Steam now offers easy refunds

Wow. It took Valve long enough but Steam finally has a low-risk refunds system similar to Origin and GOG. Perhaps a move to win back consumer confidence after the paid mods backlash?

http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds

Your move, Uplay.

 

I just ran across this, didn't see it discussed here yet... Steam is now offering refunds for purchases within 14 days and less than 2 hours of play time. Fantastic move on their part!

See below:

Steam Refunds
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. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.
You will be issued a full refund of your purchase within a week of approval. You will receive the refund in Steam Wallet funds or through the same payment method you used to make the purchase. If, for any reason, Steam is unable to issue a refund via your initial payment method, your Steam Wallet will be credited the full amount. (Some payment methods available through Steam in your country may not support refunding a purchase back to the original payment method. Click here for a full list.)
Where Refunds Apply
The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store. Here is an overview of how refunds work with other types of purchases.
Refunds on Downloadable Content
(Steam store content usable within another game or software application, "DLC")
DLC purchased from the Steam store is refundable within fourteen days of purchase, and if the underlying title has been played for less than two hours since the DLC was purchased, so long as the DLC has not been consumed, modified or transferred. Please note that in some cases, Steam will be unable to give refunds for some third party DLC (for example, if the DLC irreversibly levels up a game character). These exceptions will be clearly marked as nonrefundable on the Store page prior to purchase.
Refunds on In-game Purchases
Steam will offer refund for in-game purchases within any Valve-developed games within forty-eight hours of purchase, so long as the in-game item has not been consumed, modified or transferred. Third-party developers will have the option to enable refunds for in-game items on these terms. Steam will tell you at the time of purchase if the game developer has opted to offer refunds on the in-game item you are buying. Otherwise, in-game purchases in non-Valve games are not refundable through Steam.
Refunds on Pre-Purchased Titles
When you pre-purchase a title on Steam (and have paid for the title in advance), you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title. The standard 14-day/two-hour refund period also applies, starting on the game’s release date.
Steam Wallet Refunds
You may request a refund for Steam Wallet funds within fourteen days of purchase if they were purchased on Steam and if you have not used any of those funds.
Refunds on Bundles
You can receive a full refund for any bundle purchased on the Steam Store, so long as none of the items in the bundle have been transferred, and if the combined usage time for all items in the bundle is less than two hours. If a bundle includes an in-game item or DLC that is not refundable, Steam will tell you if the whole bundle is refundable during check-out.
Purchases Made Outside of Steam
Valve cannot provide refunds for purchases made outside of Steam (for example, CD keys or Steam wallet cards purchased from third parties).
VAC Bans
If you have been banned by VAC (the Valve Anti-Cheat system) on a game, you lose the right to refund that game.
Movies
We are unable to offer refunds for movies on Steam.
Refunds on Gifts
We are unable to offer refunds for gifts after they have been redeemed by the recipient.
Abuse
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.
How to Request a Refund
You can request a refund or get other assistance with your Steam purchases at help.steampowered.com.

Last updated June 2, 2015

 

YAY!



What I like here: " We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price."

So why don't they just offer a 7 day price guarantee or something? If it changes price they credit your Steam Wallet the difference. But good to see there is finally some recourse for users. And yes 2 hour limit is good, although it may take significantly more time than that to get something working or troubleshooting. But at least it's something.

 

Its about time. Now developers are going to actually be accountable for their releases.

 

LOL I wish that were true

 

tell me about it,about time!1

 

How is it not true? Buy a game, it crashes constantly, refund from Valve. Developers either stop releasing broken crap or they drop the PC altogether and make their millions on consoles.

 

I wonder if we are already there in some ways.
There's a lot of time and troubleshooting in making a game work on the Zillions of different PC hardware combinations not to mention underlying software differences (OS + driver combinations). Easier to release for a console that has a well-defined configuration.
IMO it's the same reason developers don't support Linux anymore than they do, too many different Distro's to manage.


(Too much fragmentation in the marketplace, what are they going to spend their time on that has the biggest return for the least trouble?)

 

Because they have no accountability, esp. the big companies. If the game is not selling well on PC, instead of looking inward they'll blame some external factor like piracy and devote even fewer resources to PC in the future. We saw it happen with Crytek, then id, then Ubisoft.

 

This is a good move. Even though it was a while ago I wonder if they refund me old games like Bloodlines that never work.

 

Was the purchase made within 14 days with <2h of playtime?

I'm still waiting for Ubisoft to refund me $75 for FC3 and FC3 BD that I had to download the Jack Sparrow editions of in order to install and play. 2 years and counting...

 

Excellent. Now, let's just hope their refund system still isn't through their hopelessly slow ticket system.

 

Purchase was a while ago... But the fact I have 0 hours play time should be enough. It needs official update patches to play which steam don't offer. Only some dodgy website does with a 24kb download speed.
Heck, it only cost me $2 or something but it's the principal.

