Steam contradicting itself?

[little P]

lol I don't really agree with what your saying there Duke to be honest.

I'm using common sense to demo games and realizing they are unfinished bags of shite and getting my money back for said unfinished piles of garbage. Rather than waste money which only rich people and fools do.

So, I'm playing within the rules CLEARLY set out by the platform so they can go and do one. I'm done buying shit games and regretting it. I've spent hundreds on games since this refund policy came out so I'm keeping the ones that are worth the money. I don't torrent games so what other choice do I have to experience a game first hand before making an informed choice like you say? Watch lets plays and game reviews? Nope. I want to experience a game for myself not watch someone else play it before I make a decision about whether I want to invest in it. Some would say the people buying games then taking it on the chin when they realize they have bought an unfinished bug ridden piece of garbage are the people making the stupid choices.

Bring back the days of demos where you can actually try a game before you buy. That way game devs had to work to impress you so you would buy the game. Not build a hype train, release some pretty screenshots with a load of promises that 9/10 times aren't fulfilled but they don't care because they have your money by that point.

It has done one good thing though, raised an interesting debate between the community which I like

 

[Kenadian]

lol I know you don't agree and that's fine, I don't expect you to.

Irregardless of what you choose to do or not to do it shouldn't affect my attempts to return a game on Steam :lol:

 

[Daunt]

It's always good to get a healthy debate going. It wouldn't be fun if we all didn't hate eachother.

Also no such thing as "irregardless" :icon_cheesygrin:

 

[Lockard.J]

All being said, I've never returned one either. They state in the return policy that they will let you return games. They didn't mention the possibility of reversing that until you had returned a few. I don't know about any lawyers getting horny over it either, Steam is extending a service that no one else would even consider and the game developers don't even want them to. They are well within their rights to not offer that to you any longer if they feel you are abusing it somehow. It's a diversionary tactic.

I think it's great to see a company that bends to their customers instead of the high and mighty game developers.

 

[Kenadian]

Also no such thing as "irregardless" :icon_cheesygrin:

Sure there is, its just not generally accepted. Just about everyone recommends you use regardless but I like to buck the trends irregardless of what others say

 

[Kenadian]

All being said, I've never returned one either. They state in the return policy that they will let you return games. They didn't mention the possibility of reversing that until you had returned a few. I don't know about any lawyers getting horny over it either, Steam is extending a service that no one else would even consider and the game developers don't even want them to. They are well within their rights to not offer that to you any longer if they feel you are abusing it somehow. It's a diversionary tactic.

I think it's great to see a company that bends to their customers instead of the high and mighty game developers.

Couldn't agree more.

Well I s'pose I could but right now I'm a little tapped out.

 

[JohnnyK]

The devs SHOULD be upset about the refunds. They should be upset with themselves for releasing garbage.

That's too simplistic though; it might be true for major studios, but the current system royally fucks indie developers even if their game is good:
http://www.gameskinny.com/arqww/indie-devs-not-happy-with-steams-new-refund-policy

 

[Shilka]

Well, steam should take into account how many games you buy there before seeing something as abuse as well.
If someone who bought 10 games can return 1, then someone who bought 100 games should be able to return 10 right? Both have returned 10% of their purchases, not seeing why the second guy should be abusing while the first one does not, eventhough they return the same percentage of their games.

I guess thats P's point when he sais he has spent a lot of money at steam.

 

[little P]

Yup. My point exactly.

Maybe a system where you build up the right to refund based on your expenditure or something like that might be a good idea.

 

[Kenadian]

Just how many games is a lot of games little P? I'm dying to know how many games you've purchased in 2015?

Your purchase history can be found here: https://store.steampowered.com/account/history/

 

[little P]

Well seeing as you're dying to know I will oblige. It's not as much as some might spend but I consider it a lot to spend on games considering I work full time.

£363.86 worth on the Steam platform so far this year ($733.66 Canadian) and that will be nearer the £500 mark by the time this year is out. That's kept games so not including any refunding activity.

There you have it. And screw you for making me do maths. I hate maths.

 

[Kenadian]

lol I don't care about the dollar value but how many titles have you purchased?

 

[little P]

In the words of Jeremy Clarkson; "literally many, many titles".

 

[Kenadian]

...still not helpful.

 

[tmtm]

I love you goofballs, I really do. Why, I have no idea, but I do anyway.

 

[Lockard.J]

When the return policy first came out it was only for Beta or "Early Access" games. I would have been fine if it stayed at that.

"Even if their game is good" That is very relative. If someone decided to return something they do not agree with you. Steam could put things in place to check how many returns you have vs. now many purchases, they could make it so you can only return if you have less than 10 hours logged, they could do a lot of stuff.

What it really boils down to, is customers like it and adding levels of 'checks' will cost them money. More than the returns do. If a developer goes out of business because all of their games are returned, then good riddance. There are THOUSANDS of games released every year. Most are trash. If they can't make a living selling their product, their product is bad.

 

[Solo4114]

I gotta say, I'm with little p on this.

Steam has said, literally, "Go ahead and refund for any reason you like." It's as clear as you could ask for.

