Anyone who uses Steam and wanted to refund at least one game at some point definitely knows about the 2-hour threshold policy. While there may be exceptions to this, today we are having a game that makes fun of it.
Refund Me If You Can is a horror game that challenges you to finish the game under 2 hours, as it is the main policy for refund on Steam. It is relatively complex, so it is not that easy to just dive in and rush out before it’s too late. Putting the ethical concerns regarding the refund when you have already completed a game aside, this is definitely a clever joke by a developer.
But there is absolutely a downside for developers about the 2-hour refund window as some people are understandably discouraged about making a game that is short. For most AAA games that cost quite a sum, 2 hours of gameplay is just tutorial and warmup. For some small indie games, this period is almost enough to finish a game.There have been some public incidents where developers stood against this policy for such matters affecting their progress in an unethically negative way.
If you want to hear some more weird stories about this 2-hour refund window, here goes one: MS Flight Simulator is so huge that downloading it alone takes you through the 2-hour window. This was caused by an initial client being quite small, but it downloads all the content itself so Steam recognize it as “play time”. Valve later explained that this period will not be counted towards the refund threshold, so it was resolved peacefully.
