There's a popular online video game that I wouldn't name that seems to be turning a blind eye on Linux users stripping out the anticheat to run the game through Proton, which is very nice of them.
While that's valid, I want to point out that Steam accepts a wide variety of local payment methods that have exorbitant transaction fees compared to Visa. Pretty sure I've seen them cover a particular payment method with 10% fee. Steam takes 15% for big publishers I think and that's not a large profit margin in those scenarios. A lot of younger customers do not have an international credit card and Steam makes purchasing games accessible to them.
Because of the policy, games with under short but high quality gameplay are getting hit with refunds. If the playtime is under 2 hours, the refund request goes through with very minimal abuse protection. I've seen people try to do speedrun where the goal is to finish the game in under 2 hours and get a refund. Publishing a short but high production value game on Steam has become a lot less profitable.
Not to mention that the refund policy can be useless as the playtime includes load screens when the server is busy, which happens regardless of the studio size.
That being said, I do believe that the refund policy improved sales volume overall because people buy games knowing that they can always refund if the game isn't for them. Return of the demos I guess?
People rushing to finish your game in under 2 hours to claim a refund are not your market. If they make up a large enough percentage of purchases for it to matter, you are going bankrupt anyway. They are not playing at beating your game. They are playing at beating the system. Like all those pirates who collect huge libraries of software, movies or music that they are never going to use or care about so little they would never pay anything at all for it.