You can come up with all manner of arguments over how this hurts developers, and gamers shouldn't use it because it's bad for the industry. Likewise, you can come up with arguments about how this adds a much-needed finger on the scale for consumers who basically have zero recourse for buggy, technically unworkable, or even just unsatisfying releases of games.

But all of that is entirely beside the point. That's all about the "ought" of the argument, rather than the "is." If you choose not to return games because you don't want to harm publishers, that's fine. That's your choice, and you're entitled to it. But if Steam puts out a system that says "Try for 2 hours and return if you don't like it," then they have to live by the system they've designed, and little p is using it as designed.

If Steam then sends out letters to dissuade people from returning games, I say...fuck 'em. Ignore it. Steam can't stop you from continuing to do exactly what you've been doing under this policy. If they don't like it, they can change the policy.

But here's the thing. Steam won't do that because they KNOW they will catch immeasurable hell from their customers. They will seriously piss off their customer base if this was ever actually enforced because this move, the refund policy, has become a cornerstone of their customer service. It sells their brand. It makes people want to buy from their store. And, frankly, trying to enforce what they've written to little p would absolutely open them up to a false advertising lawsuit. With enough people, it would be a major class action case. Not only would it cost them bigtime in terms of even just having to defend the case, it would kill their goodwill.

 

[Kenadian]

It's just this kind of thinking that causes the masses to suffer from the piss poor decisions of a few.

We're all born with a measure of common sense and that dictates that continually returning products to where you purchased them is a waste of money. Every single responsible adult in the world who's ever made a purchase knows this which is why most will try to make educated purchases.

Then there are those who try to exploit it because they think they it's ok to do stupid shit so long as someone didn't address that stupid shit directly.

Just open up a news paper and read about all the crap that happens in the world because our society is becoming indifferent to ignorance. A criminal can sue a home owner because he got hurt robbing them. A pedestrian can sue a home owner because they slipped on the snow in front of the home. They have to put warning labels on a cup of coffee warning the coffee is hot. I think there's even a warning label on irons warning you to not iron clothes as you wear them.

This is no different at all. I know p bought a lot of games but he did it because he had the money to do so. I'm willing to bet some of those games would not have been purchased if money was tight. I'm willing to bet he would have exercised a lot more discretion then.

...or not but if you're just buying stuff with reckless abandon simply because you know you can send it back then how does that not raise an alarm in your head? You simply cannot do this anywhere else in today's world so how you can argue this is acceptable is very alien to me?

I would love to see it your guys way but it's impossible to do so because your argument is we can exploit Steam because they haven't expressly forbid us to do so.

I'm sorry but we all know where this will lead if it was exploited by Steams Customers and that would be the end of this policy. Hell if every single Steam Customer returned a few titles this week it would likely be the end of Steam.

Steam is a content delivery service guys, they don't get the money they get a percentage of that money. When you return it they lose that percentage plus are out all the administrative costs of getting your money back to you.

Not to mention the Developer they probably pissed off in the meantime because they hate the Policy but Steam would rather protect the Customer than the Developer.

They are basically biting the hand that feeds them just to keep you happy. How you guys don't see this is beyond me?

You use a measure of common sense all the time when you make purchases outside of Steam. Would you buy houses in this manner, no. Would you buy vehicles in this manner, no. Would you buy furniture or groceries in this manner, absolutely not.

Why not, because you'd be inconvenienced taking it back and continually doing so would make you look like a complete moron.

Anyway I think this is the end of it for me in this topic. Every single time I read one of these ludicrous support claims about how this is acceptable I die a little inside lol.

 

[Solo4114]

Here's Steam's policy re: abuse.

[h=2]Abuse[/h] 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.

That's it. That's their abuse policy. It's pretty vague.


Frankly, I don't actually understand how it would appear that you're trying to get "free games" if, after 2 hours, you can't play the game again. I think their terms should be more explicit about how they define "abuse," because, as written, they're pretty unclear and make it difficult for high-volume purchasers like P to make an informed decision.

If the rules are "No more than 10 returns in X amount of time," fine. Say so up front. P will likely make his purchases and his returns accordingly. But a policy like this is just poor customer service, in my opinion.

To be honest, I think the letter to P was probably automatically generated. Likely the system only looks at total # of returns, and then sends out the return warning message. It doesn't look at total # of returns in comparison to purchases. I would expect that looking at P's history, if he's spent $1000 or so on purchases that he kept would pretty much put him in the clear for a return on, say, 5% of his purchases, even if that's a high volume of returns.

Regardless, if Steam has a % threshold for returns-to-purchases, that needs to be explicit, too. You can't claim "abuse" when nobody has any idea what constitutes abuse other than "just use your common sense." It's perfectly sensible to figure that if you bought 30-50 games in a year, returning 6 wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[Kenadian]

No it's really not actually. You're turning a content delivery service into a game demo service.

Most games don't offer demos these days because I'm sure somewhere some number cruncher knows how much they stand to lose from their bottom line based off the inferior product they're trying to peddle.

I agree they could certainly be more clear on their terms but as for the argument that you should be able to return 10% of what you purchase, we'll never see eye to eye.