We have a total of 117 SKUs on Steam, so we have a pretty good overall picture of how our types of games would probably fare within the Steam returns policy. In our list of games, we have full games, expansions, DLC, bundles and packages, as well as a few extras like soundtracks and e-books that are usually sold in conjunction or in addition to a full game.
The overall return rate for all of the SKUs has been 1.99% on number of units sold and 4.16% on value. The difference in percentage here is due to a number of reasons, but mainly to the fact that units (or Steam keys) redeemed from external sites are non-refundable. So places like Humble Bundle, Bundle Stars or even our own site, where we give a Steam key to redeem the product on Steam on top of the game's serial number, have an impact on the overall numbers.
Full games are, of course, the ones that have a bigger impact on the general numbers, especially in value, but also in terms of number of units. Returns on units sold for full, stand-alone games, were 2.28%, while in value the returns were 5.07%. For DLC and expansions, in units sold returns were 0.32% and in value 0.46%. For packages and bundles, in units sold returns were 2.81% and in value 2.3%.
The full game with the highest level of returns in units had a total of 9.83% rate, while in value the highest was 12.01%. Every other game was well under 10% and outside of the first 10 games, everything else was under 5% return rate overall, both in units and in value. Bigger franchises like Panzer Corps and Close Combat had return rates of less than 2%, both in units and value.
These are the dry numbers and there is a lot of food for thought here.