[hatsunearu]

Valve wasn't always like this. They were infamous for never allowing refunds, but due to EU regulations they just did a complete about face and has one of the friendliest refund policies in the ESD business. Probably just behind Costco or something.

[legitster]

The introduction of the refund made them get rid of their deep discounted flash sales though.

Real OGs remember that you could get fairly new AAA games for a song on, like, a random Wednesday. It was part of the initial appeal of Steam. Those explicitly went away because of the refund policy. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/4pnd4p/psa_yes_there... (People were really upset at the time)

Their new refund policy is great, but it wasn't completely free to consumers.

[foresto]

> Their new refund policy is great,

The "played for less than two hours" refund policy is more of a compromise than great, IMHO.

It works well for games that are quick to run and enjoy. However, quite a few of the games I've played will easily burn two hours on loading, compiling shaders, watching unskippable branding animations (splash screens), tuning graphics settings, setting up key bindings, and working past miscellaneous bugs.

Steam's "play time" clock starts when the game executable is launched, and keeps running during all of that nonsense, even at title screens and menus. Some games have run past Valve's return window before I got even a minute of play time.

It would be nice if one of Steam's widely used APIs (Steamworks?) included a way for a game to register when it is actually being played, as opposed to loading or setting up or sitting at a pause screen. I think this would help with the return window problem, and finally make the played hours count on our Steam profiles somewhat accurate.

[jpk2f2]

That only applies to the automatic refund. I've refunded a handful of games well past that window, so long as you justify it, I've never had an issue.

[windward]

Counter-anecdote: I've played a game where the developer included a bug that gave other players arbitrary code execution on my PC and left it online while fixing the bug. I've never launched it since and had owned it less than 48 hours. Steam rejected my refund.

[wafflemaker]

This is very good to know!

I always used the "doesn't work on my system". Though, most of the games I've refunded were really not working on Linux the way I'd like and I just didn't want to hack around or have to reboot into Windows for that game.

[account42]

They definitely do reject at least some refunds outside the window even if you can get lucky like gp.

[account42]

> The "played for less than two hours" refund policy is more of a compromise than great, IMHO.

Don't forget the two weeks since purchase, which is especially nefarious as Steam banks on people buying many games through sales that they will only play much later.

[mdotmertens]

No, it only takes effect upon release. Before you're free to refund whenever you want.

[legitster]

I mean, heck, even considering pure playtime a lot of modern AAA game takes 2+ hours before you ever make it out of the tutorial.

[uncircle]

I requested a refund of Cyberpunk 2077 after 3 hours (and the second time I refunded the same game - I still didn't like it) and I got it no questions asked.

[dleslie]

If a game takes more then five minutes to become fun then return it. I've returned plenty of games with under five minutes of play time, because I don't have the patience to purchase boredom.

Two hours is far more than enough to determine if a game is for you.

[account42]

There are entire genres where that makes no sense. It would be like returning a book because the first page didn't immediately grab you. Not everything should be designed for attention deficit teenagers.

[dleslie]

What genre takes more than 5m to find any indication of enjoyment from it?

4x, city builders, deck builders, RTS, RPG, etc; these can all be fun in short order, if the games are well designed.

[mghackerlady]

They still have absolutely massive sales, they just aren't random anymore.

At least personally, I'd prefer having to wait a few months and having a good refund policy over more sales

[legitster]

50-75% off of AAA games from that year were not uncommon. I don't think the sales have ever really been comparable ever since. There are people who have put together Wayback machine compilations to compare - I just took a look at the 2014 and 2015 deals (refunds were ~ 2015) and there was a remarkable drop-off in the sales and variety of games at deep discount.

I think more importantly for Valve though - the daily flash sales were incredibly important to drive engagement and grow their presence.

I think the "why didn't Valve offer refunds before" is kind of revisionist. It wasn't clear that refunds were even a necessary component of cheaper digital games at the time.

[lexicality]

You could get entire publisher catalogues for peanuts. I think at least half my steam library is useless filler because I bought every game WB ever published for $40 to get the new batman game or similar.

[mghackerlady]

I payed like 100 bucks (probably less, i don't remember the exact amount) for everything valves ever published, which isn't as good of a deal but shows it can still be done

[keyringlight]

I think one precursor could have been EA's debacle with Sim City in 2013, when they apparently had a huge wave of disappointed customers doing chargebacks. I'm not aware of any public statement/evidence of this, but it really wouldn't surprise me if their payment processor leaned on them to provide a better means of accomplishing that, and it gave them a way to portray their store as customer friendly.

[weberer]

It was Australian regulations. The EU was happy to do nothing and keep letting us get ripped off.

[rv3392]

Useful links:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/29/service-v...

[account42]

The EU was just moving slowly as it always does. Action was on the Horizon in the EU as well, which probably contributed to Valve deciding to offer refunds everywhere instead of just in Australia.