I believe GOG sometimes does that if you write to them.

I will try I'm just wondering if they're gonna pull the "30 day return" policy on me.

I believe the 30 days thing is more on games that have been downloaded but don't work.

So tell us, how much money do you want? We aren't very rich here, but maybe we can collect some for you?

How can you prove zero play time on a DRM-free game? Once you've downloaded it, it's yours.
Ah, then go right ahead. Try it out. Hopefully they'll refund it. You're not sounding as unreasonable as you were originally. I apologize for my earlier sass. :D

Many Steam games support offline mode, and could be run without launching Steam client first.
So, not all play time are recorded by Steam.

You've implied you were busy twice now yet here you still are.
That time is still tracked even offline. Yes it doesn't appear on your profile, the playtime data is still uploaded once you log online though. Plenty of people have tried to play offline to claim they never played the game in hopes of getting a refund (not me but I doubt I have any credibility left at this point)

That's true, but Steam doesn't like to acknowledge such a thing is possible. Whenever they're asked about games running without the client, the answer is "Running games outside of Steam is not supported. Resistance is futile." etc.
Offline mode maybe, but not for the DRM-free games that can be run without Steam even running.

If you want to be incredibly difficult about it you could conceivably have a second computer with an image of windows + fresh install of Steam and download, disconnect internet, play to your hearts content and then restore the computer to the original image. Not a speck of data would ever make it out to Steam.

Might as well pirate at that point though. And you're bound to get warnings about refund abuse either way if you repeat it often enough.

Nope. It's the other way round. 30 day no questions asked refund on games that you didn't download. Unlimited refund for games that don't work and that GOG support can't get to run on your computer either (as long as that computer fulfills the system specs on the product page).

Ah, I thought there was a time limit on the "it doesn't work" thing in that you had to have contacted support and reported it not working within 30 days. Obviously there's not a time limit on the "trying to get it work" phase, but I thought you had to report the problem sharpish.

This is a genuine question, why did Steam bend the knee to Australian consumer laws?

I might be harsh, but the idea of claiming money back after such a long period of time sounds plainly.. out of place.
Everyone makes mistakes and 30 days is long enough to find out you've made one. Definietely not two years..

Valve is a massive company, most likely, they had some presence in Australia that opened them up to being subjected to the law down there. Unfortunately Valve is a privately held corporation so there's a lot less transparency about how they operate internally. Most likely, they have some data centers there that they own rather than that they contract out to somebody else to do.

International law is not particularly easy to understand and I'm hardly an expert, but as a general rule, the only reason that you'd likely go to a foreign country for a trial is if your'e intending to go there at some point or to a country that has an extradition treaty.

That was a civil suit, so extradition isn't an issue, but having assets in a country that's willing to seize them on the court's behalf would be sufficient to subject somebody to the penalty.

The reason why MS, Google and so many others wind up running afoul of the EU and paying the fines is that most of those corporations have a unit operating out of there.

As an American citizen operating out of the US I'm under no obligation of any sort to respect the GPDR if I don't want to. I don't have any assets in the EU and as somebody operating out of the US, it's the US' laws that are relevant. The EU courts can have their proceedings, but it would be completely irrelevant as that's not where I'm located.

Similarly, you'll notice that most companies not operating out of the EU don't collect VAT regardless of where the person is located. It's not something that we're legally required to do and there's not much they can do to force it. In most cases though, it's a moot point as the cost of shipping is higher than what the VAT savings would be.
The ToS should clarify just how long you have to request a refund for that sort of thing. But, the only period of time I see is 30 days and I do see at the bottom of the page an indication that it's not an absolute policy. If somebody is doing something that they consider to be abusive, they don't have to allow returns.

Which seems reasonable. Very few shops that I've seen online allow people to return things for refund after a long period of time, ti's just not reasonable to set aside the cash to do so.