Steams new refund policy

[bilateralrope]

Link to the policy itself

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.)

Where Refunds Apply
The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store. Here is an overview of how refunds work with other types of purchases.

Refunds on Downloadable Content
(Steam store content usable within another game or software application, "DLC")
DLC purchased from the Steam store is refundable within fourteen days of purchase, and if the underlying title has been played for less than two hours since the DLC was purchased, so long as the DLC has not been consumed, modified or transferred. Please note that in some cases, Steam will be unable to give refunds for some third party DLC (for example, if the DLC irreversibly levels up a game character). These exceptions will be clearly marked as nonrefundable on the Store page prior to purchase.

Refunds on In-game Purchases
Steam will offer refund for in-game purchases within any Valve-developed games within forty-eight hours of purchase, so long as the in-game item has not been consumed, modified or transferred. Third-party developers will have the option to enable refunds for in-game items on these terms. Steam will tell you at the time of purchase if the game developer has opted to offer refunds on the in-game item you are buying. Otherwise, in-game purchases in non-Valve games are not refundable through Steam.

Refunds on Pre-Purchased Titles
When you pre-purchase a title on Steam (and have paid for the title in advance), you can request a refund at any time prior to release of that title. The standard 14-day/two-hour refund period also applies, starting on the game’s release date.

Steam Wallet Refunds
You may request a refund for Steam Wallet funds within fourteen days of purchase if they were purchased on Steam and if you have not used any of those funds.

Refunds on Bundles
You can receive a full refund for any bundle purchased on the Steam Store, so long as none of the items in the bundle have been transferred, and if the combined usage time for all items in the bundle is less than two hours. If a bundle includes an in-game item or DLC that is not refundable, Steam will tell you if the whole bundle is refundable during check-out.

Purchases Made Outside of Steam
Valve cannot provide refunds for purchases made outside of Steam (for example, CD keys or Steam wallet cards purchased from third parties).

VAC Bans
If you have been banned by VAC (the Valve Anti-Cheat system) on a game, you lose the right to refund that game.

Movies
We are unable to offer refunds for movies on Steam.

Refunds on Gifts
We are unable to offer refunds for gifts after they have been redeemed by the recipient.

Abuse
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. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.

How to Request a Refund
You can request a refund or get other assistance with your Steam purchases at help.steampowered.com.

This looks good. I wonder who put enough pressure on Valve to make them adopt this policy.

[Joun_Lord]

I wonder if maybe this is a band-aid to try to get the good feelings back after getting severely negative reactions to the Skyrim paid mods fiasco?

The timing almost makes me think so but I'd assume this is something that has been in the pipe for awhile to fix one of the few complaints people, beyond Steam whiners, have about the Steam Service and it being so close to the Skyrim paid mods shit is just a coincidence.

Either way its a good thing and I applaud Gaben for be willing to give back some money even if he was forced (I vaguely remember some court case in maybe Europistan where it was ruled illegal for Steam not to give refunds but I might be misremembering that and nothing on google backs me up as all I can find is shit about this).

If they can fix the incredibly slow Steam support system then pretty much all my complaints about Steam will have been met.

[GuppyShark]

I noted with some amusement that the news item immediately following this was an announcement of an Assassin's Creed Unity sale.

[TheFeniX]

I wonder if maybe this is a band-aid to try to get the good feelings back after getting severely negative reactions to the Skyrim paid mods fiasco?

I'm more inclined to believe this is to bring Steam policies in-line worldwide, at least in some areas. Steam has been getting a lot of flak since offering refunds in the EU (after the court spanked them). They probably waited to bring it to other areas because they originally had no system in place to do this. Now they were forced to create said system, so.... money already spent.

And refunds don't really hurt a digital retailer like Steam. There's no bullshit, just remove game, back charge card. Yes, they'd prefer to keep the money, but I would assume the goodwill far exceeds what money they will "lose" on refunds.

[Thanas]

This isn't Steam being nice, this is steam trying to get ahead so that the EU will not slap them down again.

[TheHammer]

This isn't Steam being nice, this is steam trying to get ahead so that the EU will not slap them down again.

It could be good for business too. Many people who might be apprehensive about buying a game because they aren't sure how it will run, or aren't sure if they would like it would be more willing to roll the dice.

[Terralthra]

Kinda sucks for indie developers who make games which can be completed in a few hours for a dollar or two. Buy game, play game, return game.

[Purple]

Kinda sucks for indie developers who make games which can be completed in a few hours for a dollar or two. Buy game, play game, return game.

The kind of people who would do that are the kind who would just pirate it anyway. Don't you think?

[bilateralrope]

Kinda sucks for indie developers who make games which can be completed in a few hours for a dollar or two. Buy game, play game, return game.

How many of those games exist ?

