Rock Hard Platformer 'Refund This Game' Challenges You to Beat It Within Steam’s 2-Hour Refund Window

If you’ve played Baby Steps or Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, you’ll understand the pure allure of a game that makes you want to clench your jaw so hard your teeth shoot off and ricochet around the room. One developer has taken this genre to its logical conclusion, challenging players to beat it in two hours so they can request their $3.99 back from Steam.

'Refund This Game' is a challenging 3D platformer where you’re tasked with reaching the summit in under two hours. Your reward for doing it? You can legitimately request a refund (and be granted one, no questions asked) under Valve’s own refund policy rules on Steam.

“Fling yourself up to the top in this Getting Over It-like 3D platformer!” the developers wrote on the official Steam page. “Stick your pole to walls, bend it and fling yourself with great speed! One mistake means falling all the way down. Can you reach the summit in under two hours and EARN that refund?!”

In the game, you pole vault your way through a psychedelic cyberspace of shapes and colors. You only get a single checkpoint, which you can place anywhere you want on the course.

It’s a smart bit of marketing for this specific kind of YouTube baity game — especially as it includes leaderboards for those who decide not to claim their money back. The Steam page also teases a secret endgame challenge, but you’ll probably have to dedicate more than two hours to figure that out.

In July this year, developers criticized Steam’s two-hour refund policy. The debate started with a post from the developer behind indie boat adventure Paddle Paddle Paddle, which had positive Steam reviews from people who proudly enjoyed the game, got their time out of it, then refunded it.

"Would be cool if you could finally do something about your refund policy," the developer said. "Got dozens of reviews like that and 21% refund rate even though the reviews are 90% Very Positive. That's over 55,000 Refunds btw…"

Valve already includes a section on "abuse" of its refund policy in the platform's terms and conditions, which states that refunds were not "a way to get free games" — and anyone unfairly taking advantage of this would have their refund privileges suspended. As someone who’s been covering the industry for the past 15 years, I’ve never seen evidence of this policy being enforced, however.

Steam’s refund policy is obviously a good thing for consumers, but there’s probably room to make it more nuanced for shorter indie games. These are generally made by very small teams, while mammoth triple-A games walk away from the policy relatively unscathed.

As for Refund This Game, it's currently sat on a 'Positive' user review rating on Steam, although there aren't many reviews yet (it only launched on October 12). One Steam review, from a person who had 1.9 hours of playtime at the time they reviewed it, and currently 5.5 hours on record, called on players not to refund the game if they enjoyed it.

"The game is fun, it's a nice challenge though I think you shouldn't refund games that you have enjoyed if its a reasonable price which it is," they said.