http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/11/do-not-let-skyrim-overflow-your-ps3/
"After Skyrim gamesave files surpass 5MB in the PS3 version, many claim to experience lag and stability issues. Such as framerate issues, poor rendering, shoddy loading and non interactions fro finishing quests/cutting wood etc, wrote gamer PurpleHaze on the games official forums."
I cant finish ANY quest and i cant buy from ANY trader/npc and i can only talk to them after some laggy button pressing, continued PurpleHaze. So my gamesave is now 6mb (how i dont know since i couldnt buy/sell/talk or complete quests) and the LAG and framerate issue is so bad at this point, the game isnt worh restarting.
It does not take long for the save file to exceed 6MB, roughly 16 hours for me, so playing the game in any sort of depth will become very troublesome, wrote Kotaku reader Toby."
I guess these people that experienced a completely broken game of Skyrim on PS3 after 16+ hours don't deserve a refund too? Time played is not a indication of when you can't receive a refund, if the game suddenly stops working as intended then they deserve a refund end of story.
Refund to me seems like the ultimate solution, one that involves money exchanging hands, and that is just messy from a business standpoint. I'd argue that a "good faith" measure to work towards a fix or patch first before a refund for broken items would be a better choice.
Of course if the company is full of jerks who can't/won't fix the game in any reasonable amount of time, then cool. Refund it is!