Sony does not follow this, how are they getting away with it?

My point is, this is just something Steam does, not something they are required to do (at least not everywhere).

Just for clarification: they are required to refund customers in some jurisdictions (apparently Australia was the reason, indeed), so they might have decided to do this for everybody

a) out of the kindness of their heart (i.e. good public image), or

b) just not to deal with complexity of introducing different refund schemas per region.

Probably a mixture of both.

Also

c) to preempt additional regulation in more jurisdictions

Steams refund policies are still fairly weak IMO. For many games, two hours doesn't really tell you much about the quality of the game and Steam also knows that many users will not get around to even trying games they pick up within the two weeks that they grant refunds for.

Imagine you went to a physical store and bought something that turned out to be broken after a couple hours of use and the Store just said too bad. Absolutely unacceptable there but Steam reserves the right to and does often refuse refunds that are not within their stated limits.

You also don't have as much leverage with Steam as you do with some random store. If a merchant fucks you over you are supposed to be able to reverse the transaction but with Steam trying that with even one game will get you banned from the store completely - and with Steam being a not-quite monopoly that means many games will literally be unavailable to you.

AFAIK you also still cant refund Steam wallet "cash" into real money so if you bought a Steam wallet card in order to buy a Game and then want to refund that game you can effectively only exchange it for other Steam products which is not a real refund.

IMO Steam gets a lot of undue credit just for not being quite as terrible as the competition.

Yes, but they did it because Australia forced them to.

I doubt that, EU consumer rights already stated that "the consumer shall have a period of 14 days to withdraw from a distance or off-premises contract". Steam purchases count as "digital content" in that case.

[0]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2011/83/oj#art_9.tit_1

In practice I've sometimes encountered that in the form of "either waive your right of withdrawal or else wait 14 days to download your content/activate your licence/etc.", though.

I don’t think that would fly in any EU court?

It would and does. There is little (EU-wide) legal protection for consumers of digital content.

This is not true for digital purchases when you waive your rights to withdraw which you have to accept for digital storefronts. See under point 19).

You can doubt whatever you want but the fact is Steam did NOT offer refunds until they were sued in Australia and lost.

As for EU consumer rights, look at Article 16 (m) in the link you posted:

> Exceptions from the right of withdrawal

> Member States shall not provide for the right of withdrawal set out in Articles 9 to 15 in respect of distance and off-premises contracts as regards the following:

> [...]

> (m) the supply of digital content which is not supplied on a tangible medium if the performance has begun with the consumer’s prior express consent and his acknowledgment that he thereby loses his right of withdrawal.

Got a source for that?

They got sued (and lost) back in 2014 in Australia for not having a refund policy: https://www.techradar.com/news/heres-valves-official-stateme...