> 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.
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.
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.
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.
They definitely do reject at least some refunds outside the window even if you can get lucky like gp.
> 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.
No, it only takes effect upon release. Before you're free to refund whenever you want.
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.
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.
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.
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.