Steam recently sorted out their refund policy after years of it not really having much of one. It’s now possible to claim a refund for a game, as long as it’s within fourteen days of purchase and less than two hours have been played.

Sounds pretty fair, but indie devs are beginning to complain that some unscrupulous gamers are taking advantage of it, by buying games, playing through them in less than two hours and then getting their refunds. Essentially, they claim that gamers are playing their full games for free, and if that’s true it’s not good.

Qwiboo, developers of Beyond Gravity, and Puppygames, developers of Revenge of the Titans, are two of these indies, who have backed their claim with graphs. And truthfully it does seem that they have a point…

It’s sort of worrying if this is a trend that is going to keep up. Hopefully Valve will tighten the rules to stop serial committers of “refund demos” before it costs a small indie studio their livelihood.