Kotaku has some whining from a developer who makes really short games. By short, I mean games that are less than five minutes long.

“I definitely think it has something to do with triple-A metrics with tons of content being the sole measure through which we understand games,” Epanalepsis creator Cameron Kunzelman, who first blew the whistle on the two hour problem, told me. “The Steam policy is actively giving us a world where certain kinds of shorter experiences don’t even figure in to the economic ecology that we imagine around games. It’s actively destructive to anyone wanting to make something smaller and content-driven, like concise narrative games.”

Nina Freeman, designer of brief, heartfelt experiences How Do You Do It, Freshman Year, and the upcoming Cibele agreed, adding that Steam kinda generally makes things tough for smaller games.

“What I find most insulting is just how little respect Steam seems to have for smaller games,” she said. “They also don’t let you write reviews for games that you’ve played for less than five minutes. So like, I put freshman year on Steam, and it barely has reviews because no one wants to play such a sad thing twice just to write a review. They basically just keep doing things that say they don’t care about small games succeeding on their platform, which is bad because they’re one of the biggest and most important platforms for releasing games.”

Note that How Do You Do It and Freshman Year are free games and Cibele doesn't have a price yet. If someone is releasing their games for free, I don't see how any complaints about a refund policy can be valid. Especially if it's one forced upon Valve.

That article also has a list of short games.

For some games—say, The Witcher 3 or GTA V or Clicker Heroes (why can’t I stoppppp)—two hours is just a drop in the bucket. But for others—smaller, more personal games along the lines of Proteus, Gone Home, and Papo & Yo or even bigger budget experiences like Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Portal—two hours can basically be the entire thing. So, in theory, someone could buy one of those games, play it to completion (or close enough), and then get a refund. Boom, free video game. For obvious reasons, that could hurt game creators pretty badly

So how long are those games ?

I'm using http://howlongtobeat.com/ for the times.
Proteus is definitely under 2 hours.
Gone Home is about 2 hours for the average play times. It's only under 2 hours if someone rushes through it. Do people really rush through a walking simulator ?
Papo & Yo. Shortest playtime is 2h 39m.
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. Only under two hours if you stick to the main story.
Portal clocks in at under two hours only if you rush through it. Which is not something I can see anyone doing the first time they play it.

So which games will be hurt by people completing them in under two hours and refunding it ?
Because it's clear that Kotaku didn't bother checking the playtimes of the games they listed.

If it's just walking simulators, I expect developers to respond by just making them longer.

Plus this discussion assumes that Valve won't call this abuse of the refund system.

Kotaku links to a Rock Paper Shotgun article claiming that the refunds open a new door to piracy on games which don't use DRM as using Steams DRM is optional. Now that really sounds like something that would trip the abuse check, plus I don't know of any easy way to tell if a game uses Steams DRM before I try to launch it without Steam. Which I don't do as launching from Steam is more convenient.

He also noted that Steam trading cards unlocked within the first couple hours of a game’s runtime can still be sold for profit, meaning that people could get both free games and (mostly) free money out of the deal.

I don't think Valve would view the free trading cards as a bad thing.

The other problem mentioned is people buying lots of copies of a game, flooding it with negative reviews, then refunding it. I'm not so sure that this is a problem with the refund system as the only Steam reviews I look at are the helpful ones. Mass voting a review into that position is something that doesn't need you to purchase the game.

I'm getting the impression that people are scrambling for reasons to dislike refunds without thinking about it.

If you have any doubts about if the refunds are nessacary here is a three minute video showing just how bad some games on Steam are. This game is not in early access, it has been released. Yet the game simply doesn't work. Sure, Jim Sterling goes hunting for the terrible games, but that doesn't change the fact that Valve lets them onto Steam. So consumers need some way to get a refund when they stumble across them.

[bilateralrope]

Some indie developers complaining about how many refunds are happening for their games and concluding that people are abusing refunds. The article includes graphs if you follow the link.

Indie Developers Report Steam Refund Abuse From PC Gamers, Show Graphs To Back Their Claims
JUNE 7, 2015 JOHN PAPADOPOULOS 137 COMMENTS
It appears that Steam’s new refund policy will hurt indie developers more than they initially thought. Today, Qwiboo and Puppygames shared some graphs, showing declined sales due to Steam’s new policy. It’s still too early to speak, but from the looks of it, Steam’s new refund policy allows gamers to play and test a lot of games for free.

On one hand, that’s not a bad thing. In the past, we’ve been getting a lot of demos. Nowadays, game demos can be really counted on the fingers of one hand. Okay okay, that’s an exaggeration but you get the point. Thanks to Steam’s new refund policy, players can test and see whether a game is worth their time.

On the other hand, this new policy will hurt indie developers. You see, some gamers are really greedy and will take advantage of this new policy. What was that? Your game costs as much as a beer? No matter. And that’s the sad thing about this whole thing.

