Refunds

[pcslookout]

I know refunds on steam shouldn't be used as a try and buy like the Prey developer suggested. (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/05/prey-developer-go-ahead-use-steam-refunds-to-demo-our-game/)

My question is a curiosity.

I will start 2. The games didn't work either.

 

[JTsyo]

Where's the zero option?

 

[nurturedhate]

Def needs a zero option and that's with nearly 300 games purchased.

 

[Nashemon]

The poll seems to be for those who have gotten a refund before. Not for those who have not gotten a refund. Thus no zero option.

However, the poll only asks about games on your Steam account. If you had gotten a refund, it would no longer be on your Steam account. So the only option anyone should pick is zero. Poll is useless. :Colbert:

 

[Feneant2]

Might and Magic Heroes VII... bought it when it was a year old and remained a buggy mess with the developer saying 'no patches' so refunded it. I'll get the game when it's on sale for 5$

 

[Zenoth]

I never refunded a digitally-purchased game, yet. So zero on my Steam account, to answer the main question.

I have, however, for physical games. But only for two or three I think (I do recall two, might have been more), in more than 25 years of gaming.

 

[Cuular]

Steam refused to refund the one I tried. it was the latest final fantasy, that takes like 15 hours to get out of the intro story to the real game. And the real game sucked. Intro also wasn't that good, but i had hope that it was just because it was the intro.

Steam said only get a refund if you played it 2 hours or less. At 15 hours that means you liked it or, played it to the end, So no refund.

 

[Achilles97]

I got a refund on a few games recently that I had trouble running on my laptop. I only played each game a few minutes. I wonder how much processing overhead the vendor (Steam) has to encure to process refunds VS host demo versions of games.

 

[Stg-Flame]

300+ games and I've never gotten a refund, though I did get my girlfriend to refund Don't Starve Together and I'm on the fence about getting it refunded on my account as well (though it's been a very long time since I bought the game and they frown on refunds for games you purchased a long time ago). However, I did send Steam a support ticket and ask to remove two games from my library, but they refused. The first game I ever bought for Steam and Mighty Quest for Epic Loot when it was in early access.

 

[Craig234]

I wonder what Steam says about how many games can be refunded or whether it's ok to be used as a trial.

My impression is that it can.

I also wouldn't want to abuse a system, but I've found Steam seems pretty inflexible on rules making me feel more ok about using the rules that are there. If I recall the policy implied more flexibility by them than they seem to show. I don't remember the details but I think there was a case I bought a game that just doesn't work when I tried over 2 weeks before, and they said over 2 weeks, no refund.

I think I've refunded about 3 games of many purchases, as I recall with a reason of 'didn't like it as much as I hoped, didn't want to spend that price on it'; I'm ok with that approach, I think the option to refund gets them more sales by getting people who aren't sure to try a game. My issue more is that I seem to rarely actually play them until long after buying, most not even played.

 

[Muscles]

Didn't vote since no option for zero.

 

[Rifter]

Didn't vote since no option for zero.

This

 

[Andy T]

I got a number of refunds. I find it particularly useful to see if a AAA title is worth it. I refunded COD WW 2 since it had major technical issues, other games were refunded simply because they were not what I expected.

 

[dud]

Where's the zero option?

Me too. I've never asked for a refund in 12 years. I usually know what I am buying ... when I buy it from Steam.

 

[WiseUp216]

960+ games on Steam but my only refund has been through Origin. BF4 just would not work at all.

 

[aigomorla]

i have refunded a couple of games...

Steam mostly looks at the time played on the game.
IF you played it more then 2 hours, then they wont refund.
IF its less then 2 hours, most of the time they will refund it for you, also mostly on games which have no demo's or trails is pretty much guaranteed refund if less then 2 hours were played.

But the reasons for my refunds were:

1. The dev's utterly lied in the video clip of the game, it was nothing like that.. infact people to this day wonder what game was shown in that preview video.

2. The game was utterly broken that i was not playable.

Both were played for less then 2 hours....
Thats the only incentive one has to buy from steam and not an outside source like humble games.
Steam will refund if less then 2 hours, or the game is broken.
Humble wont, once u hit that buy button, its yours even if you dont like it.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Zero.

 

[William Gaatjes]

1 game, crysis. The game engine is for as far as i can tell loaded by a loader program that emulates the old drm software. I got it running once after downloading the 64 bit binaries and then it started telling me that my windows 10-64 was actually a windows version lower than windows 98 and that i need to update my windows.

 

[HitAnyKey]

1 Game: Empyrion. Lots of CTD, character stuck gameplay; which is pretty unusual for me. Not a bad game but I just wasn't into it. Yeah I know its Early Access Game and there are some decent reviews.

 

[Raduque]

I've done 3 games. I refunded Elite Dangerous because while I really wanted to like it, the controls were very overwhelming. I spent an hour just trying to fly the ship, and another 45 minutes trying to land and game up. If I ever have time to sit down and learn a control scheme that uses the mouse, all the keys, a gamepad AND a flight stick and throttle, I'll buy it again. Project Cars was refunded as boring, and I refunded Cities Skylines because I bought it as a gift, but the recipient didn't want it (and I already had it myself).

Steam refused to refund the one I tried. it was the latest final fantasy, that takes like 15 hours to get out of the intro story to the real game. And the real game sucked. Intro also wasn't that good, but i had hope that it was just because it was the intro.

Steam said only get a refund if you played it 2 hours or less. At 15 hours that means you liked it or, played it to the end, So no refund.

They are pretty inflexible on this, too. I played No Man's Sky for 2 hours and like 8 minutes, decided I'd seen enough and requested a refund. Got denied for play time. Kept requesting refunds and going back and forth with Steam support through messages for like a month and a half. I think they didn't even bother to close the last refund request I did for NMS, just ignored it, lol.

 

[local]

I'm in the 300+ games with zero refunds category. I think the only game I have ever returned was the original X-Com when I couldn't get it to run on my 386. Oh the days of optimizing a computer to get the required amount of physical memory available by only loading exactly what you need, I really don't miss those days.

 

[pontifex]

I have refunded several games (I have over 300 games in my library).
I will watch reviews, watch people play it, but those are not the best ways to tell if I will like a game. I've watched tons of people play games that seem like fun only to buy them and absolutely hate them.
If there's no demo (no one makes demos any more), the only option is to buy it, play a little and see if I like it. If it sucks, then it gets refunded.

I think 2 hours is too short of a time for a refund though, especially when steam starts the timer as soon as you launch the game. You might spend 2 hours trying to get a game to work and never actually play it, or just sit at the main menu for 2 hours, or some games takes longer than 2 hours to get to the meat of the game, and you're out of luck at that point.

I guess it's better than nothing though.