For a long time now, people were pretty...irked with Steam and their rather annoying lack of a refund process. People would have to jump through hoops just to get some steam credit for a purchase they accidentally made, and getting a refund on a game you simply don't want or something that didn't work was just impossible.

Now, Valve has announced a new policy that's similar to other online game stores; all games, regardless of reason, can now be refunded 14 days after the purchase date as long as the title has been played for less than 2 hours. Refunds apply to games, DLC, in-game purchases that haven't been used, pre-orders, bundles, and even Steam Wallet funds!

Source

 

[blindseer]

Well thats nice, so if you cant even run the game you have no where near 2 hours game time.

 

[DinohScene]

Sweet, no more regret purchases anymore.

 

[Qtis]

In many ways, about time. Valve is notorious for not fixing older games that should work *cough* Dark Forces 2 *cough* and are still sold today on Steam. If CD Projekt can make patches happen on GoG with a much smaller company, Valve should be able to do miracles.

 

[Ryupower]

http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

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.

now WHEN you buy a game and THEN is goes on sales the next day you can get a refund then buy it for the sale price

 

[Nathan Drake]

Notice how this pops up a little over a week before the summer sale is supposedly going to begin. They want people to go out of their comfort zones and purchase more games. I get what you're doing, Steam. But really, this policy seems well planned out to prevent abuse. If you play a game for an hour and just can't get into it, no biggie. If you're like me on my old laptop and have a nasty habit of buying games you can't even open, at least you have a safeguard now.

 

[Qtis]

Notice how this pops up a little over a week before the summer sale is supposedly going to begin. They want people to go out of their comfort zones and purchase more games. I get what you're doing, Steam. But really, this policy seems well planned out to prevent abuse. If you play a game for an hour and just can't get into it, no biggie. If you're like me on my old laptop and have a nasty habit of buying games you can't even open, at least you have a safeguard now.

Or do like me. Buy a shitton of games before I even have a computer to play them with. Now with a modern rig, I have a backlog of thousands of hours of gaming time and I've probably spent less than $5 per game including games like Skyrim & Co

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/


now WHEN you buy a game and THEN is goes on sales the next day you can get a refund then buy it for the sale price

Ha, that's actually pretty great There have been tons of times when I've bought a game for two times a sale price right before a random sale, this will definitely help if that ever happens again.

 

[osm70]

What about purchasing a game, playing it for almost 2 hours, requesting a refund and then purchasing it again? If you keep doing that you have that game for free.
I don't think that this system is well thought out.

 

[Ryupower]

What about purchasing a game, playing it for almost 2 hours, requesting a refund and then purchasing it again? If you keep doing that you have that game for free.
I don't think that this system is well thought out.

read Abuse, that what that will be

 

[Vipera]

What about purchasing a game, playing it for almost 2 hours, requesting a refund and then purchasing it again? If you keep doing that you have that game for free.
I don't think that this system is well thought out.

Sure, try pulling this shit anywhere and see how it goes.

What about those who use Steam keys?

 

[Attacker3]

Good Steam. They are getting better and better each day. This refund policy will make purchasing things much easier for me, as I'm a guy that worries over every purchase.

 

[Nathan Drake]

What about purchasing a game, playing it for almost 2 hours, requesting a refund and then purchasing it again? If you keep doing that you have that game for free.
I don't think that this system is well thought out.

Yeah, I think you'd get a warning for the first time you did it, suspended from refunds after the second, and probably outright banned from receiving refunds the third time.

Sure, try pulling this shit anywhere and see how it goes.

What about those who use Steam keys?

They say in their policy that only games purchased on Steam will be refunded by Steam. I imagine this is first and foremost meant to protect against abuse of Humble Bundle games.

 

[Vipera]

Good Steam. They are getting better and better each day. This refund policy will make purchasing things much easier for me, as I'm a guy that worries over every purchase.

Honestly, this is the only good thing I saw them doing. Origin and GOG have similar policies and have had then for years. There is still the problem of their support being trash and other minor stuff such as no client for Windows Phone.

 

[Xabring]

awww yeah!no more wallet waste! this as close as renting a game can get these days! (of course, providing you DO have the money and time)
and now, I don't even have to fear pre-release games! I never tried that pre-release shit except for splatoon, that thing is worth it!
now 0 fear to 0 day bugs.

 

[Nathan Drake]

Honestly, this is the only good thing I saw them doing. Origin and GOG have similar policies and have had then for years. There is still the problem of their support being trash and other minor stuff such as no client for Windows Phone.

To be fair, pretty much nobody cares about Windows Phone. It's not Steam's fault that you have one of the minority phone OS's.

 

[Vipera]

To be fair, pretty much nobody cares about Windows Phone. It's not Steam's fault that you have one of the minority phone OS's.

We are still a couple million users though. Just ask for a price and you'll cover the costs in less than a week.
I'm not sure about the Android app, but I remember it didn't get updated for years.

 

[Attacker3]

We are still a couple million users though. Just ask for a price and you'll cover the costs in less than a week.
I'm not sure about the Android app, but I remember it didn't get updated for years.

Windows Phone is the Linux of phones. Iphones are the mac, Android is Windows.

 

[Nathan Drake]

We are still a couple million users though. Just ask for a price and you'll cover the costs in less than a week.
I'm not sure about the Android app, but I remember it didn't get updated for years.

Valve is just really bad about updating the Steam apps. They took the most time off with the Android app for sure, but the iOS app has experienced plenty of wait time between app updates as well. Just not quite as long.

Also, two million isn't much when you consider that there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 billion users between Android and iOS.

 

[blindseer]

We are still a couple million users though. Just ask for a price and you'll cover the costs in less than a week.
I'm not sure about the Android app, but I remember it didn't get updated for years.

The iOS version just finally got updated, and its now completely broken for my ipad mini, so using the 2 year old version that still works. Steams phone app is just outdated and or broken no matter what platform of phone you use I guess.