Steam Changes Refund Policy

[Shrinweck]

In a move that I think we were talking about 1-2 months ago, Steam has revised their refund policy to be much better than it was:

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.

This is a good move. I'm glad to see Steam tackle what was probably their biggest flaw next to their reputation for still providing fairly shit support, but I imagine that when people were trash talking their support it was mostly in reference to them wanting refunds that were previously against their refund policy.

[Eric]

[Don]

Since refunding stuff works in real life and it's not because there's a law that says a retail store must do this or get fined, it clearly must be profitable in the long run to allow refunds within a reasonable time than not or people would've stopped doing this in real life. And unlike real life you don't have to physically process whatever they're returning. I think the prevailing theory is that people tend to forget to refund stuff anyway but is more likely to buy stuff they don't need if they think they can refund it, and if someone does plan on using something for exactly 29 days before refunding it that guy would never have bought your stuff if such a policy didn't exist.

I think the whole 'play for 2 hours' thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because it'd only apply if the game is unbelievably bad that you can tell it's not worth continuing to play after 2 hours. I guess that's why they say you can try to refund anyway but that doesn't give me much assurances on trying the random stuff I see on Steam.

[kali o.]

About time.

[Shrinweck]

Two hours is a good amount of time - if you have technical issues it justifies that there might be SOME time played (starting the game, playing with options, realizing you aren't going to get anywhere - I had a good 40 minutes in Witcher 3 messing with settings and looking things up that I could try before I ordered a new video card). Also Steam has to have some way of protecting themselves from the assholes who would beat a game and then ask for a refund afterwards.

A try before you buy thing is also exactly what they want to discourage since it would create a ton of work with little to no benefit for the large amount of workforce they'd have to dedicate to the refund department if people just treated the refund policy this way. What I didn't include in the quote, is a line wherein they say that they reserve the right to stop giving refunds on an account-by-account basis if someone is abusing the new policy. They also say that if you get VAC banned (something that happens in a Valve game if you get caught cheating), that you forfeit the right to a refund.

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.

Holy shit, I just noticed that the line about it not being abuse to request a refund on a game that just went on sale. That's amazing.... or it would be - I guess the 2 hour thing would apply there lol

[Don]

If someone's going to go through the effort to refund something after beating the game, he'd probably have just pirated the game anyway, or never bought it to begin with.

I bought a chair and refunded it on the last possible day on the one month because that's how long it took me to decide that this chair wasn't going to work out. They didn't ask me if I sit on the chair for longer than 2 hours or whatever, and for that matter I didn't even know it was the last day to refund by policy. That was literally just the day I thought this chair wasn't going to work so I'll check the refund policy and it's quite possible I'll be a day late and will be screwed, but I'm pretty sure that happens pretty often with refunds which is why they offer these generous deals in the first place. And again the store selling the chair has to restock the chair and it probably loses some value from being used, but Steam sure doesn't lose anything for taking a game off your account aside from presumably a very short time for the customer service to run this through an automatic process.