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Comment by aschearer | Hacker News Reader

As someone who makes games this strikes me as nuts. I can easily see players enjoying their 90-minutes and leaving satisfied, why pay for more? We know from achievements and other data very few players reach a game's ending. I wager this will just encourage more sampling of games without ultimately buying a copy.

Additionally, creating a compelling 90-minute demo _on top of the game itself_ is daunting! I recently-ish created a ~30-minute demo[1] and it nearly killed me and my colleagues...

[1]: Shameless plug https://store.steampowered.com/app/1446350/You_Will_Die_Here...

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Is that the value proposition of modern games? 90m of content? I don't buy many new games, but I'd have thought that there was a higher ask of a game than just getting 90m out of it.

I mean, I understand your point. My friend bought a used Mac once, and it had Sim-City on it. We hadn't seen it before and we fell into a black hole of playing it for 3 hours straight before someone accidentally kicked the plug.

"Well, that's that!" and I can attest that none of us really went back to it. It certainly kept our interest for 3 hours though.

> Is that the value proposition of modern games? 90m of content?

Why not? That sounds like a pretty sensible game length to me. I'd even say that within some genres stretching it longer only makes games worse. The current 2 hour refund policy is quite harmful for hand-crafted unique experiences created by small studios. These days nobody wants to finance short focused games. I wonder where the next Loom or Portal is supposed to come from in such environment.

> Is that the value proposition of modern games? 90m of content?

It's not, it's just that there's a lot of very good sales and subscription services that firehose free games at you (humble bundle). So a lot of people have hundreds of games that they don't really need to extract any value from to get their moneys worth, so they only play most of them for a few minutes if at all, only putting real time into the few games that are really good.

The games themselves don't only have 90 mins of playtime, it's just that most of the players have lots of games and not so much time to play them.

There are short story-driven experiences, but even those generally last at least a few hours (the "walking simulator" genre - I'd recommend Firewatch as a good example of that type of game).

Imagine going to a cinema and paying more for 90 min of movie and twice as much for popcorn/nachos.

EDIT: forgot the 20 minutes of ads and trailers of other movies

> why pay for more ? I am guessing for the "lenth of the game - 90 minutes"

From my experience as a gamer, now days between the free games on mobile, epic game store and xbox game pass, the almost infinite amount of dirt cheap games on sale at any time on steam and the "sink all you life always online: experiences like destiny, overwatch etc... etc... The main resources for games is time not money. The idea that someone would find a game that they actually enjoy and decided not to pay for it (or wait for it for a sale) i don't think is realistic. Sure some people will sample the game, but the people who won't buy the game after sampling it are the same people who wouldn;t buy the game either way.

That may describe your patterns but it doesn't match my lived experience with a game on Steam... I added a demo and saw sales decline. I removed the demo and saw sales increase. I've heard similar stories from others.

Perhaps your game is bad? Encouraging folks to gamble on their enjoyment seems like a losing strategy- instead make a compelling game?

No, demos negatively affecting sales has been known for years now. Even studies as far back as 2013. This isn't some "your game is just bad" situation.

Besides, even if it was, it's not like developers set out to make a non-compelling game. Like woops, let me just press the "compelling" button before shipping!

Capcom has been providing demos for most (all?) of their big releases for a while now. Seems to be working out fine for them.

Is it a losing strategy if the revenue increases? Consider how encouraging gambling on in-game items instead of making better games has served the mobile gaming industry.

Unfortunately the world is not just and consumer-hostile behavior often ends up being more profitable.

They could already refund with playtime less than 2hrs, so not sure what is your point. Also the idea here is that you don't have to create a demo, you literally just give the game to them.

You and wildrhythms are asking, "How is a demo different than refunding?"

1. A demo is a promotional product. It has to have emotional beats that culminate in strong desire for more and a call to action to "Buy now!" The unedited first X-minutes of a game is unlikely to hit those beats.

2. A demo should be like a chocolate box, filled with delightful surprises, sampling the game. The first X-minutes of your game should be like a gentle hike into the woods, easing the player into the game's setting, mechanics, etc.

3. Refunding requires purchasing then taking action to reverse course. Furthermore, that action isn't entirely comfortable for many. That is, most people are honest and don't want to abuse refunds. A demo works in the opposite manner.

According to the article, this is not a demo. This is just the first ninety minutes of the full game. So this can’t offer anything that your game itself doesn’t offer in its first ninety minutes.

It's still absurd Steam has done nothing to the refund rule when games are around or under 2 hours long.

