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General discussionSteam now offers refunds, and I'm out of a job(472 posts)(472 posts)
(472 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 04, 2015
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Trilarion: What stays is that in case of technical difficulties (game does not run) you can get a refund even from GOG. This does not include playing or not being happy with the content, just technical difficulties.

I fully agree with your very well thought post but I also think we cannot turn back the time. It's the future and maybe even an example of DRM put to good use (never thought I would say that). But I actually like that I can test a product without relying on biased reviews. And I actually think that I'm not the sort of abusive, criminal customer.
Oh certainly the vast majority of consumers are decent, honest people. It's just that in the maybe 2-3% of cases where things like actual credit card fraud or people just frivolously demand refunds without proper justification businesses get stuck with chargeback costs while both the payment processor and the buyer basically get away with it scot-free. The problem is that while there are laws put in place to protect consumers from criminal or unethical business activity (and I fully agree there should be), there are no equivalent laws that protect businesses from criminal or unethical consumer activity. These sorts of one-sided cases actually also hurt consumers in the long run, as businesses will usually increase their prices in order to offset expenses due to theft and loss.

The other issue is that I feel current consumer mentality in general breeds a certain sense of entitlement which seems to be kind of a growing issue with recent generations and I dislike it very much. I'm also not immune to it. I've caught myself sometimes getting all righteous about something which in retrospect was rather silly and egotistical on my part, and a large part of it I believe has to do with the way it is ingrained that "the customer is always right". Well yes, in business terms it is usually best to follow that mantra, but as a customer I think people sometimes let it go to their heads and they forget to follow basic rules of civility and mutual respect.
Posted June 04, 2015
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the.kuribo: The other issue is that I feel current consumer mentality in general breeds a certain sense of entitlement which seems to be kind of a growing issue with recent generations and I dislike it very much. I'm also not immune to it. I've caught myself sometimes getting all righteous about something which in retrospect was rather silly and egotistical on my part, and a large part of it I believe has to do with the way it is ingrained that "the customer is always right". Well yes, in business terms it is usually best to follow that mantra, but as a customer I think people sometimes let it go to their heads and they forget to follow basic rules of civility and mutual respect.
I have this book in my library, only have read a few bits here and there (yeah, "books backlog") but it looks interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/Narcissism-Epidemic-Living-Age-Entitlement/dp/1416575995/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Posted June 04, 2015
This guy also has some interesting thoughts on the matter: https://medium.com/@adrianchm/six-reasons-why-game-developers-should-be-ecstatic-about-steam-refunds-f76fd09e7c7a
Posted June 04, 2015
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Hammercorps: This guy also has some interesting thoughts on the matter: https://medium.com/@adrianchm/six-reasons-why-game-developers-should-be-ecstatic-about-steam-refunds-f76fd09e7c7a
While I agree with him (afterall,short games should be proud of themselves and make it their selling point), I'm still puzzled about the DLC refund which is a bit of non-sense as supposedly, the customer is already enjoying the base game. It's even more a non-sense for drm-free DLC like soundtracks.
Posted June 04, 2015
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Hammercorps: This guy also has some interesting thoughts on the matter: https://medium.com/@adrianchm/six-reasons-why-game-developers-should-be-ecstatic-about-steam-refunds-f76fd09e7c7a
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catpower1980: While I agree with him (afterall,short games should be proud of themselves and make it their selling point), I'm still puzzled about the DLC refund which is a bit of non-sense as supposedly, the customer is already enjoying the base game. It's even more a non-sense for drm-free DLC like soundtracks.
Yeah, that one doesn't make sense to me either.
Posted June 04, 2015
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catpower1980: While I agree with him (afterall,short games should be proud of themselves and make it their selling point), I'm still puzzled about the DLC refund which is a bit of non-sense as supposedly, the customer is already enjoying the base game. It's even more a non-sense for drm-free DLC like soundtracks.
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Hammercorps: Yeah, that one doesn't make sense to me either.
That's exactly why I made an "abusive" refund to see if it will work or not. ;)
Posted June 04, 2015
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MikeMaximus: That sucks. I noticed that the developer has control over what dlc is refundable, maybe you can get around this by making your games as a single product with each story being dlc.
sucks ? Are you crazy ? It's an incredibly great news for gamers.
That means you can get refunds for games like Eador masters of the broken gameplay unlike here (i couldn't get a refund from gog for some reason even though i only launched the game once and deleted that crap).
That means if you preorder and the game sucks, you can get refunded.
Posted June 04, 2015
As I expected, the webmaster of steamspy gave some data:
https://twitter.com/Steam_Spy/status/606416984650059776/photo/1

General Playtime on Steam for "owned copies" (meaning they can come from bundles or 3rd party sites):

