You now can get Refunds on Steam

Gren said:
Made a request a moment ago. Purchase was around lat April, but in this game's case (a small Early Access title) it's also not a huge deal to me if it gets denied or not.

Really wish I could get a refund on some of the sloppy ports made by major pubs that I had bought, but those were from so long ago that making a request would just waste everyone's time.
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Took a while, but just got a notification that my refund was processed. So even though my purchase was well beyond the 2-week grace, they let it slide. Cool.

Don't plan on abusing it through; I value my account's standing too much to gamble on Valve's goodwill.
 
I sorta got a refund way in the past. They just took the game out of my list and added the funds to my Steam wallet.
 
I requested a refund for the turd Legends of Pegasus. Still waiting after I got the canned response. I'm hoping it gets approved. $33 for steam sales will go a long way.
 
I just got refunded for Mortal Kombat X even though it was purchased almost 2 months ago. I only had 22 minutes play time according to Steam.

Untitled-2%20copy_zpssbeu77t2.jpg
 
Still waiting... I asked for a refund for Hotline Miami 2 which I only played for 20 minutes...

Edit: Never mind
Hello Reila
Your purchase has been refunded by Steam.
You'll receive the funds within 7 days.
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yaaaaaaay
 
I wonder how much they could do to fix the problem by setting a price floor? Most of the people who are upset are indies building super-short games and charging a couple bucks for them. If they disallowed refunds for games under $4.99 (or maybe just knocked the timeframe down to 30 minutes) it might go a long way to fixing the problem.
 
I think the problem will fix itself really soon. The people exploiting it and treating it like "demo time" or "hey I can play this short game for free" will very quickly get locked out of refunds.
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.
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I don't like the idea of a price floor. I just got a refund for a very cheap game that was unplayable for me. I happen to like my couple of €, thanks :P I also wouldn't like devs "getting away" with bad games just because they don't cost enough.

I've seen indie devs (the one linked above for example) saying 10/15 mins should be enough for all games. They are being very, very silly. I've not gone through the settings menu and seen the intro in a bigger game in 15 mins after starting (and that would also include the time for the first time setups and such, which can take some time). 2 hours make it possible to tinker with the game to maybe make it work before giving up on it.

Mike Bithell (an indie dev I admire oh so much) tweeted about this too...
"I am worried about how improved consumer rights will impact my bottom line".. well.. it's an interesting public stance to take, for sure :)
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Getting worried about steam refunds seems to rely pretty heavily on an assumption that your audience is a) arseholes b) unaware of piracy
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(among many other tweets about it, seeing it from the consumer perspective)

A "solution" I can see would require more work from the devs and a remade achievement system. I noticed that it told me how many achievements I had gotten in the two games I sent a refund request for (got them accepted today too, it went fast and smooth!). I had gotten zero cheevos in the game I couldn't play and one cheevo in the other game. If the cheevo system could have special achievements that put "marks" on the account this would be a simple way of seeing if someone played through the game.
A cheevo put somewhere half-way through the game could get you a silver star (or whatever) and make it very hard for you to get a refund without a very good explanation. A cheevo from the end of the game could give you a gold star and make refunds impossible. But meh, it would never happen.
 
The other option is for some sort of system for developers reporting completion time and then having a shorter refund playtime limit so that no one can finish within the limit
 
Tried getting a refund for OutLast but nope, game is too dated to receive a refund. Total time played 37 minutes. Games without weapons can piss off. LOL. My fault for not researching before buying but still a shit game for me.
 
Nzyme32 said:
The other option is for some sort of system for developers reporting completion time and then having a shorter refund playtime limit so that no one can finish within the limit
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Rather than a set 2 hours for everything, what about having the refund grace period be a percentage of the game's length? Like 10% into the game or something like that. So a game's refund period would be variable based on the length of the game
 
The Red Wizard said:
Yep, it's definitely refunds and not the imminent summer sale.
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I think it's a mix of Summer Sale and Mystery Card drops. Mystery Cards replaced coupons, and there seemed to be a good number of 50% off Beyond Gravity coupons out there.

