Nonetheless, this seems to be a good place to mention GOG's 30 day money back guarantee: http://www.gog.com/support/website_help/money_back_guarantee

I'm not complaining. It's great for developers.

His comment was in response to : > Uh, that's never happened to me, nor anyone I know. And Steam Quality Control is good enough that games that bug-ridden will very very rarely make it through.

So, uhh, yeah it's their responsibility to check a game because once it is available on Steam they're vouching for its quality in some manner.

- If Steam has a thorough quality control, they (sort of) tell you that the game is OK, no obvious bugs. But there could still exist a serious bug that you can find, and I think they should give you a refund. They said it would work and it didn't.

- If there's no quality control to speak of (i.e. they just sell whatever the developers are shipping) and it turns out to be crap, it's still Steam who has sold it to you. In my mind they should still give you a refund, apologize a bit, and then deal with the developer.

I can't see that it's Steam's responsibility to test the game, but it's in their interest to provide high quality, so they ought to do some smoke tests at the very least. But no testing (from Steam and/or the developer) can guarantee that there's no problem with the software, and if there is, I think it's obvious that Steam should handle the refunds to the customer (since it's Steam's customer), and then Steam should handle it with the developer.

In other words, it costs developers money for Apple to issue a refund.

I used to feel very safe purchasing from steam, now I don't think it's very safe to purchase any sort of indie game.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/12/02/ashes-cricket-2013-pulled-...

This bug is easy to reproduce and they even know the issue (lack of physx support on the linux drivers) and even though there's a workaround (Android version doesn't have this issue) the devs still haven't fixed it. They could at the very least stop selling new copies to Linux users on Steam until this is fixed.

If you have an account on a PC and an account on a Mac they will either destroy each other's cloud saves or refuse to start.

I have a modest library of games, and I have quite a few of these I bought for when I boot to Linux. Almost none of these games work.

:(

While I have not sought a refund, or anything from Steam - it can be common to buy a game on steam and not be able to run it.

Actually, they didn't. All the developers did was have it relisted under a different name ("Infestation: Survivor Stories").

http://steamcommunity.com/app/226700

The game was advertised as it works on OSX, but it doesn't work on Mavericks, and still has issues in other cat versions. Read here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/218450/discussions/0/846955554...

I haven't, that's how much it sucks.

I'm still hoping they pull it together but the last time I looked at it, it was atrocious.

You got what you bought there.

The only good news is I got it on deep deep discount during last year's Christmas sale.

Sorry to hear about your difficulties though!

As someone who sells a digital product, I completely understand the No Refund policy.

Sure, there's nothing, literally nothing, stopping someone from downloading my entire 40-hour+ back catalog, unsubscribing, and asking for a refund. They could also sign up for the free trial, download everything, and unsubscribe.

Or they could just pirate everything. And there's nothing I can do to stop it.

So who would I hurt by refusing to offer refunds: The freeloaders? Or the legitimate customers who gave my product a try and found that it didn't fit? Maybe I'm naïve, but I think that positive word-of-mouth a friendly and prompt refund will benefit me more in the long term.

I know that if I got a non-functional product and couldn't get a refund, I'd be livid. I'd execute a chargeback so fast their head would spin, and I would badmouth the company involved for months.

Even with this proactive approach, my refund rate is only about 1%. It's not affecting my profitability in any significant way.

The benefit is harder to measure. I typically get a warm thank you from offering and, as I said, about half decide to stay subscribed for the remaining month. I've also had people tell me how much they appreciate my "no DRM" policy. So I'd say that my general attitude of trusting and respecting my customers pays off, but it's impossible to say how much.

[1] I sell a subscription-based programming screencast called Let's Code: Test-Driven JavaScript, http://www.letscodejavascript.com

I think I have had one refund requested ever. It's not a huge seller, but that still puts the refund rate considerably less than 1%.

I don't. There games are DRM'd and when I FINALLY got a 'refund' (best I could get was store credit) they disabled the game anyway so it's not like I could get my money back and still have the game.

Steam could at least provide that.

Small claims courts / magistrate court filings are cheap pretty much everywhere, and does not require a lawyer. But it would tie up some exec and someone at their law firm for enough time that it'd be a loss for them whether they in or lose.

And in the EU at least they'd also face a near guaranteed loss in most countries if they tried to punish a customer for taking advantage of their rights to return a product that did not work as advertised.

Incidentally I didn't even follow through with it, though I never played the game even once...

Here's a short (less than one minute) video on how to create a local profile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_jRZ_Sic4k

"Let's say"? Is this a hypothetical? If this didn't actually happen then what's the issue?

2weeks of being jerked around by steam, doing every. Single. One. Of their suggestion AND logging that I did them. No result. The end result could be boiled down to "sucks for you. We don't give refund."

In the end, I ate the $60. I wasn't going to risk my entire game library over one game.

I must say though, the events certainly "raised my consciousness" to the fact that owning digital things is in a really crappy place right now. What other company do we allow the right to reach into our house and pull back things that we have rightfully purchased? It's really quite absurd.

Anyway, at some point this is going to get regulated, especially in the EU. They won't be allowed to use terms like 'purchase' and 'buy' without a specific legal consequence (like the right of resale). Until then we can only hope they get onerous enough to get on the radar of lawmakers.

I really like this idea. Make sure that words that if you want to claim to 'sell' something, you actually have to fulfill criteria that guarantee buyers' rights. It makes a lot of sense and would eliminate a lot of bullshit in digital distribution.

Amazon with Kindle books.

