Microsoft XBox Self-Service Refund Initiative

[Jay]

and for the games that the studios believe that 2hrs aren't representative of the full product. Then give a demo, nothings stopping them.

it will be interesting to hear the stats on those short indie games though.
maybe overall sales go up as people willing to take risk due to ability to refund, and ends up offseting refunds

 

[AzBat]

Bring back mandatory trials, pretty please.

Tommy McClain

 

[Sonic]

It seems like a decrease of the refund period to one hour for indie titles would be a fair trade off given the time to completion for many of the games. It's a simple solution that can be implemented without too much trouble.

 

[Rangers]

I haven't read their griefs yet, but my initial response is "Give me a fucking break. Stop producing shit and you have nothing to worry about."


After having read the article:

The Indie developer grief is that their games can be fully completed within 2 hours.


Please note the below conditions for requesting a self-service refund:

• Games and apps are eligible for self-service refunds within 14 days of purchase if you have less than 2 hours of play time across all accounts.
• DLC, season passes, and add-ons are not eligible for self-service refunds.
• The game or app must be downloaded and launched before requesting a self-service refund.
• You must wait for at least 1 day after the game or app’s release before requesting a self-service refund.
• Certain Windows 10 apps may not be eligible for self-service refunds.
• Microsoft reserves the right to block access for users who abuse self-service refunds.

Well, I somewhat sympathize in that, what if you produce a great 2 hour experience as an indie? I've long argued I'd rather have a great 6 hour campaign in a triple A title than a filler padded 12 hour one.

It seems like the practical effect is something like 4 hours is the absolute lower bound you could produce as an indie under this program, and I dont want some arbitrary number guiding creative decisions.

In the scheme of things dont get me wrong, I like this new refund policy. Not sure how many times it would ever effect me, I typically know exactly what I want to begin with.

I guess you argue this is the return of the mandatory demo for all games. Except that whole non-abuse clause and how they enforce it...

This is similar to Steam's longstanding policy right? How does Steam handle indies?

 

[Davros]

f you read the rest of my post, you'd see that I did read it.

The point of the first line of my post was not about you having read it, but to use that quote as a reason to repost the tweet and make fun of it