{"id":1653766,"date":"2026-08-04T22:27:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T22:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daHm8u5ybmdadDwSdgZv23"},"modified":"2026-08-04T22:27:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T22:27:51","slug":"i-was-this-close-teenage-devs-200-joke-game-made-nearly-1-4-million-on-steam-before-the-refunds-came-flooding-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/i-was-this-close-teenage-devs-200-joke-game-made-nearly-1-4-million-on-steam-before-the-refunds-came-flooding-in\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I was this close’: Teenage dev’s $200 joke game made nearly $1.4 million on Steam before the refunds came flooding in"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This Game Costs 200 Dollars<\/a> is a game on Steam that, literally, costs $200. The listing describes it as a “psychological ‘comedic’ experience,” and promises it’s absolutely worth “every single cent” of its wildly inflated price. You might have doubts, but it was enough of a hook that for one brief, shining moment, developer Stolen Valor Studios\u2014actually 18-year-old Michael Major\u2014was a millionaire.<\/p>\n

Major told his tale to WMUR-TV<\/a> (via GamesRadar<\/a>), saying This Game Costs 200 Dollars\u2014released on January 30, nominally a sequel to This Game Costs 10 Dollars, which came out just days prior\u2014was intended as a joke, and not something he expected anyone would buy. But a few months later, according to the report, he realized that plenty of people had purchased it\u2014to the tune of nearly $1.4 million.<\/p>\n

The problem? Nearly all of the people who bought it\u2014most of them from China\u2014immediately refunded it, most without playing it even once. Major said he doesn’t know why people in China were buying and immediately refunding the game, but speculated that it may have come to attention via an ad or “scheme” of some sort.<\/p>\n

“I have heard of expensive games on Steam being used for money laundering,” Major said. “I have no idea. I could be on a hit list right now.”<\/p>\n

\n