Steam Adds Refund Option for Pre-Orders

[Use_Imagination_here]

I think steam should have refunds in the sense that if customer support can't guide you to fixing the problem after you've asked for help, and the game still doesn't work, you should get your money back for a product that doesn't work.

Refunds because of "QUAAALITYYY" are complete hogwash. Is this really just me? This doesn't seem like fair customer treatment, it seems like petty entitlement.

You're not always going to like everything that you buy. Companies don't have any sort of responsibility to give you a refund just because you didn't like something. Valve certainly doesn't.

And it's all almost completely subjective. Outside the once in 2 years examples of blatant false advertising, if you don't like a game it's not the fucking companies responsibility to give you back money! The game just didn't happen to suit your particular tastes, it's going to fucking happen, life doesn't revolve around accommodating you.

Maybe I'm overreacting but it just seems entitled and childish. There might be good arguments here but I'm not seeing them.

 

[BrotherRool]

I think it's much more likely to be Valve dragging their feet. Refunding digital items is tricky*, because any sort of decent time period opens people up to 'renting' all their games. A lot of the reason the system works at retail is there's a lot of hassle involved in getting a refund, you've got to actually pack a physical thing up and travel some place... You'd need to invent some system that doesn't make it easy for people to ask for a refund w/e, but then that probably costs manpower.

considering that on steam valve tracks thier games quite thoroughly they could easily implement progress/time spent requirements as in you cant just finish a game and reund it. if you play it for 2 hours and hate it - sure refund away. play it for 50 hours in a weekend, finish it and refund it - nope. And that would even be more reliable than retail refunding since retails dont actually know if you just spent last week playing it whol day long or not, steam does.

You're right, that would be a really good system. There's no reason for them not to implement that, unless they want to profit from sale-induced panic purchases or people buying bad games

Urghh no that would suck. I don't have so much time that I want to throw it down the drain or dedicate my whole life to playing videogames. If companies were incentivised to pad out all their freaking games, regardless of whether it's better as a 5 hour game or a 30 hour one, everything would either become incredibly cruddy, or we'd lose all the game genres except for one type that certain people like. There'd be no Journey or Gone Home or Stanley Parable, or even Uncharted. It's fine if you're only into multiplayer games, or if you actually like having to spend a month playing before getting to the end of your RPG but otherwise you'd be screwed.

then i take you dont remmeber when we had shooters that would take 20 hours to complete because they would actually have long campaigns?

It's all about value for money, my friend. If you pay five or ten bucks for a game, 2-5 hours of entertainment is a good return. If I pay 60 bucks for a game and get five hours out of it - I feel ripped off. It's completely driven me out of the shooter market. Of course, I'm a special case, I understand that most shooters are now meant to be played online, something I don't do.

Time =/= value, in fact time is valuable and if a games is wasting my time then it's costing me. I don't play online games and I do remember 20 hour campaigns. And you know what? I hate them. My biggest problem with Dragon Age is it's too long, my biggest problem with Persona 4 is it's too long.

If you play a 20 hour game for 3 hours every single day, it will still take you 3 weeks to finish. That's three weeks where you can't play other games, you can't read, you can't go out. All just to see the ending of one frickin' game. That's not value, that's just irritating. For a 40 hour game, we're talking over a month and a half of your life devoted to one single videogame.

You don't watch a film and say 'that would have been much more valuable if they added a 3 hour chase sequence', you don't weigh a book and say 'hmm this isn't heavy enough to be valuable.' Of Mice and Men wouldn't be better if they jammed in an extra 500 pages. Being a good writer is about not filling your books with paragraph after paragraph of unnecessary description, and not adding pointless scenes just for the sake of it.

Games shouldn't be padded out, they should be exactly as long as they've still got something new to show you. Adding in another 10 hours of shooting people in corridors didn't make old shooters more fun. Half Life 2, one of the best shooters of all time? 15 hours. Max Payne 2? 7 hours.

It changes game to game, if you've ever played Alan Wake, that games 15 hours long and it's way too much. It's just pointless encounter after pointless encounter and it completely spoils the story and mood having it stretched out like that.

