{"id":21497,"date":"2018-05-24T21:39:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T21:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/318848"},"modified":"2018-05-24T21:39:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T21:39:00","slug":"honesty-contributed-to-quarantine-circulars-2-percent-refund-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/05\/24\/honesty-contributed-to-quarantine-circulars-2-percent-refund-rate\/","title":{"rendered":"Honesty contributed to Quarantine Circular’s 2 percent refund rate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“I\u2019d like to think our return rate is so low because we\u2019re very clear about the experience the player should expect.”<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

– Developer on Quarantine Circular Mike Bithell\u00a0on why the game has a two percent refund rate.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Steam can be a tricky platform for developers looking to market\u00a0short, narrative-driven games. After all, if players aren’t satisfied with their purchase\u00a0they can request a refund, so\u00a0long as they’ve played less than two hours of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bithell Games’\u00a0newest title, Quarantine Circular<\/em>, has a fairly short runtime of\u00a0about one to two hours with only a two percent refund rate.\u00a096 percent of its 718 reviews are positive, and Bithell\u00a0credits honesty as the reason for 98 percent players not refunding the game after finishing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve been very upfront about the short duration of the game, and we\u2019ve done similar with\u00a0Quarantine Circular<\/em>,\u201d he explains.\u00a0\u201cWe try to be very clear this is a text adventure and what that entails, but the majority of returns are people who were expecting a very different game than the one described on the store page or in the trailer.”<\/p>\n

Another factor which may have played into the low refund rate of Quarantine Circular<\/em> is the non-existent marketing of the game, which seemed to appear\u00a0out of the blue.\u00a0\u201cWe are terrified of people getting the wrong idea from a screenshot of the game,\u201d Bithell\u00a0admits.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat better way to control expectation than to not allow time for it to build? Here\u2019s our game. This is what it is. We put a lot of work into it.”<\/p>\n

Make sure to check out the entire piece over at Kotaku<\/a>,<\/a>\u00a0which goes into more detail about how Bithell\u00a0could get away with dropping a game with little public hype before release.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I\u2019d like to think our return rate is so low because we\u2019re very clear about the experience the player should expect.” – Developer on Quarantine Circular Mike Bithell\u00a0on why the game has a two percent refund rate.\u00a0 Steam can be a tricky platform for developers looking to market\u00a0short, narrative-driven games. After all, if players aren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}