Didn't like Super Star so I'm just gonna wait for it to be bundled. Not sure what he hopes to accomplish with this since there are peeps who will exploit this shit. The most recent case I can think of is In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor where the dev decided to end development (it was in ea), remove it from the store and offer full refunds to all those who bought it (and let them keep it too). The problem was that he made the post Friday night so peeps had a full weekend to buy as many copies of the game (it was 5$) knowing they will get their money back.
Peeps ended up buying so many copies that the dev's original plan was no longer possible. He even stated that the number of copies sold, if sold during launch and before the announcement, would have allowed development of the game to continue. He ended up making it F2P and offered regular refunds to those who bought it (and considering many peeps bought +10 copied, many did).
Tl;dr: This will end badly.
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I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your tl;dr but In Case of Emergency, Release Raptor was a slightly different case because it was promising to become a reasonably rare removed game. I think it was on sale for only two days before the removal announcement. And the promise of possibly significant future profits drives sales better than the possibility of getting back 1 or 2 Dollars. I also think people won't be as quick to ask for a refund when they have to ask from a person instead an automated system.
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Fair enough though I wanted to point out the level of potential abuse that such an offer leaves open. For many, any amount of money is enough so long it is relatively easy to acquire.
I also think people won't be as quick to ask for a refund when they have to ask from a person instead an automated system.
To this, I answer with the whole issue of dev keys; especially those acquired for the sole purpose of trading/selling. Considering there are a few peeps who have idle farms that range into the hundreds, I doubt we won't see some form of abuse coming from it.
Who knows, I'm probably (and for this dev, I hope I am) just very cynical /shrug.
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Yeah, there's certainly enough people in the world willing to screw the dev over for a minor profit to sink this. Just wanted to highlight that the Raptor situation was enticing even to people with some scruples. I considered buying a gift copy of Raptor on the off chance the price would rocket (decided against it), I'd never buy this with the intention of refunding.
Let's just hope the good will this'll generate is enough to counteract the refunds. I bought a copy to gift just to show my support for good business practices.
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I saw Hell Girls popping up al over the place on my Steam friends activity, had a look at the Steam store page and saw his announcement concerning the refund. It looks like a fun game so why not.
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Dude did the same thing from Dragon Knight, seems that's his policy for all his games. Heck, I think that's the very same post on his Dragon Knight page, lol.
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I think power to the consumer is great, but at the same time do not give them so much power, too many assholes that can't handle it.
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Great, the dev assumes responsibility. Kudos for that.
It would have been interesting to see "No Man's Sky" available with the same policy.
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All I see thus far is people saying how cool that guy must be.
Has noone thought about this whole thing being advantageous to the dev as well?
I probably know jack shit about all the financial aspects, but when he works around Steam's refund policies he is able to keep backgrounds, trading cards and emoticons in rotation. If you haven't registered yesterday, you might also know how high prices for Anime related items can be.
The whole thing is keeping the market aspect going, creating profit everytime someone sells and buys which probably is able to exceed what the game's actually worth with anime backgrounds costing 10$+ most of the time.
WOW; THAT GUY IS CHILL!
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Steam fees will cut into that a bit. Steam charges quite a bit, plus the payment processing fees, etc.. Your game might cost the customer $1, but you likely will see 50 cents or so out of it. The trading cards/emotes/backgrounds give pennies, so those do add up over time if they are traded actively.
Refunding the Dollar would mean the Dev would have to pay back Steam's cut, the initial payment processing cut, and then the Paypal fee for the refund payment as well.
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Okay, you've got the needed insight for that, but recently a dev has been banned from selling, his games got removed, because he tried to influence the market sales somehow? Not sure, but as I said, Anime stuff is sold for good money. It might be just pennies for a normal 5 cent trading card, but even if his backgrounds only sell for 1$ that seems a bit more, doesn't it? Maybe I'm completely wrong about all of this, but it's still shady.
Edit: As of now trading cards are 90 cents and backgrounds around 4€. This will obviously change, buuuuuuut still.
