Download Rate Steam Erhöhen ##HOT##
Annegret Mclean
In 2020, at least across the portfolio of games I have access to via my friends at No More Robots, average monthly refund rate by unit across the portfolio ranged between 5% and 8%. Actual dollar refund rate varied between 6.5% and 11%. (Refunds from higher-priced countries skew the dollar refund rate upwards.)
Your refund rate is higher because of the country mix you are selling into. Certain countries - particularly China - tend to have a higher Steam refund rate. Two examples: Game 1: a 5.5% unit refund rate in the U.S. and a 15% refund rate in China. Game 2: a 12.7% unit refund rate in the U.S. and a 24% refund rate in China.
At the time, there was significant concern around sky-high refund rates of more than 50%. But luckily, these were people who hadn\u2019t played games much \u2018catching up\u2019 on games that would have been otherwise refunded many months before. So it normalized to a non-terrible - but still non-zero - figure.
Your refund rate is higher because your game doesn\u2019t make a good initial impression. Perhaps it\u2019s not what people expected, or it looks clunky, or it\u2019s not sufficiently finished, if it\u2019s an Early Access title. You can do something about this! (Particularly the Early Access issues.)
Your refund rate is lower because your title is in a niche. If you made an amazing bass fishing game, it\u2019s likely that most of the people buying it will be bass fishing fans. They may be \u2018bought in\u2019, understand what they are getting, and less likely to refund.
Your refund rate is lower because of the countries you are selling into. Don\u2019t need to rehash this one - it\u2019s the opposite of the point above. (But don\u2019t forget that if you don\u2019t localize, you may be missing revenue from those countries. Even higher-refund revenue is a part of much-welcomed extra $.)
Company taxes: if you suddenly make a lot of this \u2018notional $1 million\u2019 towards the end of a fiscal year, and it\u2019s actually profit that you haven\u2019t paid out to anyone, you\u2019ll end up paying corporate tax on it. In the UK, for example, that\u2019s 20%. Need to remember that.
Exchange rate costs: this is a big one, and not spotted by many non-U.S. developers. Is your local bank giving you \u2018real\u2019 exchange rates on the money sent to you from U.S. sources like Valve, Microsoft and Nintendo, or have they set their own exchange rate that\u2019s 2-3% worse? (Ugh.) It may be the latter, which is why using Transferwise or similar services can save you money. Consider it!
It'd be nice if Steam showed us how clickthrough rate has changed over time on the graph. It can be hard to tell if a reworked thumbnail is making a difference. Also, note the dip around the Summer sale! Turns out it's bad for the visibility of unreleased games, which makes sense I guess.
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