You now can get Refunds on Steam

I wonder how much this impacts shitty early access games flooding the market. Have to have at least 2 hours worth of non garbage content now.

kurahador said:
Buy new game > idle for cards > sell cards > request refund

Repeat.
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I would imagine they just lock you out of the ability to get a refund on a game if you take advantage of the system like that. The same way retailers tell folks who do this to get lost.
 
Hopefully this will be the end of everyone complaining about the low-effort Early Access garbage.

Now not only can people get their money back if they are unable with an Early Access game, but Steam can de-promote stuff based on how many people are asking for refunds.
 
Finally, its years late but its nice to now actually have it.

The 14 days is good, but I'm not so sure about the 2 hour limit (it should easily be a bit more than that, but not by much), but they at least say you can request outside of that and they will look into it.
 
Hopefully there won't be any major issues with abusing the system, but it's definitely a good step forward even though I most likely will not need it. The terms are really reasonable too.
 
Thank god, my friend got stuck with Company of Heroes 2 barely running on his PC because Steam Support wouldn't give him a refund.
 
2 hours is about perfect. It's enough time to test out a game that appeared to work immediately; to make sure it's really working or stable. And it's enough time to search for a simple fix/explanation for a game that doesn't work right off the bat.
 
I hope people won't abuse the two hour policy, since especially in the indie space there are tons of games you can get the full experience in two hours.
 
Good, they can finally pay me back for that shit port of Devil May Cry 3 SE.

In fact, they already did a few minutes after requesting it.
 
darkside31337 said:
I would imagine they just lock you out of the ability to get a refund on a game if you take advantage of the system like that. The same way retailers tell folks who do this to get lost.
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But you can't avoid getting cards, usually you'll have every drop after two hours. So either the drops start later or they don't care. I mean in the end Valve and the publisher earn something from every card sale.
 
I just thought about the idling for cards thing. Again they are probably just going to make it take 2 hours minimum to idle for cards now. That way you can't get a refund if you are abusing the system.
border said:
Hopefully this will be the end of everyone complaining about the low-effort Early Access garbage.

Now not only can people get their money back if they are unable with an Early Access game, but Steam can de-promote stuff based on how many people are asking for refunds.
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Yeah I hope so.
 
I wish it went back further i would love a refund on Killing Floor 2. Played like 40 minutes.

Good on Valve though.

jacobeid said:
Psssssst. Hey Sony.
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Aren't you only allowed 1 digital return with Sony? I contacted them about a refund on Drive Club when it was completely broken and they worded it very clearly that this was my only refund which is kind of shitty considering how many games ship broken.
 
This is kind of huge, what other digital distribution platform beats this? EA's policy is obviously great but only applies to EA games.
 
I imagine they'll have a history of you requesting refunds on every purchase and will ultimately stop you from doing that sort of thing at some point.

I'm glad they are doing this, although I only buy things from Steam during the sales anyways.
 
ShockingAlberto said:
I wonder how refunds work with gifts.

Do you get the amount in the steam wallet or does the person get the money back? Maybe it's a choice?
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Gifts aren't eligible if they have been activated. The way that wording suggests though you can get your money back if it's in their inventory? I hope not though because then people are going to get scammed.
 
Not working with gifts, if they stick to that, would be a huge mistake.

You want people to gift without compunction, making it a worse option will cause hesitation when buying games for people.
 
Does that mean that they now have a dedicated support team? Even after the initial wave of people abusing the system, and subsequently being barred from using it, they're going to have to process piles of refunds daily.
 
taybul said:
Sounds like I could have "beaten" Stanley Parable for free.
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If you really didn't enjoy your time with it, I think that would be considered fair. I doubt the developer wants to make fortunes off of people who don't like his work. If however you do that with every single short game out there whether you enjoyed it or not, I think that would fall under abuse, and then the joke would be on you when you do actually want to request a legitimate refund.
 
Hmm... submitted a refund request for Project Cars. That game is simply not what I was expecting, and knew I wouldn't play it any more.

We'll see.
 
EatinOlives said:
I imagine they'll take it away for any user who abuses it.
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Yeah, the FAQ says as much:

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.
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God, how many "recommend me a game I can buy on Steam and beat in under 2 hours" threads are we going to get?

That said, this is awesome. I wish sales figures were shared. I bet this leads to an Increase In Revenue, not a decrease.
 
ShockingAlberto said:
Not working with gifts, if they stick to that, would be a huge mistake.

You want people to gift without compunction, making it a worse option will cause hesitation when buying games for people.
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I really don't know how else they could implement it without opening the doorway to industrial-level fraud and entirely outside of Steam prison economies / key reselling etc
 
Fantastic news.

dave is ok said:
Fuck, I bet cards won't drop until it's been after two weeks or you've played for over two hours now.

RIP Idlemaster
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Yeah, Idlemaster will need to be adjusted to exclude games with under 2 hours playtime to avoid accidentally using up that refundable time.
 
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