In response to an email recieved today (not published by request of the sender)
Dear ----,
Sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy the game, and that your expectations, after I assume you had been reading the game descriptions, watching the official trailers and the YouTube play-throughs before buying, were not met.
However, your message describes your subjective opinion in the same way as a movie-goer might say they didn’t enjoy a movie. It seems you are not having a technical problem with the product, you just didn’t like it.
On that basis, just like any other author, musician, movie studio, manga publisher, playwright or artist, it doesn’t seem reasonable to provide a refund – I know that’s not the answer you want to hear, but we do take great care to provide an accurate description and game videos to enable people to make their own judgement before buying (including making it clear that there is no blood or violence, that it is story-driven and doesn’t depend on jump scares – even calling it ‘alt horror’ and explaining why).
In contrast, and to demonstrate the subjectivity of any customers experience of any creative works, this note came in from a purchaser of Huntsman: The Orphanage 30 minutes ago:
“i play a lot of horror just finished darkfalls lost souls; the sounds in huntsman are so real. outside wind birds and u wait for a scare to happen off in distance ticking, its the waiting for IT to happen thats crazy good cause ur looking down with little light and hay could walk right into something, he he. the blackboard in the classroom is awsome, and the cellar door closing gave me a real jump. totally unexpected. this is a awsome mindbending game. fustrating as all get out.... loook looook ya find loose it in refrence to jingleball. anyway i hope they make a seq even though im still on a hunt for two items. good job”
And in response post to the above just 10 minutes later from another purchaser, “The atmosphere in this game is top notch”.
I feel that for the price of a Big Mac combo and dessert, you bought an experience that took my family and our team 14 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment to build, complete with over a feature film’s length of solid dialogue by 19 actors. So while it’s disappointing to us that you didn’t get a sense of value from your purchase, I think it is fair to say that your local movie theatre wouldn’t refund your ticket price if you personally found a movie too long, short, wordy, simplistic, or too dull or too action packed either? Or Sony offering a refund if you buy a CD only to discover it’s a bit too country’n’western for your tastes after all?
Kind regards,
Dene Waring