Post by William O'Connell in Dev-Side Refunds

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At this point I'm just asking for a button in the seller UI. If all it does for now is create a support ticket with the Payment ID pasted in, that'd still seem like an improvement to me.

Can you clarify what laws you're referring to? I've never heard of that and it sounds like something I should read up on.

As far as I know neither Stripe nor PayPal charge any kind of additional fee for refunding a payment. They don't refund the original processing fee, but personally I'd fine with having that deducted from my earnings if it meant the refund process was more streamlined. And I know fraud is a big issue, but for those of us that have sold hundreds or thousands of copies on here (and paid Itch their cut) I feel like we deserve some amount of goodwill. If it's rate-limited and only applies to payments that haven't paid out yet it seems like it'd be fairly safe, although I'm sure there are aspects of this I'm not aware of. I don't really care how they want to handle it internally, I just wish refunds were easier to initiate and happened faster.

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Afloof.dev4 years ago(+1)

First of all I want to clarify I’m not a lawyer.

Can you clarify what laws you’re referring to? I’ve never heard of that and it sounds like something I should read up on.

One example is, let’s say you have a refund policy that you will only refund customers if they’ve played for less than 4 hours. Now two customers that have played the game for 5 hours, request a refund from you. For whatever reason you were feeling kind and you refunded the first one, but decided to keep your policy on the second one and declined it. Depending on the country, this can bring you a lot of problems, but if the marketplace you use takes care of refunds for you, you don’t have to worry about it.

Another reason is, assuming you plan to publish on multiple stores, some of them have restrictions. For example you can’t sell your game for $5 on one place, and for $40 on another. If you start giving refunds because you want to be nice, you would be violating the rules of other marketplaces which have their own policy on refunds.

These are just examples, each country has their own laws which could be similar or entirely different.

Having a button as you described sure is possible, but it’s not really doing anything, it’s just for convenience, so it could be a thing. Although I’m not sure if it’s worth the time.

I respect that you want to be nice and give everyone refunds. This kindness is appreciated and I’m sure customers would love that. The reality is once you start selling games, you have to treat everyone consistently, regardless of how you feel.

Hope that makes sense. If you want more concrete examples of how the law works, I’d suggest to contact a professional. Or let Itch.io do its thing, since I’m sure they’ve already done that to some degree :)

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William O'Connell4 years ago

If you start giving refunds because you want to be nice, you would be violating the rules of other marketplaces which have their own policy on refunds.

I've never heard of a distribution platform that dictates the terms of your refund policy on other stores. That'd be between the developer and that other platform though.

The reality is once you start selling games, you have to treat everyone consistently, regardless of how you feel.

You're coming across as pretty condescending here. I'm not sure where you got this thing about giving people refunds "to be nice". Or why you seem to think I'm new at this.

I have two products on Itch, both of which have technical restrictions that mean they only work in certain countries. I do try pretty hard to make it clear on the store pages, but obviously sometimes people miss that, or they misunderstand what they're buying. In either case I highly doubt that I'm going to somehow get Itch.io or myself into legal trouble by giving them a refund. But point taken, not a feature you want. It's not something I thought would be controversial haha.

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Afloof.dev4 years ago(+2)

I’ve never heard of a distribution platform that dictates the terms of your refund policy on other stores. That’d be between the developer and that other platform though.

Steam does this, Google’s Play Store does this, as far as I know Apple’s App store does this. From what you’ve experienced Itch does it as well. I’m not sure why you haven’t heard about it. The marketplaces you are using lose money with refunds, just like you do, it just doesn’t make sense for them to not get involved.

You’re coming across as pretty condescending here. I’m not sure where you got this thing about giving people refunds “to be nice”.

I didn’t mean to sound condescending. Less than a year ago I started selling my first paid game, and had a similar attitude, where I wouldn’t mind to give free copies to people if they asked, or give refunds to everyone. But once you upload your project in a marketplace and read the rules, you can get in trouble if you do that.

Or why you seem to think I’m new at this.

Whenever I type comments, I always write them in a way to be approachable by a new person. Sure you might have experience and knowledge of how the system works, but a future reader might not.

I have two products on Itch, both of which have technical restrictions that mean they only work in certain countries. I do try pretty hard to make it clear on the store pages, but obviously sometimes people miss that, or they misunderstand what they’re buying.

That makes sense in this case, so you can keep checking with Itch for every refund request, and for the most part it will all go fine. One thing to keep in mind is, if one user buys your project, downloads it, and then gets a refund, during that process Itch lost money. One user doing that is fine, when thousands are doing it, you may have to rethink of how you distribute your project.

In either case I highly doubt that I’m going to somehow get Itch.io or myself into legal trouble by giving them a refund.

In your case sure it won’t happen, but if a feature like that was implemented, it would be available for everyone, so someone who has no experience selling games could end up with legal trouble.

But point taken, not a feature you want. It’s not something I thought would be controversial haha.

As I said in my previous comment, wanting a button that automates the support ticket refund process is fine, because it still has to go through Itch. If you want to handle refunds yourself, the only option is to self-host your projects and sell them yourself.

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