Cognition Dissemination: Steam No Man’s Sky Refunds — A Blessing and a Curse

If you follow video game news and info, there’s no way you could have dodged the continued drama surrounding No Man’s Sky by now. It was perhaps the most heavily hyped indie game this year (that is, if you still want to classify it as “indie” despite Sony publishing it), but all that excitement crashed and burned when people got their hands on it. As it turns out, there might have been a reason why Hello Games and Sony didn’t send review copies to critics until shortly before its release, as it fell short of fulfilling many of its promises. My post from a little over three weeks ago covered part of it, though didn’t go over aspects like the game’s universe feeling smaller than promised in extreme detail.

This is a big game, enough that it had by far the biggest launch of any title on Steam this year. That means there have been a lot of voices simultaneously voicing disproval regarding its shortcomings, so there was no way Valve wouldn’t hear them. While some were able to get refunds for it before hitting the two-hour limit, others felt they didn’t get their money’s worth despite going beyond that. Those players made some serious noise after feeling they were shortchanged, since this game demands hours of playtime before players can really venture somewhere in its universe. Interestingly, Valve heard their cries, and extended the refund period beyond the aforementioned two-hour one.

It sounds like this should be the end of this story, but I’m of two minds regarding Valve’s decision thanks to ramifications it could have in the future.

For as much as I’m glad some people who felt burned by NMS are getting refunds, I’m no fan of anyone bragging about how they got their money back after playing it for 50 hours or more. Given how many games don’t even last a quarter that length, they definitely got their money’s worth if they felt its gameplay was compelling enough for them to pour in that much of their free time. This would have been excusable if they didn’t patch the game to fix the issues it launched with, but that was curtailed within days.

It’s also disturbing to see Valve cater to a mob mentality here, given how this could go horribly awry if it’s used towards certain works. Just imagine certain groups freaking out if they don’t like the “politics” a particular work brings to mind in its latter half, like gender or race issues. Bowing down to such a crowd demanding a refund would rob that developer of money they could have otherwise deserved. In this case, I hope Valve very selectively allows these exceptions.

This issue also brings to mind the need for some kind of rental system for digital services across PC and consoles. It’s more necessary these days since demos have been mostly abandoned for AAA games, as publishers determined they didn’t help software sales, and thus weren’t worth the resources to create. But while that sounds like a good idea that should happen sooner rather than later to benefit consumers, these services are sadly also at the whim of publishers. Why set up that kind of system if they’re getting enough cash from people curious enough to purchase games at full price? Despite my cynicism, I can see this happening if sales for AAA titles get bad enough; and if that system does happen, expect to see it through Steam before any console services.

However, a rental system wouldn’t be an automatic anodyne to every issue; there are cases where it would be beneficial to get a refund after spending 50 or so hours with a game. Take a fighting game like Mortal Kombat X, where players gave it a significant portion of their free time in the hopes that Warner Bros. would eventually fix its numerous issues. But they ended up dropping support for it, leaving it a bad port that fared even worse than the console versions performance-wise. It was considered insulting to the PC audience after they maintained that support for the console versions, despite paying the same price. In these instances, the consumer is perfectly justified in getting all their money back despite the time investment. But that’s not to say this happens often, of course.

(By the way: Despite previously being absent on PC, Mortal Kombat XL will be making its way to Steam on October 4th. It took them a while, but at least they’re finally making it up to the audience.)

Again: If this happens in the future, I hope Valve has good judgment in providing this for a few exceptions, instead of this being the start of offering it for a multitude of games. Some developers already have problems with how Steam handles matters, like how the plethora of software on the service means smaller games could get lost in the shuffle easier. Something like this could make things worse for them, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Meanwhile, perhaps Hello Games will address this head on one of these days, though they’ve remained silent far longer than expected.