You now can get Refunds on Steam

It clearly says within 2 weeks of purchase...

Valve said:
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.

Then why would it say that?

They released a client update earlier today. You may need that to enable the refund option.

That's probably why. Thanks.


Edit 1: Just booted up my PC. I'm going to try to get a refund for the games that wouldn't work which is like 4. Hopefully they don't think I'm trying to abuse the system.

Edit 2: only one game allows me to ask for refund and that's besiege. Oh well.
 
Wow, I wasn't expecting this. I figured Valve would have left the refund thing alone and settled to have it be a common but generally ignored complaint by the community.

But they actually solved it rather neatly. That's one less reason to complain about Steam.
 
I just got a full refund for GTAV (purchased in April) because it doesn't perform well on my computer. I had played it for less than two hours and I chose to have the refund issued as funds to my steam wallet, so maybe that affected their decision.

So they'll still look at your situation if it's been longer than two weeks. Neat! And now I have money for the sale, lol
 
I feel a little vindicated about a thread I made a few months ago, lol. This is literally exactly what I was calling for then, except instead of 48hrs, they've made it two weeks. Great! PSN and XBL, your turn!
 
They should've really given the option to contact them. I haven't bought a game in months and only 1 seems to work with asking for a refund even if it was over a 2 week period. oh well.
 
If people want to abuse the system with small games couldn't they just pirate it? Any game less than 2 hours will be single player.

But people like to abuse the system and exploit errors because unlike pirating it gives them clear conscience, even though it's practically the same thing.

Any number of games I like, I mean we have people listing (not necessary in this thread) 10-20 games they think you should try because they are oh so good, well what if I decide to try those 10-20 games, what if I end up disliking them all or most of them, now I can't get a refund because its to many refunds.

No like I've been saying, this "refund" policy will change nothing in my purchase habits until the abuse amount is clearly specified. This refund policy will not make me feel any safer, since I'll only buy the games I'm already sure I want, no gamble of any kind will commence.

Why does it need to change your purchasing habit? I don't get your reasoning here. Just continue as you were, and if by some reason your 100%-sure purchase suddenly broke down (because that happens, you know), you could still return it.
 
Good Job EA for pushing companies to support your user-friendly ideas from your Origin service. Origin is FAR from perfect, but it has it good things as well!
 
I bet you a lot of publishers are pissed as fuck about this, that is if they werent all involved in the negotiations. No way Valve is eating the cost for the refund. Hopefully this works out for the good. I mean if the game is broke or some shit, refunds should be had. But i have a bad feeling assholes everywhere are gonna exploit this.
 
I bet you a lot of publishers are pissed as fuck about this, that is if they werent all involved in the negotiations. No way Valve is eating the cost for the refund. Hopefully this works out for the good. I mean if the game is broke or some shit, refunds should be had. But i have a bad feeling assholes everywhere are gonna exploit this.

You already have people asking on GAF for games that take under 2 hours to complete.
 
You already have people asking on GAF for games that take under 2 hours to complete.

I wonder if Valve could smartly use the achievement system to detect if a games final achievements were unlocked and use that to filter bad refunds. Then again someone could be demanding a refund for a 50$ game that only lasted 2 hours and feel like they were ripped off.
 
This all also could be a pre-emptive maneuver against impending legal action on refunds for broken product, so they might have no choice but to eat the cost of bullshit.
 
Couldn't people just abuse the crap out of this to earn cards?

You honestly think someone will spend money on a game, have the game take up their computer for nearly two hours, go through the refund process, then wait a week for their money to come back, just for one 40¢ card? Maybe a few lunatics do, but this won't be a large scale problem.
 
It's a smart choice. Even retail had to do something. I remember people buying Turning Point and various other games brand new and getting mad because they only got $30 in-store credit or like $15- $20 cash. You spend $60 and if the game isn't good you want your money back.

You could say, wait for the reviews, but you still want that experience for yourself before hearing the person who beats it weeks or months before you do. You want a taste of the action with it being 100% pure. Then again, a lot of smaller games don't get touched by reviews and it's really hard basing a game's worth and its Meta score. Not everyone has the same taste too.

I have over 80 games hidden, maybe even more, just because I don't want to look at them. A lot of them I beat or I got in a Humble Bundle. Those bundles took a lot of space with all sorts of games.

I'm not forgetting Steam reviews, but some of those are misguiding and they feel good and bad all at the same time. Some are just jokes.

Members of the press IIRC have thousands of Steam games. It's funny to think someone in the press woukd check this out. I think they get their games for free either way. I've heard a few say they bought a game here and there.
 
Just submitted a refund for FF IV. Bought it during the Christmas sale but only put in 30 minutes 'cause the horrible quality of the port destroyed any fun I was trying to have.
 
You honestly think someone will spend money on a game, have the game take up their computer for nearly two hours, go through the refund process, then wait a week for their money to come back, just for one 40¢ card? Maybe a few lunatics do, but this won't be a large scale problem.

After seeing the lengths people will go through for digital hats I'm not sure what to think anymore. I mean, foil cards from niche games are worth something, and with refunds providing zero risk someone could look to turn a profit from it.
 
After seeing the lengths people will go through for digital hats I'm not sure what to think anymore. I mean, foil cards from niche games are worth something, and with refunds providing zero risk someone could look to turn a profit from it.

