I've noticed that if you have a typical discussion on the Internet where some guy bought some stuff and then tried to refund it, and then either failed or got his account banned, generally speaking people are overwhelming in favor game company. Now, without arguing over whether this is right or not, this attitude seems to make little sense. Do people side with game companies out of some sense of justice of getting the money they deserve? If that was the case then piracy shouldn't even be a problem. Besides, this argument rarely changes even if you're talking about something that's obviously broken. It'd obviously be quite impractical to have a number of Internet trolls speaking positively for company compared to the number of people that may have one time been screwed by such policy, or even just guys who wants free stuff. It's certainly not grounded in anything based on the real life counterparts, since in real life you can return all kinds of stuff for no or minimal cost even though the good here may have diminished by the fact you're used it some and they generally at least have to repackage it, versus games that are pretty much all digital these days so the cost to process is much less if not free.
The only thing I can think of is some kind of victim mentality, like 'I once wasted $50 on some bad game so you shouldn't get your money back either', and disguising that as some kind of 'game companies deserve their money'. I don't see how it can possibly be a bad thing if there's some kind of universal common sense laws regarding how you can refund digitally purchased goods, including DLCs and in game currency. If anything, I think it's probably more likely companies actually keep their money if you don't have to assume you'll always get ripped off so that you either pirate stuff (where applicable) or go nuclear and do a chargeback. I guess you might have to actually have infrastructure to support refunding especially when we're talking about in-game purchases, but it's certainly nothing groundbreaking for any company of respectable size. Maybe in game currency is somewhat tricky to handle, but from what I can tell just allowing people to go negative mostly solves it. E.g. you bought $1000 of stuff, spent it all, and then refund $1000 then you end up with -$1000 of game currency which prevents you from doing anything with them until you somehow earned enough. A determined person would've definitely chargeback that $1000 anyway so it's not like you're losing more for letting that person stick around while effectively locked out of any future activity that requires premium currency for months.
The only thing I can think of is some kind of victim mentality, like 'I once wasted $50 on some bad game so you shouldn't get your money back either', and disguising that as some kind of 'game companies deserve their money'. I don't see how it can possibly be a bad thing if there's some kind of universal common sense laws regarding how you can refund digitally purchased goods, including DLCs and in game currency. If anything, I think it's probably more likely companies actually keep their money if you don't have to assume you'll always get ripped off so that you either pirate stuff (where applicable) or go nuclear and do a chargeback. I guess you might have to actually have infrastructure to support refunding especially when we're talking about in-game purchases, but it's certainly nothing groundbreaking for any company of respectable size. Maybe in game currency is somewhat tricky to handle, but from what I can tell just allowing people to go negative mostly solves it. E.g. you bought $1000 of stuff, spent it all, and then refund $1000 then you end up with -$1000 of game currency which prevents you from doing anything with them until you somehow earned enough. A determined person would've definitely chargeback that $1000 anyway so it's not like you're losing more for letting that person stick around while effectively locked out of any future activity that requires premium currency for months.
