Refund This Game Hits Steam With A Two-Hour Timer Built In
A game built around Steam's two-hour refund window turns a policy debate that ran through developer circles into a playable premise, which is a harder test of the system than any forum thread.
Reporting from 1 source: Automaton.
Cactile Games released Refund This Game on PC via Steam on October 13. The first-person action game uses a pole vault pole to cross a field of objects and reach a summit, with a two-hour timer on screen. Its stated goal is to clear it inside the window and take a refund. Achievements track both outcomes.
The game follows the structure of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy: awkward controls, one pole, and a summit to reach. What separates it is the clock. A two-hour timer sits at the top of the screen, matching Steam's refund threshold, and the objective written into the game is to finish before it runs out and request a refund.
Achievements cover both directions, one for reaching the summit inside two hours and one for playing past the refund time. dofhouse, who worked on the game with Cactile Games, points to the refund debate that spread on social media around July, and says he wanted to build something that let players try the system casually.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.