Steam Refunds

[Nowak]

About damn time, Valve. Now how about some actual customer service to go along with it?

[Watsyurdeal]

Then they need to up their game with their customer service, offer a way to sell games via steam marketplace, and bam, they are set.

[sannukas0016]

About time.

[That Norwegian Guy]

Some people will find anything to complain about.

 

Just because you are cheering and whooping about the world's biggest distributor of digital games finding the bare minimum bottom-of-the-barrel common courtesy of refund policies after THIRTEEN YEARS in existence, doesn't mean everyone will. Some of us live outside of North America and know what consumer protection feels like.

[-CLASSIFIED-]

NICE !!!! i got a refund already gg steam gg

[Nexxus]

Just because you are cheering and whooping about the world's biggest distributor of digital games finding the bare minimum bottom-of-the-barrel common courtesy of refund policies after THIRTEEN YEARS in existence, doesn't mean everyone will. Some of us live outside of North America and know what consumer protection feels like.

Sorry but all im hearing is bitch bitch bitch, ya its long overdue but at least they are making a step in the right direction. it would also be a logistics nightmare to offer refunds on someones entire back catalog.

[Scionyde]

Those bastards

 

AT THE VERY LEAST there should be a window to get refunds on your FULL HISTORY of purchased games that never worked!

 

Fuck Valve so much

 

You can still submit your request - they've made no guarantees about such cases, but if the game has never worked for you, then you'll likely have very few hours logged on it. That would probably work in your favor.

[dragosudeki]

This hardly changes anything for me. The awesome sales on third party vendors makes it hard to switch back to buying from Steam again. Seems like they're trying to get people to start purchasing through Steam instead of third party vendors.

[tangra]

Just because you are cheering and whooping about the world's biggest distributor of digital games finding the bare minimum bottom-of-the-barrel common courtesy of refund policies after THIRTEEN YEARS in existence, doesn't mean everyone will. Some of us live outside of North America and know what consumer protection feels like.

 

 

You know why I support Steam?!

 

Because they single handedly saved my hobby which is PC gaming (practicing it and creating it).

 

8 years ago, I was at a developer conference here in Montreal with panel of speakers from Ubi, EA and THQ (rip). Keep in mind, that back then Indie development was much less of an option.

 

One of the questions from the public was:

 

What about PC support? Why is it always an after taught?

The answer: There is simply no budget allocated for it to be better, its not a good platform (it was pretty much the response)

 

I went to a similar conference last year and the same question was asked. This time it was a panel of a lead devs from Eidos, Ubisoft and Unity.

 

Eidos: PC is important for us.

Ubisoft: We intent to fully support the PC platform and its passionate community.

When it came to the Unity guy, he answered a single thing: Steam ....

 

So yes, they can be better, and they will get there. Its a special company with an extremely flat organization. It is extremely unique in the way it works for bad or worse. They are also extremely data driven ... in the sense everything is based on analytics.

 

So yes, I will applaud them when do things in the right direction, just like I will bitch on them when they do things that are bad. So far though, over the 13 year record they have done way more good than bad. According to me at least.

 

Also as already mentioned, you can try requesting a refund outside of that period.

 

 

"There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look."

[Nomy]

Damn this is pretty awesome news, no longer do I have to worry about purchasing a newly released game while being afraid that I won't like it at all.

Kudos to Valve!

[That Norwegian Guy]

Also as already mentioned, you can try requesting a refund outside of that period.

 

 

You can still submit your request - they've made no guarantees about such cases, but if the game has never worked for you, then you'll likely have very few hours logged on it. That would probably work in your favor.

 

 

Doesn't work for me, I just get a "this game is outside of the refund window" with no option to even contact or talk to an actual human. Or any other buttons for that matter. It's just a blind stop sign.

 

(I'm talking about Kane and Lynch: Dead Men which never worked)

[Victorious Secret]

you can thank the eu for this

 

Bless the EU for forcing companies to do what they should've been doing from the start. Sad and great at the same time. 

 

Valve doesn't care about you. They just care that the EA will bitchslap them into another timezone if they keep disregarding consumer protection laws. 

 

I would've thought the lawsuit happy US would've forced Valves hand first, but oh well. This is good for all who are tired of getting bent over a barrel by scummy practices. 

