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[ArKFallen]

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.

This is the point I'm most pleased with. Say what you want about pre-purchasing stuff, this is great news.

.....you do realize you've ALWAYS been able to cancel prepurchases, right?

You'd only get steam wallet for it (iirc), but that's not a new thing.

But once it released you were boned. IE Aliens: Colonial Marines' release. If a game is released terribly fucked up and/or with deceptive marketing and you supported it with a pre-purchase...
You can kick them in the teeth.

[Sordid]

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.

This is the point I'm most pleased with. Say what you want about pre-purchasing stuff, this is great news.

.....you do realize you've ALWAYS been able to cancel prepurchases, right?

You'd only get steam wallet for it (iirc), but that's not a new thing.

Steam wallet funds are not money, though. It specifically says so in the Steam Subscriber Agreement, look it up. It's not really a refund, it's store credit.

And yes, the requirement of having played the title for less than two hours is indeed too strict. They're are simply not allowed to restrict refunds that way, and enforcing such a restriction will be just as illegal as refusing refunds altogether.

I don't think it's too strict at all. Two hours is plenty of time to decide if you like a game or not. It's not supposed to be a "boo I didn't like the game's ending I want a refund" or "I played 400 hours and now I'm bored" type deal, it's a "it didn't run on my computer" or "game is significantly different than what is described" type thing.

As for them not being allowed to do that, I'm sure valve has plenty of lawyers and I'm sure they talked to them first.

I totally get why they would want to put that limit there, but that's not how it works. The law's the law. Yeah, it means you get people 'buying' cameras, going on a vacation, then returning the camera. It's scummy, and businesses know it's going on, but they have to give you the refund anyway because that's what the law requires. It's specifically designed to empower the consumer. Yeah, of course a few people abuse that power, that's just people for you. It's a tiny little minority, though. Overall it's a very good thing that it is that way, because otherwise the business holds all the cards and you're completely at its mercy. The whole point of the law is to take power away from the business and give it to the consumer. Yeah, of course you don't like this if you're a business, but you can't just write your own rules to restrict rights given to consumers by a law just because you don't like the law. It's the fricking law!

Consider this. What if there's an unavoidable game-breaking bug further than two hours into the game? What if a family member plays the game without your knowledge and exceeds the two-hour limit before you've even had a chance to play it yourself? What if Steam's measurement of how long you've played isn't accurate? Which it totally isn't, by the way. There's any number of situations where this two-hour rule could screw you over.

And yeah, of course Valve has lots of lawyers. The trouble is they didn't go to their lawyers and say "help us make everything completely legit". If that were the case they wouldn't have had a no-refunds policy in the first place. They went and said "help us see how far we can push it and what we can get away with". Every big business does that, that's corporations for you. It's not Valve Software anymore, remember? It's Valve Corporation. Or to put it another way, they don't make games anymore, they just make money. Watch the documentary The Corporation. It's very enlightening.

[Rolan7]

Of course this pretty much removes any trust from the pre-order system.  People may as well pre-order everything they might like, for the bonuses, then just take their money back if they don't like the product.  So it ceases to be a reliable way to support development, except as a loan.

Though some companies certainly have abused the pre-order system a lot, and at least that won't be possible anymore.

[BigD145]

They say they will consider even if it isn't within the last 14 days.

And I have a few I have never been able to get working.

It's unlikely the new policy applies to anything prior to the policy change.

[IronyOwl]

They say they will consider even if it isn't within the last 14 days.

And I have a few I have never been able to get working.

It's unlikely the new policy applies to anything prior to the policy change.

I think this depends on how concerned they are about initial backlash. The first thing everyone is going to think on hearing this is FINALLY NOW'S MY CHANCE! If that turns into page after page of people whining about how Steam's being mean and won't let them refund and this is terrible, it's likely to look bad for them.

Whether they care more about that or other things, of course, remains to be seen.

[BigD145]

I'm not sure how much you've been following Valve's past return policy but THEY HAVEN'T GIVEN A FLYING FUCK SO FAR. Steam is still around even with all the cries of outrage and grumbling.

[IronyOwl]

How are they with official announcements?

[10ebbor10]

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.

So, steam will first try to refund it through the original payment method, and only then dump it into your steam wallet.

[jocan2003]

I don't think it's too strict at all. Two hours is plenty of time to decide if you like a game or not. It's not supposed to be a "boo I didn't like the game's ending I want a refund" or "I played 400 hours and now I'm bored" type deal, it's a "it didn't run on my computer" or "game is significantly different than what is described" type thing.

Well i saw game where the tutorial alone would last that long....

[Cthulhu]

Just barely managed to sneak my Hatred refund in under the time limit.  We'll have to see if it goes through.

[a1s]

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.

I don't much play with people (I'm an anti-social asshole, who likes to drop games unexpectedly for weeks at a time.) How permanent is this VAC thing, and if very, how accurate?


Also, this is pretty cool, if unexpected:

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.

It actually didn't occur to me, until they mentioned it. So thanks Steam.

[10ebbor10]

VAC bans are permanent.  They're not particularly trigger happy however, relying on the detection of cheat software rather than suspicious behaviour.

Also, VAC only prevents you from playing on VAC secured servers. Unsecured servers remain functional.

[Metalax]

They are also normally restricted to games that run on the same engine, so a ban on one may not mean you are banned on another game as well.  At least at one point games that were running on different versions of the Source engine had their VAC status tracked independently.

[lordcooper]

Two hours is plenty of time to decide if you like a game or not.

Most of the time, not always.  Europa Universalis games would take a while to make your mind up about.

[Redzephyr01]

Apparently, one of the devs of "Gone Home" is mad about this because Gone Home can be finished in less then 2 hours, so the game is essentially free now.