And this (from the Indie Thread):

PandaPedinte said:
I went to look on the game and it was recently discounted at 50% off during the 05/25 and 06/01 period so it also can be used to explain the decreased number of sales.
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Spyware said:
I think the problem will fix itself really soon. The people exploiting it and treating it like "demo time" or "hey I can play this short game for free" will very quickly get locked out of refunds.


I don't like the idea of a price floor. I just got a refund for a very cheap game that was unplayable for me. I happen to like my couple of €, thanks :P I also wouldn't like devs "getting away" with bad games just because they don't cost enough.

I've seen indie devs (the one linked above for example) saying 10/15 mins should be enough for all games. They are being very, very silly. I've not gone through the settings menu and seen the intro in a bigger game in 15 mins after starting (and that would also include the time for the first time setups and such, which can take some time). 2 hours make it possible to tinker with the game to maybe make it work before giving up on it.

Mike Bithell (an indie dev I admire oh so much) tweeted about this too...

(among many other tweets about it, seeing it from the consumer perspective)

A "solution" I can see would require more work from the devs and a remade achievement system. I noticed that it told me how many achievements I had gotten in the two games I sent a refund request for (got them accepted today too, it went fast and smooth!). I had gotten zero cheevos in the game I couldn't play and one cheevo in the other game. If the cheevo system could have special achievements that put "marks" on the account this would be a simple way of seeing if someone played through the game.
A cheevo put somewhere half-way through the game could get you a silver star (or whatever) and make it very hard for you to get a refund without a very good explanation. A cheevo from the end of the game could give you a gold star and make refunds impossible. But meh, it would never happen.
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The sort of games that can be completed in sub-two hour runs are generally made to be completed more often than once to begin with, so it's not really a big issue to have people beating a game in that time.

And if it's some weird experimental "experience" maybe either trust your audience, or don't put it up on Steam to begin with. Steam's a huge maketplace, sure, but that doesn't mean everyone's game is the right fit for it. The refund system exists to protect consumers first, and, ultimately, if they feel unsatisfied with their purchase there's no reason it shouldn't be refundable within a reasonable amount of time. With obvious DLC or third-party related exceptions. Because sometimes, personally troubleshooting a game can take longer than you'd think.

At the end of the day, the only people being hurt by a refund service will be those peddling the worst titles on Steam.
 
Corpekata said:
I don't get it. It's a game that's not well known and not particularly acclaimed, and was just on sale for like 50 cents.

It does not have anything to do with refunds.
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Digging through the comments, one developer mentioned to Qwiboo how to see a better breakdown of their sales vs refunds. The results:

NRbZlZ0.png


So there might be something to it after all.
 
CheesecakeRecipe said:
Digging through the comments, one developer mentioned to Qwiboo how to see a better breakdown of their sales vs refunds. The results:

NRbZlZ0.png


So there might be something to it after all.
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I want to see how long people are playing before refunding. If it's less than half a hour on average, then the game probably isn't any good. Most people won't try to get a refund for a product that they like.
 
CheesecakeRecipe said:
So there might be something to it after all.
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It's a useful piece of data, but the question now is how many of these are people buying the game to actually play then scamming a refund, vs. how many are people buying the game and legitimately deciding it was a mistake. If it's the former we should see this pattern repeat with other short, cheap games, and it should be possible to build up a pretty solid case for what's wrong with the policy as implemented.
 
I tried to get a refund with NBA 2K15 since it's been a pain in the ass to play lately, especially online. I'm hoping Steam can cut me some slack so I can use the refund on something worth the trouble....like Lego Worlds :P.
 
I took advantage of this, refunded 3 games, 2 of them are purchases from Feb, and one from December. times played range form an hour to about 90 minutes.
Goodbye interstellar marines.
Would be a great game if the devs actually made content.
 
I feel sad for that Qwiboo person. The twitter feed is a mess. They think/thought it's impossible to get proper refunds due to Steam Wallet being the default option. The person also said "what would happen if Apple had this policy on AppStore, would be armageddon :)" even tho Apple since months ago have an even longer refund window in the EU. 14 days! The dev is actually from the EU but didn't know about this at all and it had not noticably impacted sales.

