In all circumstances of life, there is always someone who tries to take advantage of things. Using legal loopholes to obtain more benefits than they should. Something that is not a problem until it starts to be, because of how it harms other people. That is exactly what has happened with Steam’s refund policy, which is going to change its rules today.
Any game purchased on Steam can be returned within fourteen days of purchase, as long as it has not been played for more than two hours. However, Valve is usually quite understanding and often allows returns as long as there is a good reason and not too many hours have been played. However, there was a legal loophole in all of this: the time spent in early access and in the beta version did not count towards the total two hours.
This means that some people would spend dozens of hours playing a game, only to return it before the fourteen days were up. The trick was that, since these were early access games or games played before their official release, those hours didn’t count.
Now the return rules explicitly state that any amount of gameplay that exceeds two hours will count towards the game’s return. This includes games in early access and advanced access. However, games that are purchased before their release and are not playable until then will only start counting both gameplay time and acquisition time once they are playable. This allows for pre-purchased games to be returned if they do not meet players’ expectations.
Valve has been offering no-questions-asked refunds for eight years, within the fourteen-day and two-hour playtime window. And while it has been a blessing for players, it has also harmed some developers, due to legal loopholes sought by certain parts of the public. Something we hope this rule change will help prevent.
