Rust developer says 6 per cent of sales have been refunded on Steam

Rust developer and Facepunch Studios founder, Garry Newman, has tweeted out sales stats that indicate refunds of the game total to over $4 million.

https://twitter.com/garrynewman/status/880154963334365185

According to Newman, the 329,970 copies of the game that have been refunded are equal to around six per cent of all copied sold, which Steamspy estimates are over 5.5 million copies. 

Steam refunds allow players to be refunded if their time playing the game is under two hours. Newman has previously tweeted about the system around about this time last year, where most of the feedback was that the game was ‘not fun’ or had performance issues.

The Steam rules on refunds have allowed players to effectively trial a game for a short time to see if it is something they want to continue playing. So while figures like $4million sound like a large amount, they don’t really show how much loss impacts the studio or development in the long term.

Reported by PC Gamer, similar reasons for the refund still exist a year on, which Newman believes is ‘pretty fair’. Steam refunds hit the headlines last year after the reception for Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky caused a backlash from early adopters. Rust was released in 2013 on Steam’s Early Access programme.