Valve has added a refund policy to Steam. They say that they do not care about the reason, but there are obviously restrictions including a blanket “abuse” clause that lawyers love. First and foremost, the refund must be done within fourteen days of purchase or two hours of game time. If you feel that your circumstance is an edge-case, even if you are outside these windows, you are free to ask for a refund anyway and Valve will take a look at it. Pre-purchasing is not considered a sale until the game launches, but “Early Access” has not been addressed. I assume Valve would handle that on a case-by-case basis. Valve says that refunds will be processed within a week.
This system is very similar to EA/Origin's refund policy, with a few obvious differences. First, EA's policy only considers “participating third parties”, although they fully put their money where their mouth is with their own catalog. EA's policy lasts seven days, while Valve's last fourteen. On the other hand, EA allows returns within the first 24 hours of launch, while Valve counts the first two hours of execution, seemingly regardless of how long that takes to happen.
We're hearing a bit of concerns from developers, especially those who create quick experiences. That's a bit of a hot-button issue, but I feel as though it is something that you will need to agree to in order to ship on Steam. Honestly, I expect that users will overwhelmingly not request a refund unless they feel slighted, even for a short game. It's a pretty convoluted way to pirate a game, for a brief time, and runs the risk of Valve cutting off the account from refund requests under the “Abuse” clause.
A final note: Valve will officially support refunds for titles purchased just before a sale. If you buy a game, and it goes on sale within the refund window, you can return it and re-purchase it at the sale price.
So do you think I could get a
So do you think I could get a refund for Metro Last Light which I bought at least a year ago but was never able to play for longer than 15-20 minutes without feeling like death (motion sickness i guess)? I tried playing with all the FOV settings but no luck.
Should i give it a try?
UPDATE: Well, I tried going through the refund process on the website but it gave me this error message:
"This purchase occurred significantly outside the refund window, and cannot be refunded. You can only submit refund requests for purchases made within the last 6 months."
Oh well at least I only paid $6.79 for it! And maybe my brother will play it using family sharing.
Holy fuck, this is totaly a
Holy fuck, this is totaly a game changer. There are SOOOOOO many games in my colection that looked sooooo good, and yet…… yea not so good.
Its a start. Still not
Its a start. Still not compliant with European law for the sales of goods act and distance selling regulations but its nice start to improving the rights of customers with these types of digital goods to match rights we have had for physical goods for a long time.
Looking forward to further progress towards eventually seeing a legally compliant and balanced solution.
Since publishers set whether
Since publishers set whether refund is possible at all games should have some sort of marker on steam page indicating that refunds for that title are supported/possible.
And…. Kotaku’s Nathan
And…. Kotaku’s Nathan Grayson shit *all* over it, saying that this is a thumbing of the nose at precious indie game developers, because fuck consumers amiright?
You should stop reading that
You should stop reading that garbage.
Naw, I get my garbage
Naw, I get my garbage (Kotaku, RPS, Polygon, PCGamer, GameInformer, etc) third-hand and through caches. 🙂
Agreed.
Agreed.
One of the issues that has
One of the issues that has been brought up many times is how this can hurt indie game developers since some of those games have no replay value and/or can definitely be finished in less than 2 hours.
Let’s have game demo’s come back, aka shareware back in the olden days. Or some type of timed limited gameplay, you get something like the first hour free and then after you have to buy it.
When will Steam go away, be
When will Steam go away, be gone:
Steam: one of the worst places for subjugation under its anti-friendly user agreements:
‘We, at Steam, think you are such dumbasses, that we require you to sign you will never use your right to lawfully challenge us, no matter what we do, and, if you do not like that, say good-bye to all your products for which you paid, which you will not be able to use again, unless you sign the agreement, which is: you may never get together and sue us, no matter what we do to the community, or how powerfully we tower over you, etcetera! Yes, you pay us. We enslave you!’
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133806-valves-updated-steam-agreement-bars-class-action-lawsuit-but-is-it-legal
Never Steam…, never give Steam a penny.
Sincerely, Joseph C. Carbone III, 06.07.2015, 1941