Valve Now Offering Refunds

Valve recently, quietly initiated a new refund policy for games and DLC purchased through Steam. Gamers will now be able to get a refund for any game or DLC within 14 days of the purchase, as long as you haven’t played the related game for more than two hours since the purchase.

Other stipulations apply depending on the type of content; VAC banned players are excluded, the content cannot have been transferred or consumed (meaning used boosters are a no-go), if it was pre-ordered the 14 day rule only starts on the final release date, and movies and gifts are excluded completely.

Users will be able to request refunds through Steam’s main website and they should receive their money back within a week, either through the previously used method of payment or into their Steam wallet.

This comes as a little bit of an about-face for Valve who previously opposed laws requiring refunds in Europe, where they now say “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.”

For myself, this would take the risk out of buying a game only to find out you really can’t run it at any decent spec. The DLC side is a little less important, but still a nice change of pace in this all-digital market we’re moving towards.

Source: Steam, via Gamespot