Duration Matters: Young German developer Mateo created Paddle Paddle Paddle all by himself, promising a challenging, coordination-heavy experience for solo and multiplayer fans alike. But the game proved to be easy prey for speedrunners, many of whom asked Steam for a refund shortly after completing its single level.
Despite earning a 90% "very positive" rating on Steam, Paddle Paddle Paddle (PPP) has been hit with an unusually high 21% refund rate. Mateo says his game has collected more than 55,000 refunds, and he's now pointing to Valve's famously lenient refund policy as the culprit. It doesn't help that PPP is, by design, a fairly short game.
Under Steam's official refund policy, players can get their money back "no questions asked" within two weeks of purchase, provided they've played less than two hours. Mateo said on X that dozens of reviews openly admit the game was finished in under two hours before the reviewer requested a refund.
– Zoroarts 🦈 Paddle Paddle Paddle OUT NOW (@Zoroarts) July 5, 2026
Later in the thread, Mateo explained that he'd designed PPP around a "medium" playtime of 3.5 hours. Add in the roughly 40-minute demo, and the full experience runs close to four hours of total gameplay. Many players finished the game in just a few hours, but speedrunners moved even faster – and requested refunds en masse. One commenter mocked Mateo, telling him to simply make a game that lasts more than two hours.
Paddle Paddle Paddle contains a single, giant level where a couple of weirdly-looking characters need to coordinate their paddling action to survive lava pits, massive jumps, and more. The game is designed to test the player's coordination, and can be played both solo or in different multiplayer modes. Mateo said he got the idea for the game in the shower, where "all great ideas are born."
The game starts at $3 and is on sale for 40% off right now. Some have speculated the refund surge could be a deliberate effort to hurt the game's commercial viability, though it comes nearly a year after PPP's original release. For an indie developer, facing this volume of refunds is likely a tough pill to swallow, though it's worth noting there's no third-party data to confirm Mateo's numbers.
In any case, Mateo says he may have found a workable fix for short games caught in this refund trap: displaying "expected" playtime directly on a game's Steam page. That way, players would go in with clear expectations and a short runtime alone would no longer count as valid grounds for a refund. At least, that's the theory.