How often do you guys get refunds from Steam?

[Scott]

I've bought a few games lately and been completely underwhelmed to the point where I've gotten refunds. It's actually happened more often than I've been satisfied with the purchases so it got me wondering if this was commonplace or not?

The thing is... these games aren't cheap and it's not as if they are on a disc that can be easily sold on for most of your money back. If I don't like a game I don't want to be £40 down every time, it adds up so quickly.

I've got XCom2 (it's OK, I'm hoping it's a grower), Shadow Warrior 2 (this game is just bonkers), Civ V (knew this one anyway) and GTA V. I'm thinking of getting ROTTR to replace Mafia III but I don't want to seem like I'm extracting the urine. So far I've refunded Mafia III, Wonderboy Returns, Aerofly FS2 and Sniper Elite III (it came out MUCH cheaper and I missed it).

I just want to make sure this is the norm and that it's OK continuing to try games and getting refunds when I don't like them without any repercussions.

 

[Oussebon]

I assume you've seen this:

Abuse
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.

http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

I've only got one or two refunds over a fairly extended period so can't comment from personal experience, but I believe it's fairly normal to get refunds on several items in fairly close proximity from what I've seen others say.

The biggest concern I heard relating to refund abuse was for indie games where the game might be doable within 2 hours and so people were just getting refunds after completing the game. If this is the intention behind Valve's statement about the refund system not being to facilitate 'free games', then you're probably a lot safer buying titles from a big studios, playing for 30 mins and getting a refund after deciding it's a shocking excuse for a game, rather than if you buy a load of indie games, play them each for 1h 59m and then get refunds.

You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn't meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn't like it.

While it might be best to avoid doing it too much, or using the refund feature as an unrestricted try-before-you-commit feature, it seems fairly clear that the policy is intended to cover situations where you dropped £40 on a purchase and then decided the game was terrible.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I've had one refund in my 8 or so year steam lifetime and that was for no mans sky which I did feel was Mis sold and nothing like advertised.

 

[Scott]

I assume you've seen this:


http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

I've only got one or two refunds over a fairly extended period so can't comment from personal experience, but I believe it's fairly normal to get refunds on several items in fairly close proximity from what I've seen others say.

The biggest concern I heard relating to refund abuse was for indie games where the game might be doable within 2 hours and so people were just getting refunds after completing the game. If this is the intention behind Valve's statement about the refund system not being to facilitate 'free games', then you're probably a lot safer buying titles from a big studios, playing for 30 mins and getting a refund after deciding it's a shocking excuse for a game, rather than if you buy a load of indie games, play them each for 1h 59m and then get refunds.


While it might be best to avoid doing it too much, or using the refund feature as an unrestricted try-before-you-commit feature, it seems fairly clear that the policy is intended to cover situations where you dropped £40 on a purchase and then decided the game was terrible.

Thanks for the info. It was more-so for the big titles rather than the indie ones. I also bought Simple Planes which I think I'll really get into and it was really cheap. I don't mind losing out a couple of quid for a poor purchase but Mafia III is a good example of a poor big title. I thoroughly enjoyed Mafia II, in fact I completed it again recently, but I just didn't feel the 3rd was THAT good. Similarly with Elite Sniper III, if I had got it for the sub £10 sale price I would be happy, £40 though? From what I could see there wasn't much of a plot and I felt the game would be very samey throughout.

I've had one refund in my 8 or so year steam lifetime and that was for no mans sky which I did feel was Mis sold and nothing like advertised.

It's most likely down to me not being that much of a gamer. I'm incredibly fussy with what I actually want to spend my time on. That and the fact that I'm pretty much skint after buying the laptop. I'm a man of fairly humble means so I need to be able to justify the price of the games I purchase. I'm still trying to figure out how to justify the laptop

 

[Dayve]

Toward the end of 2015, let's say the final 4 months of that year, I probably bought around 15-20 games on STEAM and, I exaggerate not, I got refunds for all of them. Eventually STEAM started to send me emails basically telling me to do some research before buying games so I don't keep getting refunds.

Around Christmas I realized I was burned out on new games. They either all suck, or they're exactly the same as games I already own just in a different setting. For example I bought Civilization: Beyond Earth, I think that was the final one I bought, and after 30 minutes of playing I thought "why did I buy this? It's just Civ 5 but with spacey skins, AND I have about 10 strategy games identical to it already in my library".

So yeah, I got refunds, lots of them. Then just before 2016 began I made a new year resolution not to buy any new games in 2016 at all (though I could buy expansions for games I already own and play a lot, which has only amounted to two DLC's for Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4).

I've stuck to it so far for all of 2016 but I'll be breaking it next week with Civilization 6. It'll be the first new game I've bought in almost a year

Edit - Just to clarify, I wasn't getting refunds to abuse the system or anything, I would never do that. If I bought an indie game and completed it in under 2 hours I would never get a refund for that, that's a scummy trick to pull on a poor little indie company. I was genuinely looking for a good new game that would grip me and keep me entertained for a few months, like games such as Skyrim or Witcher 3 do, but I just couldn't find one. Every single game I bought was either terrible, a terrible PC port, or just identical to games I already had several of. Company of Heroes 2 was another one... I bought it, played for an hour, it wasn't as good as CoH 1 AND it was too identical to CoH 1 for me to get any enjoyment out of it.