Comment by SXX
3 days ago
It's not like this is Steam fault. You can always return games you played under 2 hours no questions asked. Some people just like to buy stuff they dont need or hoard random things, but it's as old as humanity itself
At leastrented digital games on Steam account dont contribute to global warming, waste problems and dont use tons of electicity to mint some tokens.
I guess only major issue Steam really have to solve is ability to inherit these digital purchases if owner has died. Their license agreement dont have proper procedure for that.
When I was a kid, this pattern of over-purchasing video games was very rare. When you had to go to the store and buy a game, it was very uncommon for people to buy a ton of games and then never get around to playing most of them. Even when the stores had discount bins, people would usually buy just a handful at a time and then play them until boredom (or frustration) before going back to the store. The one exception I can think of is when buying those CDs that came packed with dozens of old games from years ago, e.g. shovelware, when you hardly even knew what you were getting when you got the CD.
Also today, with gaming consoles, Nintendo's platforms, and similar, I don't think the pattern of buying lots of games and then never playing most of them happens very often.
What I'm saying is this pattern has something to do with the way Steam is structured, it's not an intrinsic property of game consumers which occurs with any kind of games store.
> ability to inherit these digital purchases
They have the (much improved) Family Sharing now, which does combat that somewhat. Still not a proper solution.
> You can always return games you played under 2 hours no questions asked.
Within 14 days.
14 days is pretty much standard cool off window for lots of services.
If you havent played game at all most likely Steam will just accept return in much wider return window especially if there some new sale has started making game much cheaper or something.
Also if for some reason game was compatible with your platform (Linux, Mac) there are cases where Valve refunded money years after due to developers breaking compatibility.
PS: Yeah in the beginning Valve was certainly forced into implementing return policy by authorities, but today their return policy is one of the best of all software distribution platforms.
> If you havent played game at all most likely Steam will just accept return in much wider return window
I believe late refund requests are forwarded to the publisher for them to judge.
I don't disagree it's generous compared to alternatives and nice it's written into a standard, but it's not the "always" alluded to in the above poster's comment. There are limits other than just play time.