 

I know what you mean. Jedi Knight DF2 and MotS have been perpetually broken since their release on Steam in 2009 and Valve hasn't done anything about it. Since I got them dirt cheap from the Star Wars Collection, I decided it wasn't worth the time and effort to pursue a refund with the Steam support monkeys. Went ahead and rebought them on GOG instead since CDPR actually fixes their old games to work properly on modern systems.

 

Yes.. It's the small nickel and dimming that erks me. I also got the original Max Payne which doesn't work.. There's quite a few titles they shouldn't be selling unless they at the very least host links to the official updates.

 

Or how about actually patch the game with whatever fixes are needed to get it up and running before selling it, like GOG does?

I think the failure of Greenlight epitomizes how Steam got too big too fast for its own good and shifted to quantity over quality.

 

2 weeks after purchase or 2 hours playtime, whichever happens first. Couldn´t hurt to try though.

 

Well it said they'll consider special circumstances on a case by case basis... since this is a new policy, if you haven't logged 2 hours of game time, I'd say its worth a try.

 

This fixes weeding out the crap launch issues a bit, but what it doesn't do is anything for false promises from devs for fixing the damn game. Some issues just recur infrequently, and you can easily crash an hour or two into a game. I guess it's a step in the right direction though. Buyers remorse has a recourse. It took Steam ten years to get there, but they did.

 

Abuse of new refund system hurting indie devs: http://www.dsogaming.com/news/indie...m-pc-gamers-show-graphs-to-back-their-claims/

 

Boo. Hoo.

No really, make better games. It used to be that "indie" games were Flash games that you played on an ad-driven website. I don't feel sorry for developers who try to pass off a casual game fit for my cell phone as something I should accept on my PC. Are people taking advantage? You bet. Is it wrong? That's debatable. These are probably the same people who abuse Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, etc with their liberal return policies.

I think Steam needs to see how this goes over the next month or two before making any changes. Opportunists always jump right away, let's see how the rest of us do.

One viable option would be Steam disallowing refunds on items under 10 or 15 dollars at full price (meaning they could still get a refund if the game was on sale at the time they bought it). That protects the smaller developers and still leaves the biggest offenders we need a refund policy for, the AAA title makers, on the hook if they produce garbage.

 

That's not the issue. The indie titles referenced in the article have good reviews on Steam. It's that they're short $2 experiences that can be finished within 2 hours. How can these devs make a profit when Steam takes 30% and people are basically renting their games for free?

Consider something like Goat Simulator. Be honest, once you get over the novelty aspect of it within the first 30 min, are you ever gonna touch it again? Probably not. With the new refund system in place, I can see hordes of people getting their free 2 hours of fun out of it and other short games.

And about Wal-mart/Sam's Club and Costco. If every single shopper abused their return policy, they would've gone out of business long ago.

 

As I said, Steam needs to make a dollar limit for such situations. And no, retail mark up is so high that they still make money and besides they all have restrictions. Valve basically tailor made this policy for abuse. I don't want to see it disappear because of some indie developers though because this is something that could finally hold the AAA developers accountable.

 

Precisely. A game like Machinarium/Samorost (check them out, they're beautiful point-and-click adventure games developed by Amanita Design) can be completed within 2 hours. These devs need the money from those small, tiny games to make their next games (hopefully) bigger and better. And if buyers take advantage of it, well, the small indie game devs are screwed.

P.S. Goat Simulator is a joke; another of those simulators that have the same font and branding of FSX, and meant to milk the hell out of the word "simulator". I hate it.

 

Right. I was going to say, what do people expect for $2? I mean seriously? What kind of desperate narcissistic moron asks to refund $2 for a game that's more than worth the $2? If you spent more than 20 minutes actually playing the game I'd say you got your money's worth. I would say they make anything under $5 exempt from the refund policy or at least implement a 20-30 minute max playtime for those titles, and offer only partial Steam credit for those games instead of cash refunds. There are still a lot of dud indie games that deserve to perish, so you have to weed those out somehow.

To be honest I've had a lot of fun with the $2-5 indie titles with my kids especially. Sometimes we only play an hour and that's it, but am I going to go back to Steam and say, hey, I want my $3 back? No. I got more than my $3 worth.

A while back, my thought was that they should offer an Indie channel with a monthly or annual subscription and they divvy up the funds to the devs based on play time. Single purchases also should be available too of course.

It's the big budget games that irk me when they are released as a sloppy mess. There is no excuse for that especially for a $60 retail price game.

I agree to a point. It's not really Goat Simulator, but it is. With both my kids, we got more than our money's worth, and they continue to support it. Granted I wasn't real keen on the whole devil worship thing... but I just made sure they didn't play that part.

 

You're old enough to have kids... I should be calling you 'Sir'.

 

Why? I wasn't knighted by the Queen...

 

Yet...

 

Great I will use this as a demo system.

 

Appreciate your honesty