Prey developer: Go ahead, use Steam refunds to demo our game

Enlarge / Take a look at these hands for two hours, then decide whether you want to keep playing.

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Valve begins offering refunds for all Steam games

Almost two years ago, Valve introduced the ability to request refunds on practically any Steam game within the first two hours of play. Some developers worried about the impact this would have on the way games were designed and played on the service. Today, though, at least one developer sees the Steam refund system as an easy way to provide a "free" demo for their PC releases.

Speaking to AusGamers recently, Arkane Studios Co-creative Director Raphael Colantonio explained that the absence of a demo for the PC edition of Prey—unlike the console versions—was not a big deal:

It's just a resource assignment thing. We couldn't do a demo on both the console and on the PC, we had to choose. And besides, PC has Steam. Steam players can just return the game [prior to playing] 2 hours so it's like a demo already.

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It's an interesting admission and a recognition of the reality surrounding the way many people use Steam refunds these days. While Steam says it reserves the right to block refunds from people who are "abusing the system," for the most part, refunds within that "two hours of play" window are approved without much hassle. And digital storefronts like Microsoft's Xbox Live are following along.

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Developers express worry, appreciation for Steam’s new return policy

Letting players use refunds as an "unofficial" demo mode might actually be good for the bottom line, too. After all, a decent number of people who buy a Steam game expecting to get a free two-hour "demo" will end up just keeping that title after getting drawn in.

"I can live very happily on the 97 percent of players who are glad they paid for our game," developer Tom Francis told Ars shortly after Steam refunds were rolled out. "And I'd much rather have a happy noncustomer than a non-happy customer... 'people not trying your game' is still a problem 9,900 times bigger than 'people abusing refunds.'"

In a way, this use of the return policy is a return to the shareware days of the '90s when "most of us offered 30-day, no-questions-asked refund policies," as Dejobaan Games' Ichiro Lambe told Ars. "I created everything from tiny puzzle games to first-person shooters—and the refund rate was well under one percent regardless of game length or genre."

Elsewhere, in an interview with Gamespot, Colantonio stressed that the PC version of Prey 2wouldn't see the same technical issues that plagued recent Arkane release Dishonored 2 for a while after its launch.

"Given what happened with Dishonored 2, we doubled our thoroughness in making sure that the game is going to run smoothly," he said. "At this point, the game is fully ready, but that's what we've been doing for the past months—a lot of tests on different configurations and making sure it works. So we're pretty confident. You never know. But we're pretty confident."