The Chinese Room Think Xbox’s Refunds Program Is “Bollocks”

As well as making some incredibly polarising games, The Chinese Room are arguably just as well known for having polarising opinions. They once called CD Projekt Red out for being sexist, and now they’re going after Xbox for their recently announced self-service program.

In short, the program will allow gamers to request refunds on games that they have played less than 48 hours of within 14 days. While this might be fine for something like The Witcher 3, where it might be better to return it before it consumes your life, games that The Chinese Room typically produce are brief. Titles like Dear Esther could theoretically be completed and then returned, making the developer lose out.

They took to Twitter to air their grievances, and definitely didn’t hold back:

Bit depressed about Xbox jumping on the 2hr refund BOLLOCKS ARSEHOLE WHY WHY WHY YOU FOOLS CANNOT SUSTAIN NORMAL TEMPER WTF MODERN CULTURE

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) 13 April 2017

It’s REALLY simple. Refunds should operate off a percentage of game completed. Simple, fair, representative. This 2 hour thing is just cock

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) 13 April 2017

And then they lost a lot of people at this point:

For reference, you can get nearly halfway through Silent Hill in 2 hours. If you need to play 50% of a game to figure out if you like it…

— The Chinese Room (@ChineseRoom) 13 April 2017

Silent Hill 2 takes a lot longer than that to get to the halfway point.

Here’s the synopsis for the program:

You’ve spoken; we’ve listened. In support of offering gamers the freedom of choice, we’re making changes to the Microsoft Store purchase experience by offering customers a simple way to instantly return digital products like games and apps through account.microsoft.com.

When a game or app leaves you wanting more, we’re here to help. Self-service refunds on Xbox One and Windows 10 provide a quick, simple way of returning a digital product.

To request a self-service refund:
1. Navigate to account.microsoft.com and sign-in.
2. From the top menu bar, select Payment & billing > Order history.
3. Navigate to a purchased game or app, and select Request a refund.

Please note the below conditions for requesting a self-service refund:

Games and apps are eligible for self-service refunds within 14 days of purchase if you have less than 2 hours of play time across all accounts.
DLC, season passes, and add-ons are not eligible for self-service refunds.
The game or app must be downloaded and launched before requesting a self-service refund.
You must wait for at least 1 day after the game or app’s release before requesting a self-service refund.
Certain Windows 10 apps may not be eligible for self-service refunds.
Microsoft reserves the right to block access for users who abuse self-service refunds.

This pro-consumer move has split smaller developers and gamers down the middle. It may very well hit developers like The Chinese Room in the pocket, so perhaps there should be some sort of compromise from Microsoft. What do you think?