then return it because you were able to return it without question as long as you didn't spend more than two hours reading it. Same deal here. You've got your jollies out of it and you kept your two bucks and neither the publisher nor the storefront got their money, sounds like at least two parties got a raw deal, right?

"But just make your games longer!" is what some will say, but why should a creator have to add spend time adding padding just to avoid being (potentially) ripped off? Shorter games have their place, and a shorter length doesn't mean a game is bad, just like a longer length doesn't make a game good. Game length is not a reliable indicator of quality is what I'm saying.

Overall I'm not too familiar with the policy admittedly, but I would hope that Steam can tell if the person asking for a refund has or hasn't completed the game.

I think a significant part of his post is the "aren't worth keeping beyond". I don't think he's actually talking about the duration of the product but more about the quality.

Never mind.

That's the hope. My Steam guy assured me they have it covered, so I'm not as worried now as I was yesterday.

That would be pretty awesome. I have a TON of games on my list that I probably won't ever touch again, and would love to re-sell.

Although that opens up an entire new can of worms that's potentially just as problematic for devs.

I can't quite remember, does The Moon Sliver have a "you won the game" achievement? If it (and The Music Machine) doesn't, then I would get right on that to be honest. It might not be much, but it would probably be useful to Steam if somebody asked for a refund.

I don't get the obsession with game length in general. I mean if it is an open-world rpg I understand the concern or a linear AAA title, but not everything needs excessive length or god-forbid padding. Some of the best stories I have ever experienced have been in short titles that were devoid of filler and bloat.

It's like an essay. While teachers like to impose staunch length guidelines, I find the strongest essays tend to flow naturally and succinctly. Restating things 50 times and being excessively wordy doesn't actually make the content stronger it just takes the focus away from the heart of the matter and instead places it on a specific quota.

Blech. I intentionally didn't add achivements to either game, because I feel they really detract from the experience. Still... you might be right.

Re-sell starts getting in the territory of heavy-duty DRM unfortunately plus being on PC our sale prices are generally much much better (you will never find a major console title for $5 unless it was absolutely terrible or they printed way too many copies and it is wasting warehouse space).

Yeah, that's my view also. In fact (I've probably already mentioned this somewhere in the thread) I'm actually at the point where I'm MORE likely to purchase a short game than a longer one. I've never had a very good attention span, and nowadays I simply don't have the time to devote 200 hours to a single game. Much less the energy.

And short experiences can be so powerful, too. Recently I played Home is Where One Starts, which only took around 20 minutes to complete, but I felt my money was very well-spent. It was a wonderful 20 minutes. Proteus is another good example. One of the most magical gaming experiences I've ever had, and my first playthrough was only about an hour (admittedly I've replayed it several times as well).

I'd really like to see players become more accepting of (fairly priced) short experiences, because I think they have just as much value as enormous RPG epics. And I think there's an audience for them. Especially the average gamer getting older and having jobs/families.

It's always something you can implement down the line if people actually are ripping you off on a regular basis, just have one achievement that you unlock at the very end of the game.

That's very true. We can already buy games super cheap. Heck, right now you can go on Bundle Stars and purchase 8 horror games for $2.49 in the Nightmare Bundle (full disclosure: mine's one of them). You couldn't even buy a single used console game for that price, unless it's a real stinker.
Yeah, it's something I'll probably do if this does end up being a problem. Thanks for the idea :)

The audience is definitely there, just there is a communication problem imo. Some games do a really poor job of relaying what kind of experience they are in their sales pitch. People generally don't have a great attention span and you only get one real first impression. Some of it is the consumers fault (like the people that buy games clearly marked as 64bit or incompatible with <x> that go and shit all over the forums and developers for it), but some of it is the publisher/developers fault. If you go through Steam there are a lot of games that really don't do a good job of explaining what they are, and since demos are incredibly rare it is often misleading (a customer that feels mislead is one of themost pissed off types of customers one will ever face).

For example, some of the flak Gone Home took (not the gamergate flak). I never touched the title, but I recall multiple people complaining that they got something entirely different from what they were expecting based on the initial storepage summary.

I missed your response the first time through the thread but that looks like a book I'd be very interested in checking out. Thanks for the link!

Well, it's been a day and nothing yet.