Hacker News Reader

Comment by whartung | Hacker News Reader

> Valve will refund any Steam purchase if made within 2 weeks and with less than 2 hours play time

Yea, I tried to take advantage of this when I picked up Stellaris, but that's not a game (I don't think) that you can evaluate in 2 hours. I gave it a couple of stabs, but found it just way more complex than I was interested it. I obviously played it more than 2 hours, and they wouldn't refund my money. No harm, no foul, but for some games, 2 hours isn't enough.

View on HN

>2 hours isn't enough

MS Flight Sim comes to mind. Apparently game content is downloaded in-game, and it's in the region of 120GB, so many folk blow through 2 hours before they even get to play the game.

i had a few games that racked up hours before i even got to play anything, so i agree, this is an issue. somehow play time should not start counting until you actually get to enter the game (after character creation and any other setup that needs to be done)

The two hour rule isn't solid. I've returned a game after completing a 1 hour tutorial of the game, only to get into the main game and find out it was nothing like the tutorial lead me to believe the game was. I had to AFK during the middle of playing, so I ended up with 5 hours of gameplay. I just told them what happened, said why I wanted to refund it, and I still got it refunded. It took five hours of the game running for me to determine that I just didn't like nor enjoy it.

but they're not reliable about this either. i had a similar experience once with an RTS and i asked for a refund at the 4-5 hour mark and was told no dice.

We must be very different people... If a game or movie doesn't grab my attention within the first 15 minutes, it goes in the round file. Life is too short for mediocre entertainment!

Being complex and taking time to get into is quite different than being mediocre. Some games take hours to just grasp the rules and its first by the fourth or fifth time you're playing that they become amazing. It's like dunking on racing because a guy without license can't figure out how to change gear.

I don't have much use for mediocrity either, which is why I will always choose a flawed masterpiece over something merely competent. None of my favorite books have grabbed my attention in the first fifteen pages. Several of my favorite games took over 40 hours to become even tolerable. They made up for it by being uncommonly beautiful by the end.

A slow start is a flaw, but in my eyes a forgivable one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com