Jokes aside, I had no idea that OReilly gave PDFs with their books. I thought that was only something that much smaller publishers did.

Console games we'll take back if our disk tester says they're faulty.

If I meet the minimum requirements, if I can show bench marks, "prove" system stability, and run every other game in my library with the exception of this specific game, who is liable? Is it my fault that their game doesn't run on my system? That's an honest question, cause I don't know. I know that as a developer, if something I've written doesn't run on a computer that I consider it a fault in my software. Or, can at least recognize that an external force (i.e. a Bit Locker or something) will prevent that software from ever running due to permission issues, at which point a refund would be in order. I just can't wrap my head around not being viable for a broken product.

Valve are. As a matter of law, any seller is responsible for selling a working product. If Valve claim otherwise, they're lying, and probably breaking the law in doing so.

I guess the fine line from Valve is, there isn't really any way to differentiate people legitimately having problems vs. people trying to scam the system, so their default policy is if you file a chargeback your account is going to be suspended.

Or they could just limit the number of refunds you can get, to say 1 out of 10 games that you buy, and no more than one per month.

Or they could just refund you any time you want. Yeah, sure, a few people will scam them that way, but it's not like they have a huge per-unit cost for delivering the games to you. If it'll make users like the above more happy and more willing to buy from Steam, it's probably worth it in the long run.

I think your underestimating the number of gamers who would pull all-nighters to play through a game as fast as possible in order to play games for free. Heck, plenty of people already do that without the ability to get a refund once they are finished.

Hell, if I was still in college I would seriously consider doing it as a broke student.

Allowing for refunds within 24 hours is effectively a free 24 game rental for any game in the library.

Plus, with all the Steam sales how do you not want to do business with them? I have so many games from Steam that I just have but have yet to play.

Also, why would you buy a game without first reading reviews?

Er, maybe not when an update comes out, but about iOS in general? I've sure heard and read plenty of discussions about the app store. The iTunes / App stores is specifically the reason I do not want an iPhone (again).

In this case, I get that its linux, but its Valve's branded linux. Complaints about Steam, the impetus behind the distro, are completely relevant.

Not sure what you mean by this. Who are you complaining about, if not Valve? It's not as though "Steam Support" is an entity independent from them.

I have not had a single negative experience with Valve. I started with them on Windows years ago and when they came out with Steam for Linux last year I installed it and got all my games (that ran on Linux and more since that have been ported) in the same UI, better experience, faster, I have zero complaints with Valve and Steam.

I actually showed Steam my email from them and still had to fight for it. In the end all they would give me was credit for the Steam store, they wouldn't refund me.

I thought this might have been a one-off (maybe I just got a bad customer service person) but apparently not. If I were a game developer I'd be pretty worried that the blame fell back on me for bad customer service like this.

After trying to get it to work for weeks, I finally told them that their product is faulty and they're not doing anything to fix it so I would like my money back. Of course they refused over and over. Since I only had a handful of cheap games bought at sales, I decided to write the whole thing off as a loss and uninstall it.

I had previously spent thousands of dollars through Steam, and after they wouldn't refund a $5 sale, I quit buying games through them. I even mailed a letter to Gabe Newell at their corporate headquarters, and while this has worked successfully with other companies, I never received a reply.

I also won't buy games that require Steam activation, which sucks sometimes. Shadowrun Returns was one such game, but it looks like they now have it on GoG, so I have something to play this weekend.

I'd start doing business with them again for a $5 store credit and an apology, but I have little hope that will ever happen.

It is GAME's policy in the UK to NEVER refund/allow returns of PC games after they've been opened because of piracy, and quite frankly, is exactly the same reason Steam have their own similar policies in place.

If you don't like it, buy console games.

The reason they have these policies in the first place is because so few people stand up for themselves in these situations.

Isn't that illegal under EU consumer protection laws?

Purchasing from Steam has risks and benefits, just as purchasing from any other store does. You highlight one risk, and it is a real risk, but you don't really indicate why it outweighs everything else.

Let's assume that Steam games are generally 20% cheaper than boxed games from my local game store (actually, they're much cheaper than that, in this part of the world). Let's assume that one game in ten is a dud (actually, much less than that, in my experience). So we have two options:

Buy 10 games for X locally, get a refund on one game, ending with 9 good games for 0.9X.

Buy 10 games for 0.8X locally, get no refund, ending with 9 good games for 0.8X.

Obviously, option 2 is better. Same games, less money, even AFTER the refund. Plus I didn't have to go outside to be hit by a bus. :) (Plus, my local game store has a poor selection.) Your argument seems to be "hey, options 2 is so terrible I will never use Steam", but I don't see what's terrible about it; it sounds like a great deal to me. Plus, many brick and mortar stores will quibble over refunds; many will absolutely refuse to give a refund if the box has been opened. How is this better?

"Steam isn't perfect" isn't a good argument. "Steam isn't the best option" is a good argument, but you might struggle to make it. :)

I told Steam about it. They said, "no refunds". It's not that I made some kind of vow to never use Steam again, but basically that was the disappointment that pushed me over to using my PS3 for all new games and I haven't bought another Steam game since. That was a few years ago.

But I don't care. I'm disappointed, sure. On the other hand it's a generally very rare occurrence, mainly limited to indy titles, and it's very likely most games will get fixed and patched. The deployment of fixes is a major benefit to Steam in general.

If you think there's a retailer on earth who won't give you some edge case runaround in a similar way you're naive.

This also isn't the first refund I've gotten? Are you all using the same support ticket system?

This has never happened to me. I've always gotten a refund.