Steam Refunds

CruelCoin

New update from Steam:

"You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.
It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours."

This is frankly brilliant. This gives us great new protection from all manner of things such as:

1 - Developers outright lying about their game (X-rebirth anyone?)
2 - Quoted specs not being accurate
3 - Review gags, leading to games being bought after reading glowing previews
4 - Games full of ****ing bugs (Asassins Creed: Unity)
5 - Etc

I am a heavy gamer, and this is the best thing since sliced bread.

Thoughts?

The_Valeyard

About time.


They tried and tried to restrict EU buyers rights for a long time now.


Step in the right direction.

jumbobreakfast

It's protects consumers against being conned by bigger publishers but could it hurt short indie games that only cost a few quid? If I was them I'd start dragging out their intros (2 hour, unskippable intro? )

Overall it's a good thing

Varik

Probably going to lead to more sales, people buying games thinking it fine they can get a refund if they don't like it and then next thing they know it's a year later the game is on sale and steam is telling them they already own it.

Will be using this a lot during sales, buy it day 1 of sale and not play and if it does show up with a greater reduction refund and re-buy.

This doesn't really help if a game is buggy as you're unlikely to find out in the first 2 hours. Also never knew you couldn't cancel a preorder.

Up to now I've gotten 1 refund on steam, they had DLC for 1 game that's cost would be counted against another game. I didn't get the discount so they did refund it for me.

gizmo

Great move from Valve, nice to see they've not only matched but superseded Origin's refund policy.

There are some potential issues though, as outlined in the RPS article on the subject. Hopefully they don't crop up too often...

Games that have opted not to use Steam’s DRM, which of course is usually perceived as a customer-friendly decision, can now be purchased, copied over into a different directory, and then a refund requested. With the new no-quibble policy, they’ll get their money back, and have a working copy of the game remaining on their hard drive. It is, essentially, the same shady antics that were possible when brick-n-shelving game stores would provide refunds on DRM-free boxed PC games. It was, in fact, a huge reason why boxed PC games had DRM.

It’s also worth noting that any trading cards dropped in the opening two hours of a game (which of course is prime dropping time) can, as well, be sold before the refund is issued. This means these new changes go so far as to provide customers with a way to profit from buying and refunding games.

Then there are the enormous problems this raises for developers whose games last under two hours. Dear Esther, Gone Home, heck, even the original Portal, are designed to have short running times. Once completed, there’s nothing (other than honour, I suppose) to stop a customer requesting a refund for a game they’ve completed.

CruelCoin

There are some flaws alright.

I wonder how many publishers will avoid steam and move to a different platform? I doubt it however, and Steam really does have such a majority.

The_Valeyard

I'd say they will be following a person's buying and refunding history very closely to stop abuse of the system.

CruelCoin

True.

I can see short games being given an exemption. For a 2 hour game it would be fair to give them 30 mins (25% of the playtime), given that they're giving 2 hours for Call of Duty which only has a 8 hour single player campaign.

Ant695

It's definitely a step in the right direction but it will probably be amended and refined with time. Good to see them making the effort though.

TheDoc

I'd imagine X amount of refunds in Y time will trigger a warning, second warning, then blocked from refunds for a period of time.

Which is fair. Give an inch people will take a mile.

The main thing has been where people buy a game and it goes on sale a few days after. Going by the conditions, I'd imagine that would not factor in for a refund as you would have most likely put 2 hrs into a new title you bought in a few days?

I think the "and" part of the sentence is really important. Purchase made within 14 days and you have played less then two hours.

I've never actually ever come across a point where I needed to do a refund, wanted a refund, or bought a game that then went on sale shortly after and got thick about it.

Is this actually a thing?

The season sales are so well categorised now, its hard to really ****up buying a game at a higher price then what it will potentially hit, with the lowest price usually coming back on the final day.

Nollog

They've been required to do this in Europe for the past few months, it's been EU law for a year if not more.

Distance selling and all that. Nice of them to make some publicity by making it global though.

Varik

/\/ollog wrote: »

They've been required to do this in Europe for the past few months, it's been EU law for a year if not more.

Distance selling and all that. Nice of them to make some publicity by making it global though.

The distance selling consumer rights for digital goods end when the download/stream/service starts to download or is accessed, so they gone above that now with the 2 hours.

Before they just worded their terms to go along with recent EU changes so that they had prior consent and you acknowledged that the provision of the game started when you bought it; the service of providing the game stated instantly so you'd already used it even if the download hadn't started. Most other digital stores did the same over the last year.

johnny_ultimate

There are definitely significant benefits to this news - especially if your game straight up doesn't work for whatever reason. I really do hope, though, Valve make efforts to ensure independent developers aren't damaged here. Several of my favourite games of recent years have been around 90-120 minutes long (Three Fourths Home most recently), and it would be a damn shame to see people game the system with titles like that (potentially even profit from it, with the whole trading card business). Some vigilance from Valve in that respect would be great, and hopefully the dominant audience for those sort of games won't be tempted to get a cheeky refund.

CruelCoin

I applied for my first two refunds last night.

1 - Tree of Life - 4 hours played. Twice the max of 2hrs that Steam set. Seems there is a good bit of flexibility. I just argued in the comment box that an mmorpg takes more than 2 hours to get a true flavour.

2 - Spintires - 5 mins played.

Both refunds got approved inside of 2 hours, which is great, exspecially given the summer sale going on.

CruelCoin

Just received a refund for an application i made last night.

Reign of Kings - 26 minutes played.

But this one had been bought way back in May 26, so the official "14 day limit" seems to be very flexible.

Zillah

CruelCoin wrote: »

Just received a refund for an application i made last night.

Reign of Kings - 26 minutes played.

But this one had been bought way back in May 26, so the official "14 day limit" seems to be very flexible.

Huh. Might give X:Rebirth another go then. My request for a refund the first time was rejected.
(Also Reign of Kings looks like such an amateur pile of nonsense, what were you thinking?!)

CruelCoin

Zillah wrote: »

Huh. Might give X:Rebirth another go then. My request for a refund the first time was rejected.
(Also Reign of Kings looks like such an amateur pile of nonsense, what were you thinking?!)

I don't know.

I was looking for a rust alternative...:(

sweetie

Got refused a refund on a game I hadn't installed. Was a couple of months since I bought it though.

Links234

sweetie wrote: »

Was a couple of months since I bought it though.

So a bit over the 14 day refund window then?

sweetie

Links234 wrote:

So a bit over the 14 day refund window then?

Guy above was outside the window though.

Lone Stone

Just don't play more than 2 hours of a game or own it longer than 14 days, very fair got a few refunds trying Crap out.