They are putting more of a fight, games are taking ever longer to be cracked and some never do.

Unsurprisingly these are the games that are poorly optimised.

Back in the day, games that you can buy on GOG for like 3 bucks used to cost 50 bucks too. It's the AAA price set by devs/publishers according to market size and needs. The thing is that back then you had brick and mortar stores that sold games for a fraction of their "official" market price, so you could easily find a 20 dollar copy of a game instead of being forced to pay 50 bucks.

Games have gone up in price because the industry is bigger now, games are being done in studios that are often in different countries as well. Also, the general cost of living in first world countries, which usually develop most famous games, is very high, and you have to adjust your game's price to that as well.

There's a big chance very few people actually paid less than 20 bucks for Monkey Island.

I only looked at this thread to find out what a chad move was, I'm more than satisfied with this definition :-D
Plus, interesting mental image that I can't get rid of now!

Great, that means I'm talking to someone with no bias

Think of the latest industry trend - live services. These are games that ask you to pay 50 dollars for an unfinished product with the promise that all the content will be released later. Don't you think that if 6 months or a year later if the team just abandons its promises and does not release that content that the people who paid for it should receive a refund for the game?

If you remove refunds you also remove accountability from the developers and publishers to send out an adequate product. Remember Batman? WB would never have fixed the issues caused by its horrible DRM practices if it wasn't for all the refunds. It makes sure that the product is at the very least functional
I never thought of it in this way but... well.. what can you do XDDDDD

He even said that if a game was broken at a certain point, this would be cause for a refund. His whole point was that the refund system often gets abused by the users, who play a game and ask for a refund, not because of technical problems but because they don't like the game or certain aspects of it. I'm playing on an offline computer so Steam is not an option for me anyway, but I sometimes read Steam reviews, and judging from these I have to agree with him. In recent years, the number of "I hated it - refunded" comments has increased a lot!

While I don't think that the possibility to refund a product should be removed entirely, I do think it should be limited to those cases where major technical issues make it (almost) unusable. Yes, the developers should make sure that their products meet certain standards - but so should the users' behavior as well.

I think we will have to agree to disagree, I get your point and his but games are very unique pieces of interactive media that aren't really comparable to any other experience. I would say even more in pc gaming where each machine has different specifications and a game that works great for one user might work horribly for another.

I think the refund being necessary for functionality is the bare minimum and having that has the only standard I don't think it's fair. And I will use that same logic of the live service games or even early access games - you buy these products with the promise that more content will be added later, why shouldn't you be able to ask for your money back if they don't deliver on that promise?

Eh... I hate DRM, but comparison videos for Denuvo games that have it removed later show that it usually barely makes a difference. Load times yes, but performance not really.

It really depends on what they are using as well as on your machine. My brother has a potato pc and DRM free games visibly play better on his pc.

Might be just our experience, but it has been quite consistent

We may disagree in parts... You keep getting back to the "a game might not work for some people" point. And in that regard, we do agree. If a game doesn't work for some people or produce heavy problems, graphical glitches, you name it - then of course it's not functional and a refund seems only fair. It's the "the game works fine but I don't like it and therefore want a refund" that @PixelBoy was talking about and in this regard I fully agree with him. In such cases it's unfair behavior towards the developers (this gets even worse considering nowadays we're so used to buying most games only when they're on sale and drastically reduced in price).
Sure, even if you read a ton of reviews before buying a game, you might still end up being disappointed by it, even if the reviews lead you to believe you should like it. Yes, this sucks. But as long as the game is working, there's no reason for a refund - unless maybe it was falsely/misleadingly advertised on purpose.

As for long-running service games.. to be honest, I can't speak for those much since I don't play any. As for early access.. I bought into a few years ago when the whole Kickstarter thing started getting huge. Fortunately I didn't have any complete stinkers there, though some took way longer to get finished than anticipated. So yes, it's definitely a gamble. My only advice there would be to wait until it's finished (or in a state that's "sufficient" for you)

Anyway... I think this isn't quite on-topic anymore. As you said, let's agree to disagree :)

Not so much off topic, especially since GOG announced perhaps the most generous refund policy early this year. So that is another massive gamble from the devs to put their games here.

I compleately get what you guys are saying - it does put pressure to developers, especially when games are being sold at an already discounted price but from my prespective it's an issue of power. It comes down to balancing the scales so that both the consumer and the seller has their rights respected, especially considering that unlike boxed copies of old you don't actually own your games, you own a key to access them. They can change that product, make updates that will cause it to perform horribly (think of the recent denuovo anti-cheat problem with DOOM eternal) and there is literally nothing you can do about it after the first 2 hours. If you buy a pillow, a desk or a dvd, that is yours and it can't be altered by the seller after that. The power lies solely on the developers/publishers after that and I think that there should be something to tip the scales.

While we are on that topic, remember when gog announced that policy? There were quite a lot of devs that complained about this practice and there was a youtube comment that highlited why they were so nervous about this change:

'It's interesting to note that the developers who have commented more negatively on the news are those who have behaved worse towards GOG and its users, releasing incomplete games or never updating them, in fact abandoning completely those who had bought them at day one.

Mike Rose is behind Not Tonight, whose DLC and soundtrack have never been released on GOG. Rami Ismail is the creator of Nuclear Throne, which has never been updated on GOG since the day of launch, and only recently, after years and years, received an update because the game was released for free on the Epic Games Store and the build is identical to that of GOG. They are absolutely ridiculous.'

Ultimately, I might be very naive because I don't run a studio or publishing company, if your game is good people will not refund it and that practice of playing a game and just refunding it after you are finished might happen in a few isolated cases but I'm sure gog will tackle that.

Oh ok so "chad move" means like a really manly move, a very courageous thing to do, or a "bossy" move etc.?

I believe it is a "good guy chad" meme, so a chad move is doing what's right, not what's most selfish. A dev releasing on gog instead of steam would be a chad move.

Maybe.

dunno but it must contain a lot of soy

Chad is a country in Africa...

Precisely. It’s just a meme doe, I think people are overanalysing it a bit too much

Although it’s becoming quite hilarious to read some of the replies xDDD