Facepunch Studios developer Garry Newman tweeted out yesterday about how Rust [Steam] has done in terms of refunds, turns out it's quite a lot.
Added sales stats to our backend today. These are Rust's real Steam Refund figures. pic.twitter.com/IhjUsJUN9N
— Garry Newman (@garrynewman) June 28, 2017
For those don't wish to view Twitter:
So they've had over four million dollars in refunds, which is about 6% of the copies they've sold (going by this reply). That shouldn't be seen as entirely lost income though, since a lot of people will be using refunds in place of a demo. Since the refunds system, many people (myself included) are more likely to pick up a bunch of games they wouldn't normally to test them out, since there's less chance of losing your money to something broken or just outright bad.
When asked about the main reasons given for the refunds, in reply to a PC Gamer editor on Twitter, Garry said "Not fun followed by bad performance - which is pretty fair I think". It's nice to know that Garry is not only open about these kinds of things, but he's also very down to earth about it and understands the reasoning.
On the Linux side, I wouldn't be surprised if a breakdown per-platform showed more refunds on Linux compared to Windows. Every time I try out Rust myself, it's broken in some way. Right now for example, the game doesn't register any input unless in Windowed mode.
Quoting: OLucasZanellaWould've done the same if I hadn't surpassed the 2 hours by looking at a blank screen and hoping it would load.
It's not an absolute limit, you can still try. Maybe send them a link to an article that it's been broken many times.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/garry-newman-of-rust-and-garrys-mod-regrets-supporting-linux.6565
Quoting: OLucasZanellaWould've done the same if I hadn't surpassed the 2 hours by looking at a blank screen and hoping it would load.The only reason I have never refunded a Steam game is because I never think of it. Rust is a game that I should have refunded. I feel hopeful for it and I think it will be fun, but I'm not going to upgrade my hardware for an unfinished game. (Same goes for ARK.) What I should have done was try it out for a half hour or so and refund it after experiencing bad performance. I can always buy it again 6-12 months later assuming there will be some major optimization patches.
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