I would say though, if you want to go above 20 hours, then that time should be in optional sidequests or free-play mode or something, because there are people who don't have that time to invest. I'm guessing we're all students or younger right? Because I've got friends who've graduated and now that they're working 9-5 with extra work when they get home and having to go to sleep 10-12pm ish (it sounds horrifying ), they've suddenly really began to appreciate their time

 

[Sidmen]

It's all about value for money, my friend. If you pay five or ten bucks for a game, 2-5 hours of entertainment is a good return. If I pay 60 bucks for a game and get five hours out of it - I feel ripped off. It's completely driven me out of the shooter market. Of course, I'm a special case, I understand that most shooters are now meant to be played online, something I don't do.

Time =/= value, in fact time is valuable and if a games is wasting my time then it's costing me. I don't play online games and I do remember 20 hour campaigns. And you know what? I hate them. My biggest problem with Dragon Age is it's too long, my biggest problem with Persona 4 is it's too long.

If you play a 20 hour game for 3 hours every single day, it will still take you 3 weeks to finish. That's three weeks where you can't play other games, you can't read, you can't go out. All just to see the ending of one frickin' game. That's not value, that's just irritating. For a 40 hour game, we're talking over a month and a half of your life devoted to one single videogame.

You don't watch a film and say 'that would have been much more valuable if they added a 3 hour chase sequence', you don't weigh a book and say 'hmm this isn't heavy enough to be valuable.' Of Mice and Men wouldn't be better if they jammed in an extra 500 pages. Being a good writer is about not filling your books with paragraph after paragraph of unnecessary description, and not adding pointless scenes just for the sake of it.

Games shouldn't be padded out, they should be exactly as long as they've still got something new to show you. Adding in another 10 hours of shooting people in corridors didn't make old shooters more fun. Half Life 2, one of the best shooters of all time? 15 hours. Max Payne 2? 7 hours.

It changes game to game, if you've ever played Alan Wake, that games 15 hours long and it's way too much. It's just pointless encounter after pointless encounter and it completely spoils the story and mood having it stretched out like that.

I would say though, if you want to go above 20 hours, then that time should be in optional sidequests or free-play mode or something, because there are people who don't have that time to invest. I'm guessing we're all students or younger right? Because I've got friends who've graduated and now that they're working 9-5 with extra work when they get home and having to go to sleep 10-12pm ish (it sounds horrifying ), they've suddenly really began to appreciate their time

So, if a game is long, it's padded? I think you're just talking about bad games. Games can be bad regardless of their length.

So, you play games 3 hours at a time - well, that right there is our disconnect. I'll take that 20 hour game and grind right through it in a single weekend. Give me a 5-hour game and I'll pop through it by mid-afternoon Saturday then be looking around for something else to do Few games are enjoyable enough to get me to feel like I got a good value from a 60 dollar game that didn't meaningfully fill more of my time than an 8-dollar movie would.

 

[SexyGarfield]

But torrenting a game runs the risk of getting in trouble while you download that 22gigabyte download now doesn't it. As well as a risk of viruses and malware. Instead finding a crack for a game is quite easy, and while it also runs the risk of viruses and malware, it is only one or two files.

Especially with the new strike program the companies in the US are using. Anything to avoid long torrents is good for those would be pirates.

I would like to make it clear I am not defending or condoning piracy just offering a counter argument.

Viruses are practically nonexistent in reputable scene releases. Even if they were a noteworthy issue there is a crowd sourced community of guinea pigs posting in the comments section.

The three strike program is effectively propaganda in that it emboldens those in support of it and is brushed off by those who know it to be such. The only ones that it scared where those who were on the fence about pirating, not the hardcore or even moderate infringers . Most anyone that pirates knows how to stop people from snooping on their torrents. Hell, most torrent sites are saturated with advertisements for services that let you get around snooping.

 

[BrotherRool]

So, if a game is long, it's padded? I think you're just talking about bad games. Games can be bad regardless of their length.

So, you play games 3 hours at a time - well, that right there is our disconnect. I'll take that 20 hour game and grind right through it in a single weekend. Give me a 5-hour game and I'll pop through it by mid-afternoon Saturday then be looking around for something else to do Few games are enjoyable enough to get me to feel like I got a good value from a 60 dollar game that didn't meaningfully fill more of my time than an 8-dollar movie would.

so ultimately you agree with me right? What you were talking about at the start were companies being forced not to make 5 hour games anymore because people would just return the game. Which is okay for people like you, but isn't okay for anyone who is unable/doesn't want to spend 20 hours of their weekend on one game.

Whereas with the current system, you can read reviews and avoid 5 hour games and play the big CRPGs etc and I can play the 8* hour games and be happy with my time.

