Since an Australian court case, Steam has always been one of the better companies when it comes to giving refunds – even if it was done reluctantly. Recently, they’ve given an update to Steam refund policy. This update will be incredibly important if you have bought a game with a Steam e gift card.
The Old Steam Refund Policy
As we said – Steam originally had one of the better refund policies around. As long as you have played less than 2 hours in a game, you would be entitled to a full refund, if requested. You could, potentially, get a refund if you’ve spent longer than 2 hours in the game, but the refund wouldn’t be automatic. It would need to be looked over by one of the Steam team members, so it may take a few days for the refund to be processed.
The idea behind this refund policy was to give players time to see whether a game was for them. Steam believed that 2 hours was enough to determine whether the game was fine.
There was a tiny, tiny loophole in this policy, though. This loophole applied to early access games.
Previous rules stated that if you got an early access game, the ‘timer’ would reset as soon as the game received a full launch i.e. came out of early access. This meant that we were in a position where people were getting hundreds, if not thousands, of hours out of a game. They were then returning it for a complete refund on Steam. This was just unfair. This is why the policy is now changing.
The New Steam Refund Policy
The new Steam refund policy will change how refunds are given for early access games. Essentially, the rules will now be brought in line with the way other games act on the service. This means that if you have played 2 hours of a game, you are not entitled to a refund on Steam whether the game is an early access game or not.
As you can probably imagine, there are a few people who are against this policy as they believe that games can change a lot throughout early access, which they can. However, you should also remember that if you have had some enjoyment from the game, then you really should be paying for the game. This is the idea that game publishers are taking. Plus, anyway, you should really see the amount of gameplay time people had with some games. They were receiving hundreds of hours of ‘fun’, and then refunding. It wasn’t good, and it was a case of just a few people ruining it for everybody.
This does mean that if you don’t like the games that you buy, you’ll need to refund as quickly as possible after purchase. If you buy Steam account from a top site like U7Buy.com, then you probably won’t need to worry about that part too much. Those accounts will be packed with fantastic games already, so you don’t need to worry about returning any.
