How many times has this happened to you? You’re sitting at your computer waiting for the clock to tick to midnight so you can start the mass-download odyssey that is the Steam Summer Sale. It’s your chance to get amazing deals on popular games and rock bottom prices on last year’s classics. You wait patiently for your chance to unload your digital wallet and buy up every game you wished you had over the last year (or more). Slowly, or rapidly, as the case may be, your games library fills up with blockbuster AAA titles and more than a few indie highlights.
But then, after the euphoria has worn off and you start to play a few of your recent purchases, you realize that maybe this one or that one wasn’t the game you thought it was. What then? Well, Steam recently announced that buyers will, for the first time, be able to “return” games purchased through Steam and receive a full refund.
What’s that? A full refund? Yes, my friend. A full and total refund. And this isn’t just for accidental downloads or unintentional duplicates. No. You can play a game and decide you don’t like it for any reason and Steam will refund your purchase.
Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.
So you get two weeks or two hours, whichever comes first. This is a big step in the PC gaming world as other large companies like Apple and Google Play have specific scenarios where they will issue refunds. Steam will do it for whatever reason, as long as you haven’t had the game for over two weeks or played more than two hours of it.
Even then, they say they will “take a look” and see what they can do. This is great news. Especially given the fact that the 2015 Steam Summer Sale dates have been potentially leaked (June 11 – June 20, if you don’t want to click on the link).