Well, apparently what this IS changing is life for devs of small games, because a lot of them are reporting massive rates of refunds right now.
Also, there are apparently concerns about people buying games, copying them, and getting a refund?
Very interesting news.
So Valve explicitly said that getting a refund to take advantage of a sale isn’t abuse. What about buying a game that looks interesting, trying it out, deciding you don’t like it, and getting a refund? They said they would be monitoring it for abuse, so would a user who uses the new refund policy as a way to play “demos” earn their attention?
If Valve does allow “demoing,” I wonder what effect that will have on development cycles. Demos have become rarer and rarer anyway, since data seems to show that they don’t often help sales, and divert dev resources. But if any game on Steam effectively has a built-in preview, will that hurt sales or help them? Will demos become even rarer? Will short games lose sales since people can purchase, finish, refund?
That last one would almost certainly fall under Valve’s definition of abuse, even if demos don’t.
Allowed. There’s a refund category for “The game was not what I expected” which I guess is a nicer way of saying “I hated this piece of junk”.
I would assume that repeated refund requests will get you flagged no matter what your reasons so I wouldn’t really want to risk my standing by “demoing” a bunch of different stuff.
It will herald in a new era of people bitching about some other aspect of the Steam service.
I was able to get a refund for a game purchased back in January. Played for an hour and a half right after purchase, tried to get back in last night and only got a blank window. Apparently a patch broke it and nothing on the troubleshooting page helped.
The game has been removed from my library and $7.49 will be added to my Steam wallet within the next seven days.
I was able to get a refund on a newly-purchased AAA title. I was willing to eat the $7.49 sale price, because you takes your chances, but I thought I’d give it a shot. And it truly was a case of “this isn’t what I expected”.