Steam is huge and this refund thing is "the new cool thing". People are flooding it with request just because it's suddenly easy. It won't be new and cool soon and will probably be "forgotten" by most people unless you actually need it. Or you'll be banned from it for abusing the system.
 
Abe Bly said:
I want to see how long people are playing before refunding. If it's less than half a hour on average, then the game probably isn't any good. Most people won't try to get a refund for a product that they like.
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Game quality itself could absolutely factor into it. I know I haven't played the game in question and haven't been aware of it outside of this set of tweets, so I can't say for sure.

charlequin said:
It's a useful piece of data, but the question now is how many of these are people buying the game to actually play then scamming a refund, vs. how many are people buying the game and legitimately deciding it was a mistake. If it's the former we should see this pattern repeat with other short, cheap games, and it should be possible to build up a pretty solid case for what's wrong with the policy as implemented.
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I theorized in the Indie Games thread that perhaps people are abusing it now while they still can in the off chance that Valve lets them slide just before this sale, helping them net a higher bounty for sale funds. With the restrictions in place to prevent total abuse of the system, once Valve starts refusing funds and blacklisting serial refund-fiends, I'm sure the amount of requests for refunds will slow. Doubly so if Valve cares to tweak the refund-windows and algorithms to prevent people from beating short games and then flipping it back to Valve.

We are in the very early stages of this open refund system, so any and all data will be interesting, but I feel like it's not indicative of how it will continue to be.
 
They accepted my refund request for Out of this Park Baseball. Ordered on March 23rd. I played 116 minutes and unlocked a foil card.

They said I will get a credit in the next 7 days. Nothing yet.
 
statham said:
when you can beat some games in two hours, they gotta figure out a alternative for small games.
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Have an achievement for game completion. If you have it, no refund for you. It's only fair for the small devs. If you find a game interesting enough to beat it, it should be yours permanently.
 
Bry0 said:
I took advantage of this, refunded 3 games, 2 of them are purchases from Feb, and one from December. times played range form an hour to about 90 minutes.
Goodbye interstellar marines.
Would be a great game if the devs actually made content.
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I guess I should try for a couple more. I don't want to look like I'm abusing the system.
 
DoctorWho said:
I guess I should try for a couple more. I don't want to look like I'm abusing the system.
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I figured three was fair enough, considering how little I played the games, and I made sure to explain my issue with each. I think they are being pretty lenient right now as well, since the refund program just started.
 
Bry0 said:
I took advantage of this, refunded 3 games, 2 of them are purchases from Feb, and one from December. times played range form an hour to about 90 minutes.
Goodbye interstellar marines.
Would be a great game if the devs actually made content.
Click to expand...
I want to refund a few more but I am afraid steam might deny my request in the future when I need it the most.
 
More_Badass said:
Rather than a set 2 hours for everything, what about having the refund grace period be a percentage of the game's length? Like 10% into the game or something like that. So a game's refund period would be variable based on the length of the game
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That is a pretty bad idea. Take a game like Skyrim, it has 4 minutes of content, but you can play it for hundreds of hours if you want. So what % is that?

The best way is time based on cost. If it costs < 5 you have a day to refund (enough time to know if it works). If you pay $60, a longer period is fair enough.

If nothing else, it would make people feel better about paying full price, which would be a big positive for steam and pc gaming.

I paid a high price for x-rebirth, which is a mess. So even though it was a long time ago, I think the refund is still fair.
 
CheesecakeRecipe said:
Digging through the comments, one developer mentioned to Qwiboo how to see a better breakdown of their sales vs refunds. The results:

NRbZlZ0.png


So there might be something to it after all.
Click to expand...

I don't understand that last sentence. Rate of refunds before was minimal? When was that, when Steam mostly didn't give refunds?
 
So I bought the Scholar of the First Sin DX11 upgrade to my original DX9 version of Dark Souls II. I wasn't going to say anything about this at first since it's been way over 14 days, but since other people in this thread are being refunded for purchases over 14 days, I thought why not?

I'm not mad that they didn't refund my purchase. But it's kind of pathetic that they didn't even bother to notice their own contradiction. At least use the right reason to reject the refund request. The fact that it's been over 14 days.