Besides if you actually want to do the maths on it, an 8 hour game is the correct 'money per minute' value or whatever. A DVD cost $15 for 2 hours, a game costs $60 for 8 hours. That's exactly $7.50 per hour each. If you were comparing cinema prices then you're forgetting that you're only 'renting' the film and you can't replay/rewatch. Of course books smash both into the dust

Games can be bad regardless of their length, but padding is a specifically bad thing that happens only to overly long games. And to make a game longer without padding takes more skill, because you need to come up with 10 hours more stuff than with an 8 hour game, so whilst you can get good long games (Mass Effect and Fallout: New Vegas), there's naturally going to be fewer good long games than there are short games.


*Even I probably wouldn't buy a 5 hour game at $60. There's a sort of acceptable region between 8-30 where I don't care about game length but I do agree that a 5 hour game would literally have to change my life to be worthwhile. In the same way I don't care about book length for 150-400 ish pages, but a book has to be really good outside of that. Of Mice and Men is actually an exception

 

[Edl01]

Why would any one pre-order anything on Steam? Is it just because of the pre-load option? Even then how long does it take to download a game and how impatient can someone be?

I pre-order a game when I know for sure I am buying it no matter what. So for example I would have bought Skyrim no matter the reviews because I am a fan of the Elder Scrolls Franchise. The same goes for Dark Souls 2 in March. In them cases I feel that Pre-Ordering is useful since you get a small discount and you can play the game right away. However, in any case other than that then I agree with you entirely that pre-ordering is a complete waste of money.

 

[rapidoud]

Kind of sick of constantly addressing the bevy of misinformation and half-truths that pop up on this topic; many of which are already everywhere in this thread; so I'm not going to address them.

However, I will just say this:
Steam has offered refunds for years. Origin and GoG.com are the newcomers to the practice.

If you had a legitimate issue with a purchased game on Steam, an issue that you felt could only be rectified with a refund, and you contacted Steam Support about it, they more often than not would refund you.

The only difference between that and Origin/GoG's methods are that the latter methods are some amalgam of pseudo-automation and manual support.

But, you know, it's easier to just ***** about Steam not having a thing it actually has than to bother to research the truth.

Oh wow, talk about not bothering to 'research the truth'.

Steam will actually ban your account if you try to get a refund through a chargeback or the relevant legal authority (e.g. the ACCC). They flatout say 'no refunds on games already in your library', and they might make an exception occasionally but you do not count on it (FYI this is also illegal).

GMG, GOG and Origin already had great refund policies (i.e. they'd still obey Australian law), just they never mentioned it. Now they essentially have warranties which are set in stone and have to be obeyed and aren't as ambiguous as the law is (which isn't much but valve are indeed breaking Australian law).

I've wanted refunds for games my laptop cannot run and they threatened to ban my account if I so much as hinted at disagreeing with this.

Steam is a crappy service these days, there's no 2 ways about it. GOG and GMG have FANTASTIC support, don't price discriminate between regions, and have no DRM. Origin you can get refunds anyway (even before they 'announced a policy') but steam has NEVER done this and still doesn't, which also cuts into the gross profit margins of other businesses as they can't refund steam keys to anyone and lose business as a result.

 

[thewatergamer]

It's a step in the right direction but this is hardly a refund, this is just cancelling a pre-order, which pretty much every store lets you do already, Maybe work on it becoming not nearly as much as a rare thing to return a game valve?

I mean anyone who has tried to return a game on steam knows that its a nightmare, especially if its your second or third time,
most times valve lets you return one game once and thats it...

I mean come on valve get with the program...

Refunds need to be easier and less of a hassle and more common

 

[Vigormortis]

Oh wow, talk about not bothering to 'research the truth'.

Steam will actually ban your account if you try to get a refund through a chargeback or the relevant legal authority (e.g. the ACCC). They flatout say 'no refunds on games already in your library', and they might make an exception occasionally but you do not count on it (FYI this is also illegal).

They account lock or ban on chargebacks because you are effectively attempting to circumvent their own security system by using your bank to take back your money while also keeping the product in question.

I was already aware of this but didn't think I needed to explain it in full to get my point across. But I guess you're right. I should have written a page-long post describing every facet of Steams purchase, trade, and refund policies.

My apologies.

I've wanted refunds for games my laptop cannot run and they threatened to ban my account if I so much as hinted at disagreeing with this.

Funny, I and many others that I know have had no issue getting refunds on faulty or broken products bought on Steam; save for one occasion.

