Steam has a litany of disclaimers to block refunds. Even games dropped by developers don't matter to Steam. I had a few hours registered to a game I could never get to work beyond a few turns but since I "played" it I was not entitled to a refund.
I really dislike digital distribution of games and software on this point. While some Steam games I can run offline I am not sure if all of them can be. Plus how do I reinstall?
It is a sad state of affairs when being a buyer on ebay is safer than buying from Steam
It always surprises me that I've never seen anyone take real legal action against a platform like Steam over this sort of policy. You can put almost anything you want in your terms of service, but in most places if it's blatantly one-sided and unreasonable there's a chance that courts will strike it down, particularly in areas with relatively strong consumer protection laws like Europe. Something like blocking access to previous purchases because of an unrelated dispute seems about as one-sided and unreasonable as you could get; it's essentially no better than the kind of anticompetitive practices that are explicitly illegal in various other contexts.
I was also under the impression that the card networks frowned upon trying to prevent cardholders from exercising any chargeback right they have with their card. Then again, I have business interests that accept payments via these card networks and I've never even seen the full terms that we supposedly agreed to on the merchant side, so I don't know how I'd check even though we're presumably subject to the same rules, whatever they are.
There's no incentive for a private party to sue them because the losses are so small that even a class action isn't worth pursuing. Any legal action would have to be government-initiated. That's unlikely in the US due to the current political climate, and EU action would do nothing for us across the pond, and vice versa.
In the US that might be true, but a small claims action if they locked someone out of a large number of previously purchased games wouldn't be out of the question somewhere like the UK.
> I had a few hours registered to a game I could never get to work beyond a few turns but since I "played" it I was not entitled to a refund.
Cough, ahem, No Man's Sky...
According to Steam I'd played around 40 hours, but in reality most likely <10 hours active and stupidly left the game idling a couple of nights which racked up the hours.
I tried to get a refund from Steam and was refused, I then tried a charge back from PayPal and Steam stepped in and more or less told me that if I continue down this road I'll be locked out of all my games.
A few lessons learned:
1. Don't pre-purchase games
2. Wait a couple of weeks for real gamer reviews
3. Avoid Steam/digital distributions for higher value games.
This has certainly soured me from buying anything costing more than a few quid on Steam.
>> 2. Wait a couple of weeks for real gamer reviews
I know it's hard to do if everyone you know's playing the latest hotness, but if you can wait a few months, you can usually get the game heavily discounted in one of Steam's (or Humble, Green Man or other Steam key sellers) quarterly sales.
I used to buy my games on release date at or near full price, but these days I try very hard to wait as long as I can for them to get heavily discounted. When you pay much less than full price, the sting is lessened if you chalk up too many hours to get a refund.
> but if you can wait a few months & > playing the latest hotness
To be honest NMS is the only game I've paid for prior to the release date, and even then I only paid for it a week beforehand.
I'm not a huge gamer (with the exception of dipping into Eve Online no and then). But NMS was hugely attractive to me, less so from the gamer/press hype, but from all the things Sean had talked about and demo'd.
Yeah, this is the same with me. The last game I bought at full price was watch_dogs, and I felt ripped off that most of the season pass content was the same copy and paste missions as the rest of the game, with only one proper DLC.
Last month I bought Dishonored 2 for £10 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for £8, roughly six months after release (when they were £60).
According to Steam I'd played around 40 hours, but in reality most likely <10 hours active and stupidly left the game idling a couple of nights which racked up the hours.
THIS. I posted my own comment, but I also suffered from the same crash/hang refund issue. The game was so unplayable I gave up, and shut down my Steam link. Unbeknownst to me, it was still running and therefore Steam refused my refund, and didn't reply to my follow up.
My Steam refund story: Bought a shitty game, asked for a refund but because said shitty game crashed and "ran" overnight, they denied my refund because I "played" for 25 hours straight. It was $5 so I let it go, but I received no response to my follow up regarding the reason why there was time logged. Bad support.
You can run Steam games in "Offline mode" if the network goes down and you were most recently logged into that computer, for up to (iirc?) 30 days.
And reinstalling the games is easy. You can install a copy on any computer you log into. You just can't play more than one at a time.
If you played a game for more than a couple hours, are you really entitled to a refund? And when you mention "Even games dropped by developers don't matter to Steam" do you mean early access games?
Caveat emptor. Digital distribution won't magically prevent you from buying bad games. Look at reviews, try the game for an hour or two, and ask for a refund if you don't like it.
I plaid a game a while back that was stuck in the tutorial level. The game company said that it was a known bug and that they would provide a fix for it. The fix never came. Steam tried to claim this same thing with me. Yes I was entitled to a refund despite having tried to change settings and despite being in the main menu of the game.
I really dislike digital distribution of games and software on this point. While some Steam games I can run offline I am not sure if all of them can be. Plus how do I reinstall?
It is a sad state of affairs when being a buyer on ebay is safer than buying from Steam