Untitled.png
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Lain said:
I don't understand that last sentence. Rate of refunds before was minimal? When was that, when Steam mostly didn't give refunds?
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Of course. What else could it mean?

Abdul Hafeez said:
So I bought the Scholar of the First Sin DX11 upgrade to my original DX9 version of Dark Souls II. I wasn't going to say anything about this at first since it's been way over 14 days, but since other people in this thread are being refunded for purchases over 14 days, I thought why not?

I'm not mad that they didn't refund my purchase. But it's kind of pathetic that they didn't even bother to notice their own contradiction. At least use the right reason to reject the refund request. The fact that it's been over 14 days.
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From the information you've presented you ought to be irate. They're doing boilerplate CS responses of "TL;DR"
 
Just sent in a refund request for Splinter Cell Blacklist (game crashes to desktop).
Bought it a long time ago (Dec 2014) and apparently logged 3 hrs, so I'm not expecting anything, but doesn't hurt to try.

What I actually got to play I really enjoyed, but every time it crashed I lost all my progress.
 
Lain said:
I don't understand that last sentence. Rate of refunds before was minimal? When was that, when Steam mostly didn't give refunds?
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Yup.
I tried to talk to the person but immediately got blocked. I don't think I said anything wrong...

Abdul Hafeez said:
I'm not mad that they didn't refund my purchase. But it's kind of pathetic that they didn't even bother to notice their own contradiction. At least use the right reason to reject the refund request. The fact that it's been over 14 days.
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This seems really odd. People (like me) get refunds for purchases from 6 months back. Could it be some trouble with the update thing, that they count the playtime from the non-upgraded version too? But then it should be listed...
Getting the wrong message is not anything I would be mad about tho, it happens.
 
statham said:
when you can beat some games in two hours, they gotta figure out a alternative for small games.
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Agreed. Then again we are already hearing about pirates downloading and then cracking the games then asking for refunds. The problem is you can't track intent. If so my last 5 games, 4 of which were AAA didn't work well enough and had I asked for refunds I would have been labeled as misusing the system. I wouldn't have simply because I assumed at some point they would be patched but...thats still an issue. The real problem is there just aren't systems in place for this yet and there should have been before rollout because refunds are awesome!

Also one weird thing we have talked about before in other steam threads the total gametime bug still exists. I have beat the Batman games and one of them says I have played less than 1 hour. I have a good number of games with that bug...so that bug NEEDS to be 100% fixed. And that bug has occurred in Ark today for me as well.
 
Karak said:
Agreed. Then again we are already hearing about pirates downloading and then cracking the games then asking for refunds. The problem is you can't track intent. If so my last 5 games, 4 of which were AAA didn't work well enough and had I asked for refunds I would have been labled as misusing the system.

Also one weird thing we have talked about before in other steam threads the total gametime bug still exists. I have beat the batman games and one of them says I have played less than 1 hour. I have a good number of games with that bug...so that bug NEEDS to be 100% fixed.
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Wait... how would the bolded even work? It's too silly to be real.
 
LurkerPrime said:
Wait... how would the bolded even work? It's too silly to be real.
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Buy it, copy it crack it, then ask for refund. People blocked from utorrent sites and so forth, or in places where they can't find an easy way to get a game are already talking about doing it. No worry about being tracked in utorrent, no worry about ISP tracking, no need for usenet accounts, no IP blocking. Just get the .exe later. Super simple.

ipukespiders said:
Most games have an achievement for beating the game. Maybe if you have unlocked that, it could void a refund?
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I also like the idea of a % of the game played(levels or progress not time as that could be bug fixing on the users side) meaning a certain % returned.
 
Spyware said:
Yup.
I tried to talk to the person but immediately got blocked. I don't think I said anything wrong...
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So the developer is saying people should down vote the game rather than ask for a refund? That's great for business, they get to keep your money but the amount of possible down votes could outweigh future sales.

You don't like what you paid for and you want a refund of the money you paid, now have the option. If anything having that option could encourage more people to purchase the game and give it a try, possibly in the process enjoying it and up voting/recommending it.
 
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