I suspect a big goal of this refund policy is to make steam self moderating. Valve don’t want to have to police individual games more than absolutely necessary.

If devs can game it by giving players the completion achievement the moment they launch the game, suddenly valve has to step in to solve the problem, and they are far too busy enjoying their enormous profits to actually do work

The function of a market is not the movement of goods, but the movement of prices.

This particular market is not functioning, or at the very least, it’s not functioning like a market for a commodity that has no particular resource limitations.

Makes me think of the classic yes minister national service scene, https://youtu.be/ahgjEjJkZks

Yeah, and not like it needs to eat radiation to be successful, all it has to do is survive in a place where everything else dies, and suddenly it has no competitors or predators, and is free to grow explosively.