The alternative to this problem is, and always will be, giving devs the power to censor reviews. Its not really something with a middle ground.
The cost of being released to the masses, and thereby getting their money in much huger amounts, is that you are dealing with the IQ of those masses.
Maybe if devs didn't use EA as "quality control and market testing" they would know a lot of these problems before it started to tank their reputation. Because if that many people are having the same misunderstanding, then you should have been able to catch that in house during game testing and put in a tutorial or text box explaining it.
But instead they went for the "they will pay me to test my game for me!" option, and are now suffering the consequence that can bring.
I think one solution, at least for PC games, would be if Valve loosened their refund conditions just a little.
The 2 hour of gameplay cutoff is frankly not terribly flexible. Like anyone who really speed runs a game in 4 or 8 hours is probably not typical of a customer that actually wants to enjoy the game.
The 14 day thing isn't technically that bad though, save for maybe around Christmas when things might be a little hectic (and when sales are going).
Maybe let the individual devs set it on a per game basis? Like if your game is six hours long then refunds ending at 2 hours makes sense, but if your game takes 20 hours to really get rolling then maybe 2 hours isn't enough of a window and you choose another duration.
Something along these lines might be a good idea. Or maybe have it scale based on the standard running price for the game, since most devs already price their games based on how much content and playtime their product provides.
The alternative to this problem is, and always will be, giving devs the power to censor reviews. Its not really something with a middle ground.
The cost of being released to the masses, and thereby getting their money in much huger amounts, is that you are dealing with the IQ of those masses.
Maybe if devs didn't use EA as "quality control and market testing" they would know a lot of these problems before it started to tank their reputation. Because if that many people are having the same misunderstanding, then you should have been able to catch that in house during game testing and put in a tutorial or text box explaining it.
But instead they went for the "they will pay me to test my game for me!" option, and are now suffering the consequence that can bring.
I think one solution, at least for PC games, would be if Valve loosened their refund conditions just a little.
The 2 hour of gameplay cutoff is frankly not terribly flexible. Like anyone who really speed runs a game in 4 or 8 hours is probably not typical of a customer that actually wants to enjoy the game.
The 14 day thing isn't technically that bad though, save for maybe around Christmas when things might be a little hectic (and when sales are going).
Maybe let the individual devs set it on a per game basis? Like if your game is six hours long then refunds ending at 2 hours makes sense, but if your game takes 20 hours to really get rolling then maybe 2 hours isn't enough of a window and you choose another duration.
Something along these lines might be a good idea. Or maybe have it scale based on the standard running price for the game, since most devs already price their games based on how much content and playtime their product provides.