I know they don't grant refunds on everything nor in every occasion, but the fact remains that they do indeed give refunds.

And I could be wrong, but I think you're flat-out lying when you claim that they literally "threatened" to account ban you for asking for a refund. Perhaps it's your verbiage but it sounds rather fantastic.

Steam is a crappy service these days, there's no 2 ways about it. GOG and GMG have FANTASTIC support, don't price discriminate between regions, and have no DRM. Origin you can get refunds anyway (even before they 'announced a policy') but steam has NEVER done this and still doesn't, which also cuts into the gross profit margins of other businesses as they can't refund steam keys to anyone and lose business as a result.

I've had nothing but misery in dealing with Origin and GoG support. In most instances I had to turn to community suggestions or mods to fix things I had issue with.

I've had few issues with Steam's support. Every time I've needed to contact Steam Support they responded with helpful information in an expedient manner. Whereas I've waited weeks a times for a response from EA's support; if a response ever comes.

You can say all day that "there are no 2 ways about it", but most of your; and indeed my; experiences with any of these services are going to be different and ultimately subjective. You've had issue with Steam and nothing but bright and sunny days with Origin, GoG, etc. I've had the opposite experience. (hell, I've had less trouble with Uplay than I have with Origin and GoG, for god's sake)

And again, Steam does grant refunds. Not in every instance but to say they don't at all is a lie.

Besides, I bought two games through Origin; two EA games specifically, Dead Space 3 and The Sims; and was denied refunds on both. So from my perspective, EA/Origin most certainly do not offer refunds.

 

[FogHornG36]

snip

why is it steams fault you bought the game on the first day without looking at reviews. Its not steams responsibility to take care of you when you make a disappointing purchase. I can understand the idea that a game doesn't work, but steam has already been giving refunds for that for years.

 

[Cecilo]

Kind of sick of constantly addressing the bevy of misinformation and half-truths that pop up on this topic; many of which are already everywhere in this thread; so I'm not going to address them.

However, I will just say this:
Steam has offered refunds for years. Origin and GoG.com are the newcomers to the practice.

If you had a legitimate issue with a purchased game on Steam, an issue that you felt could only be rectified with a refund, and you contacted Steam Support about it, they more often than not would refund you.

The only difference between that and Origin/GoG's methods are that the latter methods are some amalgam of pseudo-automation and manual support.

But, you know, it's easier to just ***** about Steam not having a thing it actually has than to bother to research the truth.

Oh wow, talk about not bothering to 'research the truth'.

Steam will actually ban your account if you try to get a refund through a chargeback or the relevant legal authority (e.g. the ACCC). They flatout say 'no refunds on games already in your library', and they might make an exception occasionally but you do not count on it (FYI this is also illegal).

GMG, GOG and Origin already had great refund policies (i.e. they'd still obey Australian law), just they never mentioned it. Now they essentially have warranties which are set in stone and have to be obeyed and aren't as ambiguous as the law is (which isn't much but valve are indeed breaking Australian law).

I've wanted refunds for games my laptop cannot run and they threatened to ban my account if I so much as hinted at disagreeing with this.

Steam is a crappy service these days, there's no 2 ways about it. GOG and GMG have FANTASTIC support, don't price discriminate between regions, and have no DRM. Origin you can get refunds anyway (even before they 'announced a policy') but steam has NEVER done this and still doesn't, which also cuts into the gross profit margins of other businesses as they can't refund steam keys to anyone and lose business as a result.

Steam will lock your account (Make it so you can't purchase more games but still able to play the games you already have) If you try to get a charge back, because it 1) Costs them money, and 2) Because that isn't a refund, that is taking your money back without giving the product back.

Further, the system requirements for each game are on the page you buy them on, while I do agree that they should give a refund if you can't play it, you should have done your research first all the same.

But as for the idea that steam does not give refunds, they do. Many people got refunds for The War Z (Now named Infestation Zombie Survivor something). You can get a refund if you ask Steam, if you go through the right process, not through a chargeback. Which I will remind you, Origin, will also ban you if you try to get a chargeback on a product, you may recall the Simcity fiasco. - http://answers.ea.com/t5/Origin/EA-Banning-People-Who-Request-Chargebacks-for-Defective-Product/td-p/659356

Any company will ban you if you use a charge back, many companies will try to put you on a "Do not do business with this person" List as well. So please. Stop acting like Steam is the only company to punish you for doing something you shouldn't.