Take for example Qwiboo. This indie dev released on Steam Beyond Gravity; a procedurally generated “platformer” where you jump in-between planets and try to collect as many pickups as you can. The game is priced at $1.99 and has been on Steam for almost nine months. During that time, the game has received a lot of positive reviews. And this is what happened when Valve announced Steam’s new refunds policy.



As Qwiboo tweeted, out of 18 sales 13 refunded in just last 3 days. That has never happened before as Qwiboo noted.

It's refunds. Out of 18 sales 13 refunded in just last 3 days. That's 72% of purchases. Rate of refunds before was minimal. #SteamRefunds
7:51 AM - 7 Jun 2015

Qwiboo agreed that refunds should be available, however this new 2-hour policy is currently being abused by a lot of gamers. And while this may not hurt triple-A titles that last 10-20 hours, it does hurt indie devs. Qwiboo also provided another graph, proving that Steam’s upcoming Summer Sale is not to be blamed for these low sales.



And Qwiboo is not the only indie developer that suffers from this exploitation. PuppyGames has also shared a similar graph for its Steam sales. As we can clearly see, sales took a dive after the announcement of Steam’s new refunds policy.



It remains to be seen whether Valve will react to this whole exploitation of Steam’s new refunds policy. In its current state, players can enjoy indie games for free.

Our opinion is that Steam’s refund ‘time-played’ policy should be dynamic. For indie titles that are priced at $2, it should be around 20 minutes or so. For games priced at $30, it should be around one hour and for games at $59.99 it should be 2 hours. Or at least something like that.

The point is that in its current state, Steam’s new refunds ‘time-played’ policy can hurt indie devs.

Jim Sterling has a response

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/indie-dev ... ir-claims/ There is absolutely NO evidence of abuse there. We frankly don't know what those stats really say about the customers. Maybe these games are good at attracting impulse buyers who now have a way to recant their impulses. Maybe these were customers who felt bolder about trying games out now that they know they can get their money back if they don't like the game.
What is clear, is that although the game does have a very positive review score on Steam, a lot of the most helpful reviews are fairly negative and list a number of notable cons, pointing out that Qwiboo's game is a rather shallow mobile port. The game's forum is also full of an inordinate amount of users looking to trade 50% off coupons which goes back months.
Seems to me that Steam refunds are ripe to become the new piracy or used games, where any instance of them will be counted as a lost sale while any failures will be blamed entirely on the policy.
What I see here is a dev comparing the rate of refunds now to the rate of refunds back when refunds were REALLY HARD TO GET, on a game that is nine bloody months old from a studio that really isn't close to well known. Hardly evidence of "exploitation" or proof that gamers are "greedy."

I wonder which AAA publisher will be the first to release a bad game, have a large chunk of the preorders refunded, then start complaining about people abusing refunds.

[Darth Nostril]

All that those graphs show is that before it was nearly impossible to get a refund and so buyers just sucked up the hit to the wallet. Now they don't.
Welcome to the wonderful world of consumer protection laws, where you actually have to put some effort into making a quality product that people want to buy and keep to make a profit.

[Darmalus]

All that those graphs show is that before it was nearly impossible to get a refund and so buyers just sucked up the hit to the wallet. Now they don't.
Welcome to the wonderful world of consumer protection laws, where you actually have to put some effort into making a quality product that people want to buy and keep to make a profit.

It's a great way to get a "demo" out of game without any demo.

To be honest, I wish the "refund window" scaled with the retail price. 1 hour for $10 or less, 2 hours for $20, etc. to ensure you get your moneys worth.

[bilateralrope]

To be honest, I wish the "refund window" scaled with the retail price. 1 hour for $10 or less, 2 hours for $20, etc. to ensure you get your moneys worth.

I'm not aware of consumer protection laws making exceptions for cheap products. Why should video games be any different ?

[AniThyng]

Most other cheap products are in no condition to be returned after use?

I mean what if I bought a magazine, read it all then returned it for a full refund?

[Thanas]

I am not having too much sympathy with developers who can't get their shit together, release a beta version and then delay any bug fixing into eternity. Those people deserve to have to pay refunds.

[Terralthra]

Yes, Thanas, that's totally what we're talking about. Excellent reading comprehension.

[Thanas]

Yes, Thanas, that's totally what we're talking about. Excellent reading comprehension.

My apologies, I forgot I need to spell out context for your small mind.

This is not going to wreck the indie scene or small developers. You are blathering about people who will go and treat steam as a library, when the real issue is not that, but developers being shitty in general. This is squarely aimed at the shitty asshole devs who release titles that clearly needed at least two more months of work.

I'll await definite proof of smaller developers being hurt by this before going into it.

[bilateralrope]

Most other cheap products are in no condition to be returned after use?