If that becomes a legitimate concern, devs will just tweak the card drops so they don't come until after the first couple hours. It's can be solved in a matter of minutes.
 
Sounds good to me though I think two hours is a little short. There are some games where you can easily pass that two hour mark before you hit problems/realize it is shit or as this thread has shown beat the game in that time. Something like bought within the last 14 days and played for 25% or less of the average completion time would work better I think.
 
I'm impressed with Valve. This is something I never thought would see the light of the day. As I posted in another thread, I think this move will put an increasing pressure on Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo?) to implement refund systems of their own. This move will also significantly increase the trust in digital game distribution. Valve implementing a refund system is a HUGE deal.

Now I just wish that the system will not fall under the weight of abuse. Please, please, please do not let the few ruin a good thing for all of us.
 
This is awesome! And now we don't really need to wait for daily on Steam Sales. If a game goes on sale one day at 50% and then gets a daily at 75%. You just refund and rebuy.
Just wait until after sale to play more than 2 hours.
Or you know. Let it sit untouched in library forever.
 
If that becomes a legitimate concern, devs will just tweak the card drops so they don't come until after the first couple hours. It's can be solved in a matter of minutes.
Yeah, pretty easy solution there. Wouldn't be surprised if it was implemented though to be honest.
 
I'm impressed with Valve. This is something I never thought would see the light of the day. As I posted in another thread, I think this move will put an increasing pressure on Microsoft and Sony (and Nintendo?) to implement refund systems of their own. This move will also significantly increase the trust in digital game distribution. Valve implementing a refund system is a HUGE deal.

Now I just wish that the system will not fall under the weight of abuse. Please, please, please do not let the few ruin a good thing for all of us.

I can't help but wonder about Sony. Four years and some change since the PSN security breach and there's still no sign of 2FA.
 
Why does it need to change your purchasing habit? I don't get your reasoning here. Just continue as you were, and if by some reason your 100%-sure purchase suddenly broke down (because that happens, you know), you could still return it.

Because that IS what they are suggesting/advertising, now you do not have to ONLY buy the 100% safe games you usually do, now you can try games you're not sure about, because if it do not run at all or bad on your hardware, you can refund it, if you do not like that game, you can refund it.

BUT, it that 1 game I refund will be the one that forever blocks my account for future refunds, what good will it do me... Nothing that's what.
 
And unsurprisingly now this whole refund business got involved in the GG mess. Couple of indies expressed concern or contempt at the 2 hour limit and then Grayson put up an article and you can guess the rest. smh
 
Oh man, unless Ubisoft shapes up they are going to get hit by this hard. As I said, this move has real potential to force some developers into paying more attention to the state their games launch in.
 
16 hours and no refund yet. :(
Asking for a refund during a flash sale doesn't seem like a good idea now.

And, can't you cheat the online time using offline mode?
 
Because that IS what they are suggesting/advertising, now you do not have to ONLY buy the 100% safe games you usually do, now you can try games you're not sure about, because if it do not run at all or bad on your hardware, you can refund it, if you do not like that game, you can refund it.

They are advertising no such thing. Refund system of anything is not a pass for you to just buy willy-nilly things you're not sure you'd want or need. It's not a stand it for demo-ing stuff. It's for when bad things go unplanned or honest mistakes are made.

When I bought Mass Effect 2, the PC I was using to play it was above the recommended requirement. It could play it really smoothly. However, the game would crash every time at the same place, making me unable to progress. Nothing I did, even reformatting the PC, fixed it and I couldn't find anyone with the same problem on the net.

This is a problem I would not ever found with any research had I not actually played the game on my own PC. It would be nice at that time if I could actually get a refund for it.
 
Too bad this wasn't implemented two months ago so I could get refund for the nonfunctional PC version of Mortal Kombat X
 
Too bad this wasn't implemented two months ago so I could get refund for the nonfunctional PC version of Mortal Kombat X

If your playtime is under 2h, they'll do it.

I've got things bought 2 months ago refunded.
 
This all also could be a pre-emptive maneuver against impending legal action on refunds for broken product, so they might have no choice but to eat the cost of bullshit.

You can butter it any way you want. If anything, this is following EU law, except rather than just matching each countries law, they issued the refund policy globally which there is no need to do. As far as I know, no other company is doing this to this extent for digital products
 
You can butter it any way you want. If anything, this is following EU law, except rather than just matching each countries law, they issued the refund policy globally which there is no need to do. As far as I know, no other company is doing this to this extent for digital products

They likely realized actually reviewing cases instead of pretending to do so would be more expensive than to just throw it up global and automated.
 
If your playtime is under 2h, they'll do it.

I've got things bought 2 months ago refunded.
It's not. The game has (or had, I uninstalled it weeks ago) this ridiculous bug where it kept running on the background after you closed it (you would need to go on task manager and then kill the process to actually close the game). So no refund for me. On the bright side I learned to never buy non-Nintendo AAA games on release again, so I am good.
 
Looks like a generous setup. I would've expected one hour instead of two.

Actually I'd almost prefer 1 hour, if only because I don't want indies to feel they have to pad their games past two hours long just to avoid refunds.
 
well i just put in a refund for aliens colonial marines :D

purchased back in august 2013 played for 1 hour and had refund option still lol
 
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