Interesting. In 2017 I purchased a game on Steam that was said to work on Linux (SW KOTOR 2). It didn't get past the initial splash screen. Contacted Steam support and they refunded without question.

Would that experience have been different if I wasn't an Australian?

No. Valve has offered refunds in all countries since mid-2015. The Australian suit was filed in 2014.

The usual refund conditions are “less than two hours of play, within two weeks of purchase.”

I'm still upset with them: A couple of years ago, Linux support for Rust (the game) was discontinued and the publisher said that all Linux users would get a refund on Steam, regardless of play time. I tried several times but all my attempts at getting a refund were rejected.

Not much you can do - if the machines decide you don't get a refund, well, then you don't. I haven't bought anything on Steam since.

In Australia, take it to the ACCC. If the machine says no, then the ACCC goes to the machine’s owner and scares the living daylights out of them.

Only if there's the possibility of a massive fine involved. The ACCC receive FAR too many reports to action any more than a tiny percentage of them. More often than not they respond saying they can't confirm or deny any violation, but you should try mediation.

The threat of the ACCC is usually enough for international companies to provide the refund, in my experience. Link them to the Repair, Replace, Refund page[0] and you're good.

0. https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-guarantees...

Seperately from anything else, damn but is that a turn of phrase.

Wouldn't that be more the publisher's fault?

Hard to tell. It's Steam that refuses the refund, no idea how the decision is made. Apparently others managed to eventually get the refund by trying again and again; maybe I gave up too soon.

Weird, it was the same for Rocket League and I was refunded without any issues. Steam has always been very nice to me regarding refunds.

I recall some minor controversy as there are story games with less than two hours of gameplay and everyone was refunding them.

There is a minor genre of YouTube content with people speed-running longer games (e.g. Fallout, Skyrim) to fit into the two hour Steam-return window.

Ironically because speed-running requires a lot of practice this often means purchasing two copies of the game - the first to practice with, and the second to be (potentially) refunded!

The problem I've now noticed is that there are many games with ~2hrs of filler before real content (which may only be worth 1-2hrs) begins...

eh, it’s not the end of the world if games just have to provide more than 2 hours gameplay. Steam is targeted at longer form entertainment. Just extend the story out with some puzzles or challenges that send the gameplay over 2 hours.

As another poster mentioned, some have done just that - added "filler" to a game to inflate it over the 2 hour bar, which is disappointing.

There should be some sliding scale where you can make a great 2 hour or less game without the risk of infinite refunding (perhaps the game could be marked with a "half-way" point, etc, though that would involve the shop actually playing it).

I know this happened a lot with Sonic Forces.

I remember when the latest DOOM title added a rootkit for anticheat. I had like 4-5h of playtime but still got a refund when I gave the reason "I didn't buy a rootkit". Not in Australia either.

Also, before then, Valve had a "one-time exception" to "no refunds" that you could use.

I bought 2 copies of a game advertising co-op to play with a friend, only to discover it's local-only. (Steam didn't have separate "local/remote play/online co-op" labels yet) I opened a ticket and they refunded me as a "one time exception".

Tangential, but KOTOR 2 does work for me on Linux as of a few months ago. If you're still in the mood for it, maybe try again?

Yep. I tried again a year or so later and it "just worked". Still one of my favourite games, even though it hasn't aged well.

I suppose I could have invested time to diagnose the original issue (drivers, OS upgrades, etc). But, it was good to see that Steam just refunded without insisting it was an issue on my end (which, it may well have been, given the disparity of Linux systems).

I bought a game in 2020 on valves Steam that said it was macOS compatible. Did found out after starting it, that it required a dedicated GPU, which I didn't had. If I would have looked into the System Requirements I would have seen clearly that dedicated GPU was required.

They refunded my game after a short and polite message without any fuzz. I said thanks by buying a different game instead. Shame for the dev yes, but it was already an older one, that the developers moved on from years ago, so I didn't felt too bad about that.

As is Sony for digital purchases - but believe me you have to fight tooth and nail to get anywhere, I had one return request email chain top 100 replies. I'm amazed the ACCC/ConsumerVIC aren't onto them more about it.

Put in a report with the ACCC. They’re usually very interested to hear your story and they almost always follow up with a company. I’ve had many problems solved just be reporting it, getting a case number, then calling the company back and giving the them case number. Usually gets their attention

I've logged at least 5, most of the time they come back with we don't deal with that you should contact consumers Victoria - I contact them and they only tell me my rights but don't do anything.

If Consumers Victoria will not handle the case, talk to your local state MP.

This sort of shit is what MPs (or at least the office of your local MP) is for.

Sounds awful :(

That sounds as if their share of the email replies causes more cost than the refund itself. Unless that's all AI replies now. In which case the solution is an AI that negotiates the refund.

Yeah exactly, with one I was really annoyed about that they kept saying they don't have to provide refunds for digital goods and I kept supplying Australian consumer law, it got to about 80 emails over 6 months trying to get a reply - then I hunted down people who work at Sony and started guessing their emails, regional ceos, cios, support managers - you name it! Eventually one of them replied an issued a refund. Obviously my time is worth more than the refund but it was just the principle of it that cheesed me enough to keep pushing.

I don't think our guarantees extend to you just not liking it. The game has to be defective, or incomparable with your computer, or have been misrepresented before you bought it. IANAL

Updated after your update: In this case I think we can assume "acceptable quality" has already been established by Nintendo's QA department. Its not an open store after all.

There's a AAA game from a major studio on Nintendo's store right now that can't be completed due to a game-breaking bug (the new Knights of the Old Republic II port), so Nintendo's obviously not doing that much of their own QA for things they're selling on their store.

Early on in the Switch's lifespan, the GameGrumps decided to check out the "Worst rated games on the Nintendo store". For reference, these are two games that Nintendo gave the green light to sell in their store:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGtanhZvjcM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFJwO7AbfCk

They've actually published games with Nintendo before, so they discuss how such terrible games were allowed on the shop in the second video

Whether or not something is acceptable quality is not up to Nintendo, right? Otherwise it would be a weird conflict of interest that Nintendo would set the standards for their own store with no recourse for the consumer.

"acceptable quality" is very broad and subjective. I don't think you'll have much luck convincing a court a game is objectively bad. (unless the game actually crashed like where somebody mentioned in KOTOR)

If you take a game back to a major retailer like Target or Big W, they won't accept it with the seal broken unless you tell them there is something wrong with the physical disk or cartage. They won't accept a return if you just tell them you didn't like it. (in my experience - also not an expert on this either)

My point is just that their broad "we don't accept returns, ever" policy in the UK is not legal in some jurisdictions, and nothing about returning a game because you don't like it. How that's interpreted is, of course, a matter of convincing the courts but the language Nintendo uses in the UK is not applicable worldwide, as many other companies have been raked over the coals for trying to do the same. Note that the wording on the UK page definitely excludes things like KOTOR II from being returned!

"Its not an open store after all."

The Nintendo online market pretty much has no oversight anymore. They don't do any careful pruning of shovelware these days.

At a bare minimum, you can buy games on the Switch with incomprehensible English translations:

https://legendsoflocalization.com/this-be-bad-translation-19...

NES games often had some pretty rough translations, but I can't think of a single game in that era that was this garbled.

These are bad but seem to be at the level of "All your base are belong to us".

Which comes from a Sega game. Not that the NES was really better, it still has classics like "a winner is you!"

It’s open enough because I’ve demanded a refund for a total dog shit game and received it. And I’m American.

Nintendo's Lot Check doesn't really establish anything. Nintendo Switch's game store is flooded with games that don't really work as the testing was minimized.

And the EU :)