For those worrying about what this means for devs of indie games, here's TotalBiscuit's take on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPUToCNq-iA
Success! I used hearsay and anecdotal evidence to support my claim that SR are not harmful, and now a famous person agrees with me, so I was right.
Actually, it's a legitimate response that shed light on the broader context which expose the claims and drama for being what they are: anecdotal "evidence" by very few developers. i think TB "investigation" answers two of the three main concerns:
1) Steam refunds are being abused by the user base.
TB shown that the sample size and period examined are both too small to extract any meaningful data. its not his opinion, its a fact. the system is still fresh out of the oven so naturally people will use it more, the sale data is of too little sample size.
2) Steam refunds reduce sales.
This claim is illogical and a borderline fraud because the graphs that were shown lacked crucial information and context.
First, because the reduction of sales of "Beyond Gravity" was actually the result of the game going out of a sale that was promoted by valve so the sales numbers after the refunds system took place were actually the normal figures.
Second, because the developer neglected to mention that devs can only see Refunds, Chargebacks as steam calls it, only by downloading an CSV file, so you can't even see the refunds on the graphs! if people had abused the system for buying and then instantly getting a refund, you would have actually seen a rise in sales on the graphs, not a reduction (This also address the graph by puppy games, which btw, since it shown a graph without a Y axis and a bigger time frame, it can be completely disregarded).
Last but not least, since the developer could see where the refunds came from, or rather, how much money is being refunded for each unit, he could have shown which of the 13 refunds were actually for games bought in the last 3 days or ones from before, such as, ones from the sale that took place just a couple of days before. you can't calculate 13/18, because the 18 units were bought in the last 3 days and the 13 refunds were for games that could have been bought during the last 6 months. even disregarding this lack of information for the context it should provide, then looking at this whole thing from a purely monetary perspective: the refunds could have all been from a deep sale price of 0.99$ and the bought units were bought for 4.99$. in terms of net revenue, it could very well be that he got more money than he normally would have for the same time period!.
TB video is important not because he is famous, but because he actually present the whole situation in a bigger context.
Edit - Puppygames have published a blog post "addressing" the graphs and their opinion
http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1708#more-1708Now they revealed that their reduction of sales was actually due to the end of a coupon scheme and not because of the refunds!
Also, they maintain they got a 55% refund rate, although still neglecting to mention the refunds are from a 6 months range and from possibly 90% price reduction while the sales are just from the last week or so, so their refund rate is far far lower. and they still didn't give a wider sample size for their normal priced sales so their claim of reduction in sales can still be disregarded.
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Topic: Steam refund program! (Read 44617 times)