 

[barbzilla]

I think they also need to refund crappy Pre-Release Early Access games that have either stopped patching regularly, or released Early Access games that failed to deliver on all of the fronts they promised when you purchased the game. Then they need to add in a refund for games that don't function.... at all..., as well as multiplayer games with no servers (see DungeonLand until recently). In fact, Steam has become a breeding ground for failed and abandoned games since the advent of Steam Greenlight, and while it does some good, it has started to tarnish Steam's reputation (as well as my faith in the product).

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

As has been said, this isn't news. It isn't even worth arguing over the word 'refund' is the right word, since they're pretty much just automating something they've already been happy to do. Still, I'm not about to pretend this is a BAD thing.

Snip

See, the thing that annoys me is that the Steam TOS and appropriate support page pretty much says "no refunds for releasd content ever", despite the fact that I've heard so many different stories saying otherwise. Either it's as you said case-by-case, or it's only one per lifetime, or something else entirely. Would be nice to have a source clarifying it all.

 

[Sidmen]

Actually, if you want to play semantics as terribly as that...
A refund is you returning the product and getting your money back. Right there. See it? (Re)turn the product to get back your (fund)s. Now, and this might get a tad complicated here for you to understand, that means the product is available to use for you before you decide to get your money back.


That example you listed? You aren't returning anything. But hey, let's see you order something from a company, and then the day before it ships call them up demanding a refund. After they are done laughing at you off phone, they'll tell you "So you want to just cancel your order? Or would you prefer waiting til we ship it out to you first so you can then send it back and ask for a refund then?"

It isn't really that hard of a concept for most to keep up with, but not everyone is that fortunate I suppose.

What dictionary are you using? I'm only asking because Webster disagrees with you. All a refund refers to is the repayment of the money - you want a refund because you are cancelling your order. You can cancel an order and not receive a refund for it, depending on the contract you agreed to.

Simultaneously, I have gotten calls asking for a refund on prepaid goods. The answer was no, at the time, because our policy is pretty strict on that count. So your fictional company response there is, well, fictional.

 

[Vigormortis]

See, the thing that annoys me is that the Steam TOS and appropriate support page pretty much says "no refunds for releasd content ever", despite the fact that I've heard so many different stories saying otherwise. Either it's as you said case-by-case, or it's only one per lifetime, or something else entirely. Would be nice to have a source clarifying it all.

It's essentially a case-by-case thing. Though, if it's just a general, "I don't like this game so I want my money back", they will usually deny it.

I wish there were a different system in place, to be honest. While it's possible to get refunds on Steam, it's still a hassle.

Seeing that they've automated this current form of refunding, I feel a slight sense of encouragement that perhaps they may make other (better) changes to their current general return/refund policy.

 

[Strazdas]

Time =/= value, in fact time is valuable and if a games is wasting my time then it's costing me. I don't play online games and I do remember 20 hour campaigns. And you know what? I hate them. My biggest problem with Dragon Age is it's too long, my biggest problem with Persona 4 is it's too long.

If you play a 20 hour game for 3 hours every single day, it will still take you 3 weeks to finish. That's three weeks where you can't play other games, you can't read, you can't go out. All just to see the ending of one frickin' game. That's not value, that's just irritating. For a 40 hour game, we're talking over a month and a half of your life devoted to one single videogame.

You don't watch a film and say 'that would have been much more valuable if they added a 3 hour chase sequence', you don't weigh a book and say 'hmm this isn't heavy enough to be valuable.' Of Mice and Men wouldn't be better if they jammed in an extra 500 pages. Being a good writer is about not filling your books with paragraph after paragraph of unnecessary description, and not adding pointless scenes just for the sake of it.

Games shouldn't be padded out, they should be exactly as long as they've still got something new to show you. Adding in another 10 hours of shooting people in corridors didn't make old shooters more fun. Half Life 2, one of the best shooters of all time? 15 hours. Max Payne 2? 7 hours.

It changes game to game, if you've ever played Alan Wake, that games 15 hours long and it's way too much. It's just pointless encounter after pointless encounter and it completely spoils the story and mood having it stretched out like that.

I would say though, if you want to go above 20 hours, then that time should be in optional sidequests or free-play mode or something, because there are people who don't have that time to invest. I'm guessing we're all students or younger right? Because I've got friends who've graduated and now that they're working 9-5 with extra work when they get home and having to go to sleep 10-12pm ish (it sounds horrifying ), they've suddenly really began to appreciate their time

Wow this went into first world problems really fast. You like the game so much you play it for 20 hours then complain that you like it too much and spend too much time on it. your basically complaining that the games are too good so you want to play them for long. Your argument wasnt that it was bad or panned out or anything, merely long. sorry but i see this as a benefit, not an issue.