Lest we forget, Origin has been doing this for a while. Amazon will straight up refund you anything and even let you keep the item half the time. Valve didn't do this in response to competition or better leaders. They did it to avoid penalties and ridicule. 

[Scionyde]

 

 

 

Doesn't work for me, I just get a "this game is outside of the refund window" with no option to even contact or talk to an actual human. Or any other buttons for that matter. It's just a blind stop sign.

 

(I'm talking about Kane and Lynch: Dead Men which never worked)

 

 

Hmm. I'm at work(employee of the year amirite?) so I can't look at the Steam website currently. Only thing I could think of would be to open a standard customer service ticket.

[Imakuni]

can no longer find a fault with valve...sigh, I need something new to hate.

How about the fact that they have no Primary School Diploma, attesting that they DO know how to count to 3?

[Jamdude]

I believe you can only be refunded for games bought through Steam and not from other vendors, if anyone is wondering.

[tangra]

 

 

 

Doesn't work for me, I just get a "this game is outside of the refund window" with no option to even contact or talk to an actual human. Or any other buttons for that matter. It's just a blind stop sign.

 

(I'm talking about Kane and Lynch: Dead Men which never worked)

 

 

http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds

 

Scroll down, click on the help link. Open a ticket. And then wait ... I really hope the next thing they will fix is the response time on those tickets. Last time I had to use the support system it took a week to hear back from then, but after the first response it was faster the back and forth.Then again ... with refunds being a new thing I guarantee there are TONS of people who are doing exactly what you are going to do now.

[tangra]

I believe you can only be refunded for games bought through Steam and not from other vendors, if anyone is wondering.

 

It would not make much sense if you could refund purchases of other vendors ... The fraud possibilities.

 

 

Purchases Made Outside of Steam

Valve cannot provide refunds for purchases made outside of Steam (for example, CD keys or Steam wallet cards purchased from third parties).

[.spider.]

~6 month after purchase seems to be the deadline for opening a ticket. 

[XTankSlayerX]

Finally.

 

Now all they need to do is improve a few of their games and Steam as a service.  

 

They need to catch up to Origin imo.

[Nowak]

Bless the EU for forcing companies to do what they should've been doing from the start. Sad and great at the same time. 

 

Valve doesn't care about you. They just care that the EA will bitchslap them into another timezone if they keep disregarding consumer protection laws. 

 

I would've thought the lawsuit happy US would've forced Valves hand first, but oh well. This is good for all who are tired of getting bent over a barrel by scummy practices. 

Lest we forget, Origin has been doing this for a while. Amazon will straight up refund you anything and even let you keep the item half the time. Valve didn't do this in response to competition or better leaders. They did it to avoid penalties and ridicule. 

The biggest problem I have with Origin is the purchasing process. When I bought Battlefield 4 off of Origin, it wouldn't take my Paypal. Tried looking it up, found out it was a known issue but nobody was working on it because it was a weekend. Go figure. That, and there are allegations of Origin spying on the user, so my trust in it is pretty low. Although there is worse out there, I know of this. I did get the game eventually, but I had to wait until Monday night for EA to fix the purchasing process.

 

I know people like circlejerking about how great EA's CS is compared to Valve's, but come on. Their CS isn't perfect either, nowhere near that in fact. Don't pretend that it is to belittle the competition. Although in the case of Valve's CS, they still deserve any criticism they get.

 

Good on Valve for implementing a refund policy, shame on them for taking 13 years to do so. Now if they could get some actual customer service in line as well, that'd be great. Oh, and maybe some tighter QC guidelines, to keep shit like Digital Homicide's "games", other Unity asset pasting jobs masquerading as games, shitty joke "simulators" and other garbage like that off of Steam.

[Suika]

Valve - "We're finally doing something that we should have been doing!"

 

OK, cool, do you want a pat on the back?

[Master Disaster]

you can thank the eu for this

Nope, Australia actually

[Mystic Mistro]

This is ill admit pretty great but i cant help but still hope the valve does somthung about there customer service... this just adds further pressure on the customer service team and they already fair to slow to responde to anythung...

[DontPeek]

Good idea in theory. We'll see if Valve has enough customer service reps to actually make the service usable.

[theKumba]

This + Summer Sale = Steam Support getting completely raped