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It would be pretty foolish for a dev to try to make money that way. More than likely it would lead to losses. The way to actually make money out of the market is to give away tens of thousands of keys, which means hundreds of thousands of your game's items floating around the market.
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Why does he do it then? Psygineer said that he will have to pay almost double of what he gained through sales. There's no reasonable explaination for me.
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Karma is the reasonable explanation. More specifically Reddit (and the Internet in general).
Dev's who are jerks to their customers, get chased with pitchforks and torches. Their game becomes infamous/notorious and known.
Dev's who are kind to their customers, get put on a pedestal. Their games become known and there is a good chance the Dev will become famous/well known and their games will sell well.
Dev's who do nothing, usually go unnoticed and sell only on their own merit. Odds are the Dev will fade into the void unless someone important notices them.
For the non Redditor, Karma is your Up/Down Vote ratings for your posts/links
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Because he has confidence in the quality of his game and is a decent human being? You seem to think all people are petty profiteers.
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That is most likely a motivation right there. I know if I put a shovelware on Steam, I would never offer lifelong refunds for it. But if I put something of quality on there (that was my own and not owned by anyone else) I would consider doing this as well if I felt confident in my game.
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I would do that too. I actually think that sort of thing should be the standard, not the exception. Anything that reduces the profits of those who release shovelware is a good thing. And I firmly believe that if customers are consistently treated with respect even just for a fairly short time, they'll become extremely unlikely to exploit the system.
What I ultimately dream about is gaming moving to a Patreon-type system, where all content is available for free and people get to choose how much to give to reward the developers of games they like.
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Well, what can I say? I tend to look for the worst in people. :)
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No you are right, the higher the card/emote/background sells for, the more "pennies" per item you get. A basic card will always get you a penny, but when you are selling a card of higher value you will start seeing the Dev/Steam cut more. For example, a card that earns you 44 cents as the seller, is sold to the buyer for 50 cents making an 6 cent difference, and that difference is divided between Steam and the Dev). So yes, Anime things that sell for high prices are nice as it gets you extra, but it still isn't that much extra until you get in to the silly high values. The thing is, volume makes it good. Selling one thing at higher price, yay an extra 3 cents! Selling 1000 things at the higher price, yay 3000 cents ($30)! But then you have the issue of market saturation where things stop shifting, prices come down, etc. and your cards/items are now pretty much worthless (overly bundled games/free games/etc.) So if sufficient people choose to exploit this, to farm Anime cards to sell and refund it through the Dev, the cards likely will crash in value until the offer is revoked. Plus being a low priced game, the cards likely will not have that high value because it is just as cheap to rebuy the game on another account and farm them out of it (and get booster chance) rather than buying from the market. Most Anime cards that have high value come from games that have higher values themselves (Neptunia Series, Final Fantasy, etc.)
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This actually is pretty decent, shame it will get abused badly.
Buys one copy, sends refund request, uses money to buy another copy, sends refund request. Soon has 10 copies of the game and a free Level 5 badge mwa ha ha ha. Gets greedy, does it 1000 more times for the foil badge, selling all extra normal cards for a profit. Gets even more greedy, uses card money to buy other games. soon owns every game on Steam and only paid $1 in the first place. Charge back is then placed for that initial dollar.
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I think he's gambling on two things: People not bothering to get a refund on a cheap game even if it sucks. And his charitable approach serving as positive publicity so that people buy his game as a reward for him being a nice guy, which is what a bunch of people in this thread are doing.
Shouldn't be too cynical though. Maybe he's just an idealist.
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i think he will go bankrupt unfortunately, too many crooks in there :/
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game removed from sale 😮😌 its back 😎
thread in discussions
you still can buy it with sub
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That topic is just a beautiful bunch of stupid people arguing with bad reasonings, logical fallacies and tons of grammar errors :D
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The whole discussion forum is a treasure trove of misplaced moral outrage really.
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People apparently don't know that they can make Steam just hide certain categories and ~never mention them :D
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To tell the truth, considering this is a simple casual game, the store page images did get raunchier and raunchier. Which is funny, because the game itself totally lacks any content that wouldn't make it suitable for any ages. The worst it gets is that all girls eventually get a bikini costume (which often suck with the bonuses anyway, especially since they patched/nerfed the one on Lightning Girl).
