Steam - Refund Policy Changed

Myrthos · June 3, 2015

The refund policy of Steam has changed. Valve will refund for any reason within 14 days of purchase and if you played the game for less than two hours.

You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.

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.

You will be issued a full refund of your purchase within a week of approval. You will receive the refund in Steam Wallet funds or through the same payment method you used to make the purchase. If, for any reason, Steam is unable to issue a refund via your initial payment method, your Steam Wallet will be credited the full amount. (Some payment methods available through Steam in your country may not support refunding a purchase back to the original payment method. Click here for a full list.)

Thanks Drithius.

More information.

wiretripped · June 3, 2015

Trying to get some community goodwill back after the Skyrim mod debacle?

joxer · June 3, 2015

No, trying to allow metacritic trollmode in.
Buy game, thumb it down, get refund.

Ripper · June 3, 2015

Very good. I've been asking for this for years. 2 hours is enough time to realise you've been sold a turkey.

DArtagnan · June 3, 2015

About time, really.

borcanu · June 3, 2015

been hoping for this for ages. now the developers are under pressure. they need to deliver. to pack a punch. lazy bastards

muhabor · June 3, 2015

WOW didn't expect steam to actually bow down to customers. It is about time, just like DArtagnan said.

lostforever · June 3, 2015

Good change but I think I need minimum 5 hours

azarhal · June 3, 2015

lostforever said:
Good change but I think I need minimum 5 hours

I don't think the policy change is because they think players should be allowed to demo games. It's look a lot more like "will it run on my PC or not?" protection policy.

Darkheart · June 3, 2015

I'm pretty sure this is due to customer rights laws some countries have (i.e. European Union).
Well, under 2h play time is a catch, but it might be worth it if a game is so bad I really don't play more than that.

Sacred_Path · June 3, 2015

welp, a shame I bought Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms more than two weeks ago. Or maybe I can just give it back without a refund?

Ripper · June 3, 2015

Darkheart said:
I'm pretty sure this is due to customer rights laws some countries have (i.e. European Union).
Well, under 2h play time is a catch, but it might be worth it if a game is so bad I really don't play more than that.

I think you might be right. The EU are pretty feisty about consumer rights, and I believe they were looking into this.

More than 2h would be good, but it's enough to detect the really outrageous stinkers. I've been burned by one or two RPGs that were really scandalous garbage, and I wouldn't have needed more than 20 minutes. If I'm still OK with it after 2h, it's probably not so bad that I feel really cheated.

Voqar · June 3, 2015

I think this is a good and big change considering their previous stance has effectively been "no refunds" - you could get a refund if a game didn't work but only if you jumped thru moving hoops of fire to prove you and every possible tech person from the developer had tried everything possible.

Ripper said:
More than 2h would be good, but it's enough to detect the really outrageous stinkers. I've been burned by one or two RPGs that were really scandalous garbage, and I wouldn't have needed more than 20 minutes. If I'm still OK with it after 2h, it's probably not so bad that I feel really cheated.

2h seems enough. You should be attempting to make intelligent purchases, not buying games to demo them. Refunds should be for times when a game doesn't run well or not run at all or when even when you research a game it ends up being an immediate and obvious bad fit.

Drithius · June 3, 2015

Also unexpected and welcome to see that they offer a complete refund and not simply a Steam Wallet credit (which is what they were offering during the Paid Mod fiasco).

Necrosis · June 4, 2015

Doesn't this tempt developers to make sure that the first few hours of the game are of the highest quality to sucker people into buying the game and then let the rest of the game be mediocre? And if most people are going to play a significant portion of the game in the first 14 days anyway, why bother laying down the 2 hour time restriction?

figment · June 4, 2015

Necrosis said:
Doesn't this tempt developers to make sure that the first few hours of the game are of the highest quality to sucker people into buying the game and then let the rest of the game be mediocre? And if most people are going to play a significant portion of the game in the first 14 days anyway, why bother laying down the 2 hour time restriction?

Already the case I think. Lionheart was criticized for this as I recall. Also the 2 hour limit is so that I cannot play the 5 hour long Call of Duty campaign and return it immediately. It also helps predict and limit damage financially. If it was too open ended then that could be used against you by malicious actors.

Drithius · June 4, 2015

Games are always front-loaded.

namelessone · June 4, 2015

This is bad for games that have 2-3 hours or even less length though (episodic, other cheap games). Will you be able to play the whole game and ask for a refund?

Nyx · June 4, 2015

This is mostly a good change. Most noticeably this will force developers to actually make an effort to make a good working game rather than garbage with bad performance because they know ppl will buy it anyway, which we have seen over and over again the past few years. And since there used to be no refund policy they would get away with it cuz everyone would buy it and use steam to do so anyway.

Now we might actually see some working games too

Next step: get rid of pre purchases

ChienAboyeur · June 5, 2015

borcanu said:
been hoping for this for ages. now the developers are under pressure. they need to deliver. to pack a punch. lazy bastards

Hardly.
Kind of policy that was computed to cost less to Steam than the salary of the guy who set the policy up.

It does nothing for Steam Early Access, the department that would require that products correspond with their depiction texts.

Steam - Refund Policy Changed

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