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Valve Introduces Steam Refunds In Advance of Summer Sale
Deathspawner writes: Despite all of its competition, Valve's Steam service remains the most popular digital PC game store around. While Steam does do a lot of things right, it can sometimes stumble in the worst of ways. Look no further than April's Skyrim mod debacle as a good example. Well, just as Valve fixed up that issue, it's gone ahead and fixed another: it's making refunds dead simple. While refunds have been possible in the past, it's required gamers to jump through hoops to get them. Now, Valve has set certain criteria for granting a refund, no questions asked: if you've bought the game within the past two weeks and played it for two hours or less, your refund is guaranteed.
The changes are being welcomed by most, but not all: some developers of smaller games that take less time to play through are worried that this will lead to abuse, and the system may enable more risk-free review-bombing as well.
Yep. It's the usual crowd of anti-gamers that's whining about this.
Think "games" like Depression Quest and Gone Home. Games that aren't what any sane person would call a "game" and contain less than two hours of content but still charge like $5 for the "experience." It's just more anti-gamer crap from the usual crowd.
Damned right. They are upset about this because Indie games and shitrags like Kotaku have a nice little incestuous relationship. Shitrag posts glowing review of some Indie darling PC garbage and it sells... even though as soon as you bought it, it's clear that it's utter unplayable garbage.
This will put a stop to that. Of course the corrupt Indie devs and shitsack journos they are in cahoots with don't like it.
Most games I purchase aren't from public reviews but from friends recommendations.
Smaller games once recognized will quickly drop in rating if they really aren't that good.