Now, i dont know what you do in life but if you only have 3 hours per day free time left for anything you are obviuosly not the average person. i can understand you dont want to spend all your free time for games so you spend only 3 hours a day, but 3 hours a day is not all you have. you can play 3 hours a day and read and go out. And if you play games only to see the ending then you can do that in 10 minutes on youtube. here i just saved you 20 hours. Meanwhile i will continue playing games because i enjoy playing them.
I devoted almost a year to morrowind and it was worth it, because the game was good.

No, i watch a film and say "That would have been much more value if we saw more of it" though. because there are plenty of films that i would love to see continue. in fact the reason i often like tv series more is because its a continuation of a story rather than a rushed 2 hour job.

noone said anything about games being padded out. we want games that last longer, no are padded out to be longer. you know, more than 2 hours of content you never want to repeat. its as you blame us for wanting to have games we like enough to play for long.
Max payne only took 7 hours to complete but it was good enough so i played it for 50. thats what long games mean - you can enjoy it for long, not that you need to grind through campaign for long. This is why i didnt finish Empire earth campaign - it was a grind. and why i spent 400+ hours in civilization 4 - it was fun.

to put it shortly, its not about the lenght of campaign, its about the amount of time you enjoy the game. and if your enjoyment comes only from the ending, then maybe you should skip the 20 boring hours altogether?

Besides if you actually want to do the maths on it, an 8 hour game is the correct 'money per minute' value or whatever. A DVD cost $15 for 2 hours, a game costs $60 for 8 hours. That's exactly $7.50 per hour each. If you were comparing cinema prices then you're forgetting that you're only 'renting' the film and you can't replay/rewatch. Of course books smash both into the dust

Games can be bad regardless of their length, but padding is a specifically bad thing that happens only to overly long games. And to make a game longer without padding takes more skill, because you need to come up with 10 hours more stuff than with an 8 hour game, so whilst you can get good long games (Mass Effect and Fallout: New Vegas), there's naturally going to be fewer good long games than there are short games.

Its been a while since i saw a 15 dollar DVD. Netflix costs what 10 dollars for 24*30=720 hours, thats 4320 hours per 60 dollar value. Sure i picked extreme example, but even at your 3 hours a day that would still be 90 hours for 10 dollars.

since you brought the "rewarch" argument then we must assume that you rewach a movie, lets say 2 times. thats now 6 hours for 15 dollars, making it 2,5 dollar per hour, meaning a game should be at least 24 hours to match the value. And bty bringing in books you brought another argument yourself - games are not movies, just like movies are not books, and you shouldnt compare them like that.

padding happens to both short and long games. Far Cry 2 was padded as hell. the game had 3 missions that repeated over and over again, and one could easily beat that game in 4 hours. you woudl still need to do each mission at least 4 times or so though.
making a game longer without padding takes skill. it also makes game better, which is what we wanted - good games. good value for our money, not a 3 hour COD campaign. if we had a system of return if played less than 5 hours for example, this could easily make sure that games you liked you get to keep and games you dropped in an hour you get to return.
and game doesnt have to be 20 hours to beat in order to be 20 hours till you get bored. remmeber a thing called replayability. yes its still a thing.

snip

why is it steams fault you bought the game on the first day without looking at reviews. Its not steams responsibility to take care of you when you make a disappointing purchase. I can understand the idea that a game doesn't work, but steam has already been giving refunds for that for years.

Its not steams fault or anyone eleses fault. It is the sellers responsibility to ensure costumer rights to have a refund on an event the object is returned. there are obvious exceptions for food and the like but all media has this policy, regulated by national law, already. If i buy a chair and i cant sit in it confortably i return it. If i buy an appliace that is too big to fit in my house i return it. if i buy a movie ticket and walk out in first 5 minutes i get a refund. games are one of the few places where refuns dont exist as a status quo. and introduction of said policies have proven that people dont actually abuse them because they keep the games they like. and no you should not be forced to keep bad games. if a company tricked you into buying a bad game the fault should fall on the company *cough* gearbox*cough*.

P.S. capcha asked me what my education was, i selected my education and it told me "Capcha error".
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