Studio withdraws from the industry

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Emika Games is turning its back on game development for an indefinite period of time. Steam’s refund policy is to blame for the withdrawal.

The game “Summer of 58” was released last month and received almost consistently positive reviews on Steam. The overall rating was even “very positive”. Fans especially praise the good atmosphere of the game. Still, developer Emika Games had to live with an enormous number of returns. what happened there?

The game can be played through in about 90 minutes. As a result, the game falls within the two-hour return option offered by Steam. This return policy enables every Steam user to receive a full refund if a game has been played for less than two hours.

This is fair in so far as gamers notice that they don’t like a game after all, that it is too difficult or simply not fun. Then you can return the game and get all the money you invested back. This rule is stupid for games like “Summer of 58”, which are well received by users, but can be played through for free in a short period of time. In such cases, the developers end up empty-handed, even though they delivered a good gaming experience.

This incident has now moved the solo developer of Emika Games to take a drastic step. The Russian Alexander Reshetnikov announced in a statement that he would withdraw from game development for the time being and thus put his next planned project on hold. “Friends! Thank you for your support! I’m leaving game development indefinitely to gather my thoughts. The fact is that my game ‘Summer of 58’ did not reach two hours of gaming time by steady standards and under these circumstances there were a large number of returns and, despite positive reviews, I am not earning enough to work on a new game, ”says Reshetnikov about his future. He has no means to continue working on games and will therefore look around for something new, the Russian continues.

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