Developers offer some thoughts on Steam refunds just a couple of months after their introduction, positive and negative both.
“I can say daily sales are up by more than 30 percent, which is big enough that I don't imagine refunds are completely negating it. It's the first time the game's daily sales rate has ever gone up and stayed up -- the usual pattern is a slow decline with brief spikes for discounts.”
- Tom Francis, developer of Gunpoint
Steam refunds, introduced at the beginning of June, may not be the apocalypse that developers were expecting. Two months' worth of data is painting a rosier picture, although new problems have also arisen.
This info comes from a report by PCGamesN, which interviewed a number of steam developers including Gunpoint's Tom Francis and Rust's Garry Newman.
Francis' quote above is heartening, though it's hard to say how directly it correlates with the new refund policy.
Speaking of new problems: “The only problem we're seeing with the two-hour time limit is that we're seeing a lot of persistent cheaters who will make a new account and cheat on it for 1.9 hours and then refund. Then they'll make a new account, cheat for an hour fifty, and refund again,” says Newman.
The full PCGamesN story also includes quotes from Paradox Interactive's COO Susana Meza Graham, alongside more from Newman and Francis.
We spoke to a collection of Steam developers shortly after the introduction of the refund system, and you can read their thoughts, too.
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