I mean what if I bought a magazine, read it all then returned it for a full refund?

What happens next would have no relation to the price of the magazine. Or are all magazines the same price where you live ?



Also, I'm not thinking of people developers who release decent games having people play them and then get a refund. Unless you can prove that is happening, I see no reason to think of them. I'm thinking of:
- People who are using the refund window as a way to get a free trial. It's not what the refund system is intended to do and I have seen no proof that it's happening, but it's a good thing.
- People who find that the games page on the Steam store gave them the wrong idea about the game. Before refunds your money is gone before you find out. With refunds, you can get it back.
- Developers who release games which don't work. Note that this game was released. It was not in early access.
- Developers who take tutorial examples from the Unity asset store and release them as a game with little to no changes. I can't see many people being happy with the game the first time they run into the asset flip, I can't see anyone being happy when they run into the same asset package being flipped for the second time.

[Grumman]

I mean what if I bought a magazine, read it all then returned it for a full refund?

What happens next would have no relation to the price of the magazine. Or are all magazines the same price where you live ?

The argument being made is that, at the very least, a video game needs to have enough content to justify its price. Portal can get away with a 3 hour long main game because it is priced accordingly; a game like Order: 1886 is not.

Incidentally, there is only one game I own on Steam that I would want a refund for, and it is because of an incredibly shitty design decision that cannot rear its ugly head in your first session playing the game.

[InsaneTD]

This isn't Steam being nice, this is steam trying to get ahead so that the EU will not slap them down again.

Not just EU, they were warned (or fined, I can't remember now) for not doing refunds.

[Coaan]

The only time I have ever needed a refund on steam, they obliged my request and refunded the full amount to my steam wallet. It was during the troubled release of Legends of Pegasus, a game that tried to deliver far more than it ever could due to the devs being some form of howler monkey. (this was a couple years ago now, long before this policy)

I can sympathise with people caught on the rough end of steam's customer support, but I've personally never had difficulty recieving refunds for products if I've went after a refund.

If they're making the process of getting a refund for a dodgy product easier, and laying in a bit more protection for steam customers then it's definitely an improvement.

[Temjin]

I'm curious. If a trigger was added to games where if you completed it enough to see the end credits, you are no longer eligible for a refund, would anyone be opposed to that?

It seems like a simple solution to the apparent problem of people completing short indie games and completing the before getting a refund, if that is actually happening. And if people are using the policy as a way to get demos, it also doesn't interfere with that.

[Thanas]

I'm curious. If a trigger was added to games where if you completed it enough to see the end credits, you are no longer eligible for a refund, would anyone be opposed to that?

It seems like a simple solution to the apparent problem of people completing short indie games and completing the before getting a refund, if that is actually happening. And if people are using the policy as a way to get demos, it also doesn't interfere with that.

That would require gamers to know when they are close to the ending, aka spoil things.

[General Zod]

It would have been nice to have this option back when I bought Arkham Origin and discovered a game-breaking glitch that prevented me from making any progress beyond a certain early stage.

[TheFeniX]

I honestly don't like the way "indie" has usually come to mean "pay x bucks for an hour of content." I understand people might enjoy those types of games, but exactly how much are they pushing the market? There's ways to get hundreds of hours out of cheap/free games. Angry Birds is a perfect example. Is there more than 2 hours worth the "content" in Counter-Strike? Most fighting games? Some racing games? Probably not, but there are entire series that survived off the same basic gameplay for decades. As for Portal, because valve smartly added easter-egg content, but also a way to challenge the player by doing puzzles faster and more efficiently, it has way more than 2 hours of content. That's because valve knows how to keep players playing their games.

People who judge Portal's "content" on your ability to power through the game in 2 hours for the story aren't people I'd take seriously as to what and where video games should be. And I honestly doubt those kind of people can beat Portal in 2 hours on a blind run.

Just as I see a problem with the AAA "pay $60 for X hours of content and throw it away," I feel the same way about Indie games in this vein. If your game lacks any replayability, I feel you've done something wrong unless you hit it out the fucking park. Even movies with plot twists that spoil the entire thing still have "replayability" when done right. Fight Club, 6th sense, etc. I could spoil them for a lot of people and you could still find hours of enjoyment. Even once spoiled, you can go back and watch them on another level. Idiots keep trying to treat games like movies and forget that really good movies get watched over and over. Just because I know how the story ends does not remove my enjoyment. If your gameplay and story is so shit, 2 hours is all anyone would ever want to play the game: deal with it.

If a system gets put into place that punishes cheap, throw-away games in order to keep me from getting railed by broken pieces of shit like Brink, Colonial Marines, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 and epic snooze-fests like Halo 3 which I think I've only played for 3 hours (360, so not really applicable, but still relevant), then I consider it worth the loss.