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I recalled a totally different thumbnail on release, a white haired girl from waist up, or maybe even just shoulders and up, while the change to the butt one was quite uncalled for.
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It's odd that new a hate-topic got so many replies in such a short time, all agreeing.
I assume some SJW-hatecall got send out or so and they all flocked "for justice"!
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It happens in every different case as well. "A" political side hosts and condemns "B"s opinion, people go and trashtalk B. Sites publish gaming news about a thing, readers who don't like it go and spam it with hate... it's not a new thing. It likely got published / shared in some groups :D
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I see it here http://store.steampowered.com/app/575550/Hell_Girls/
Fixed? (I see an age verification when opening it)
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I can still find it in store just by searching my its name.
Maybe someone messed up with your parental control or something? :D
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devs changed screenshots on store page 😝 like this one, added age verification and changed this to this
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he is pretty cool i bought the game since i like bejeweled and girls :P i never had a refund in my life for games i am also a collector but i hope people would not take advantage of his kindness tho
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Trying not to offend people in Current year lol ... Its so sad when someone is stupid enough to report the game just for a cover .... and worse of all it actually worked .
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Meanwhile all the stupid shit Steam pulls off is still there.
Or blatent pre-fab swap games or outright scams. Don't need to take down a quiz with 4 whole questions which don't even tell you if you were right if you clicked an answer. Noooo sire, that's a GREAT Steam game.
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http://store.steampowered.com/app/546920/
Still being sold.
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And slapping an age verification on it go it back on the store it seems. Like anyone actually answers those truthfully.
I mean you can just claim you were born sometime in 1902 and the system will happily believe that you're one of the oldest people alive and let you through.
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he is gonna regret that, the world isnt perfect sadly
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Well,as you can see,it is actually turning out really well for the dev. Just look at the sheer number of supporters who volunteered to get multiple copies of the game to support him. Plus, he benefits from sale of trading cards anyway since all his games have anime elements,which means high card prices.
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A well known marketing tactics. Your mother probably loves some cosmetics brand for the same offer.
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well, since i already had it wishlisted and it's just a little over 1 Euro, why not supporting some good-willing dev for a change? :> Also to screw with all SJWs who cannot bear a little ecchi scene on Steam yet are fully ok with uncensored sex scenes within western games -.-
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I just saw I could play this on family sharing and decided to give it a go. It's absolute filth, completely disgusting.
(Edit - still playing just to confirm how disgusting it is.)
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That's a long 8.5 hour session of playing something you hate XD
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I think it's a scam attempt. It's completely Illogic don't be stupid... He is practically offering the game for free at this point and everyone will do it aswell
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SakuraGame will participate in 2017 Steam Summer Sale, If you want to buy my games, please wait until late June to buy it again. If you purchased this product before buying this notice or did not see the notice, Send me the following information: the voucher (You buy the game from steam) and your PAYPAL account.
Email:swerboyd@foxmail.com
2017 Steam Summer Sale Discount:
Dragonia -45%
Hell Girls -50%
Dragon Knight -40%
Super Star -60%
PS: Refunded players can not apply for the difference againComment has been collapsed.
one more dev did the same
new game THE WALL 墙
source
Due to the sensitivity of the game's theme, the game will be rather short. Meanwhile, since the goal of the game is not "to amuse you", like all games should be, the game experience may not be pleasant.
Therefore, we allow an unconditional refund. The process is as follow:
Send your Steam purchase confirmation email and your Paypal information to 659709535@qq.com.
We will verify your information after receiving your email, and will return your money back within one working day.
You do not have to delete the game after refund, and you can keep all badges, cards, backgrounds and emoticons.
----------- RoseDog, ZuoBuLaiGame
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Hell Girls is released today and developer made a post about unconditional return policy saying:
Note: He's also the developer of Super Star, whose also offered price difference refund when the game got price drop. I also made a thread about it in the past.
So, what do you guys think?
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