On Steam, you can get a refund for the game if you spend less than two hours in it. Although this policy is used by many gamers, short game developers are not very happy with it. She forced the Russian indie developer Emika Games to leave the industry altogether.
Summer of ’58
On July 21, the horror Summer of ’58 was released on Steam.
He tells about a blogger who went to explore the abandoned camp “Youth” — supposedly ghosts live there. The game received 88% of “very positive” reviews, but was not commercially successful.
The fact is that Summer of ’58 can be completed in about 90 minutes. As a result, about 30% of gamers decided to play it and get their money back.
According to Alexander Reshetnikov (it is his Steam account called Emika Games), there is not enough money from the game to develop new projects of a larger scale, such as From Day To Day. He was faced with a choice: to continue releasing short titles to compensate for losses, or to leave the industry. Reshetnikov chose the latter.
I don't want to artificially stretch the games so that the player doesn't get bored. That's why my games last less than two hours. I think you've noticed that they look like short stories. As if you were watching a movie, not a TV series. I don't take offense at people who return games because they didn't like it, or because of technical problems. But if a person went through the game to the end and returned it, it can be compared to the fact that he ate a pizza, but he didn't like it, so he just gave the box and returned the money.
His posts on Twitter attracted the attention of both gamers and other developers. They encouraged Reshetnikov, and although he still intends to leave the industry, now he “has something to think about.”