There are zero consequences to "buying" games like Superhot, A Short Hike, Journey, and Before Your Eyes; completing them, and refunding the game. None. They do have an abuse warning system in place, but I have never seen validation that it works for short games, just frequent refunds/odd cards used.

EA has 10 hour trials, but we haven't heard anything about how successful they are. EA likes to boast, so one can only assume it's not all that successful in getting people to actually a) stay subscribed to EA play or b) get people to buy the games. We also know generally that demos, especially for lesser known games, can negatively affect sales.

I can see publishers only supporting this for already very popular and well received games to secure every last potential sale, but everyone else has little reason to.

Users who want to game the system by adding a credit card to their Steam account, purchasing the game, finishing it in <2 hours, asking for a refund and waiting to get their money back already have a much easier option – piracy.

On the other hand treating your customers with respect and letting them try what they are buying ultimately increases sales and works out in everyone's benefit.

You make it sound complicated, it's not. Refunds are automated, buying games is easy. Piracy still involves external tools. We're talking about people already having steam accounts, refunding games they've completed just because they can. Not those who have to specifically create a new account entirely for it.

Anything you want to refund after playing less than 2 hours doesn’t sound very engaging.

The refunds are not due to dissatisfaction, it's because they can. The act is closer to piracy than an angry customer.

Hot Take Edit: It's gamer Karens requesting the refunds. "I had information available to me that said the game time was under 2 hours but I bought it anyways and now I'm severely disappointed that the game was under 2 hours long and I deserve a refund!"

It's not piracy. They can't play it after they refund it and I'd call wanting to give it back because you accomplished everything you wanted in less than 2 hours a type of dissatisfaction.

Really? I'd call "accomplishing everything you wanted" satisfaction. Especially since the chances are nearly 100% that the time to complete was known prior to the purchase (at a minimum, the information was available).

I wouldn't demand a refund for a movie, for example, if it finished in 1:59. I wouldn't demand a refund for beating my friends in a round of Top Golf in an hour. Nor would I demand a refund if I decide I'm done after spending less than 2 hours in a museum.

Demand? Steam offers it. It’s about expectations. How many video game’s legitimately expect players to be completely done with it under 2 hours? If that is your target audience then maybe steam isn’t the best platform for you to sell on. I’ve never refunded a game before, but I also see no issues with this policy.

A complete story can be told in under 2 hours. Forcing developers to bloat their games for no reason other than to avoid the refund system is an absurdly idiotic suggestion.

I didn't say they had to bloat their game. They can also choose a different method of distribution. Steam takes a one size fits all approach and an overwhelming majority of the market isn't on paid games with content that lasts under 2 hours.

I don't think the statistics are really communicating what you think they're communicating. I have hundreds of games in my steam library, a lot of which I've either not played at all or only played for like 30 mins or so.

This doesn't mean I actually want games to only have ~ an hour of playtime, it's just that they were all either very cheap or free through things like humble bundle. So I grabbed them with the intention to play them later when I feel like it and maybe messed around in them for a little bit to see if I felt like properly diving in now.

Anecdotal, but as a kid with no money, demos were super important, and 100% of my purchases were from games whose demos I’d played. I hope your effort in making a demo has been rewarded!

Players can already just download the full game before purchase, for the majority of games people play

This is just more convenient, so it makes it more likely to convert into sales

If the game can't keep people wanting to play it more than a couple hours, and players decide they don't want to buy it anymore, they could already do that with a refund.

Making games more convenient to play always increases sales, if you think there's any chance at all that the product you're selling is worth buying.

Make a game someone wants to play for more than 90 minutes :)

This is how we get endless waves of shallow games and nothing but addiction hooks to get people into the game for 91 minutes :)

Nah, we had those already. Gacha games and looter shooters with lootboxes.

How is this much different than players refunding the game within the 2 hour window? (the current policy)

https://i.imgur.com/E4Qcqu1.png (not my pic)

Refunds are for 'this product does not work', and they will block you from doing it if they think you are doing too many. Demos are zero consequence for the customer.

> they will block you from doing it if they think you are doing too many

I was warned after refunding no more than about 6 games over 5 years. I'm still not sure how many are too many.

Steam has a "It wasn't fun" option in the refunds page.

That message in the screenshot is semi common, I've got it myself. But I've never seen anyone actually have their refund permissions revoked ever.

FWIW, the current policy is also hotly contested for the very reasons outlined by the person you're replying to.

As someone who loves the occasional tight indie game that only has 2 hours of content, I agree. A game like "A short hike" couldn't exist if every game had this 2 hour policy. Hopefully its an opt-in system for game devs at the very least.

I don't personally have a problem with letting the publisher set a different time limit. I wonder if they will add that.

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