No playtime ( => thus not played at all) : 36%
Less than 2 hours: 24%
More than 2 hours : 40%
Post edited June 04, 2015 by catpower1980
Posted June 04, 2015
I like that Steam is offering refunds but 2 hours is a pretty generous amount of play time to be able to get a refund after. 30 mins is enough to try most games.
Posted June 04, 2015
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Faenrir: sucks ? Are you crazy ? It's an incredibly great news for gamers.
That means you can get refunds for games like Eador masters of the broken gameplay unlike here (i couldn't get a refund from gog for some reason even though i only launched the game once and deleted that crap).
That means if you preorder and the game sucks, you can get refunded.
It sucks for his situation, I didn't mean refunds in general suck.
Post edited June 04, 2015 by MikeMaximus
Posted June 04, 2015
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jefequeso: because one of my games didn't work with his AZERTY keyboard (which I hadn't even heard of before that).
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Kardwill: Most computers in France come with AZERTY keyboards. Many little differences with the QWERTY ones, but the main offender for gaming is the switch of the positions of Q and A, and of Z and W. Since most games use a wasd scheme for movement (that becomes zqsd on AZERTY), playing a game without any control remaping is often nearly impossible.

That said, under windows, switching between AZERTY and QWERTY is quite easy. If both are supported (as is often the case by default on French computers), then the switch is done with just a 2 keys combo. Sure, your letters will be inverted if you have to type a word (can be a pain to enter a character's name, for example), and the prompts "press w to advance" will be wrong since the w key will be labelled "z" on my keyboard after the switch, but controls will be on the right "intuitive" spot.
I believe the problem he had was not being able to properly rebind keys, but as I said he never actually bothered to explain his problem any further, and Google doesn't turn up anyone else having problems with Unity and AZERTY keyboards. So I have no idea if it's actually a problem or a "user error."

That's interesting, though. Like I said, I hadn't ever heard of them before.
Posted June 04, 2015
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jefequeso: I believe the problem he had was not being able to properly rebind keys, but as I said he never actually bothered to explain his problem any further, and Google doesn't turn up anyone else having problems with Unity and AZERTY keyboards. So I have no idea if it's actually a problem or a "user error."

That's interesting, though. Like I said, I hadn't ever heard of them before.
Azerty user here! :) In Moon Sliver, the keys are not rebindable in-game unless we do the "alt+shift" trick but not all gamers know that trick. If you have questions like this, tell them to change the keys configuration in the game launcher window (the one used to set video preferences before starting the game). So it goes like this:

Up : Z
Left: Q
Down : S
Right: D
Posted June 04, 2015
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Fesin: "That said it seems to be a tiny minority of devs complaining, most realise on which side their bread is buttered"
I wonder if he'd feel the same way if people could refund their ad revenue after watching one of his videos.

(Yes, I realize "refund their ad revenue" makes no sense. You know what I mean)

I basically agree with his tweets, but I'm a bit irritated at this "if you're worried about the refund policy you're a terrible, stupid human being" attitude some people seem to have. If you went to work tomorrow and your boss informed you that your paycheck would now be in the form of a large basket of money, stored unguarded and unlocked in the public restroom, wouldn't you be a mite concerned?

Yeah, it's not a perfect analogy, but I think you get my point.

I can see the advantages of the refund system, and Steam probably has a way of dealing with potential exploits... but still, guys, try to put yourself in my position before you get all self-righteous and haughty. I woke up yesterday and suddenly, it seemed to me, the general public had a way to basically pirate both my games directly from their store pages. My wife and I just started being able to actually pay our bills within the last year or so. Wouldn't you be a little scared as well?


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jefequeso: I believe the problem he had was not being able to properly rebind keys, but as I said he never actually bothered to explain his problem any further, and Google doesn't turn up anyone else having problems with Unity and AZERTY keyboards. So I have no idea if it's actually a problem or a "user error."

That's interesting, though. Like I said, I hadn't ever heard of them before.
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catpower1980: Azerty user here! :) In Moon Sliver, the keys are not rebindable in-game unless we do the "alt+shift" trick but not all gamers know that trick. If you have questions like this, tell them to change the keys configuration in the game launcher window (the one used to set video preferences before starting the game). So it goes like this:

Up : Z
Left: Q
Down : S
Right: D
See, that's what I thought. The launcher should allow you to rebind everything. Thanks for letting me know that it does indeed work, in case anyone else has the same problem.

I wonder why it wasn't working for him...
Post edited June 04, 2015 by jefequeso
Posted June 04, 2015
Just bought Fallout 3 GOTY yesterday, today it's $8 cheaper. Time to test their refund policy. I'll let you all know how long it takes.
Posted June 04, 2015
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Ophelium: Just bought Fallout 3 GOTY yesterday, today it's $8 cheaper. Time to test their refund policy. I'll let you all know how long it takes.
Fallout 3?! Ahem, don't know what you put for the "reason for refund" option but with this one, you can tell it's a broken mess. Trick is that it generally crashes after the loooonnnggg tutorial/intro so you waste the 2 hours by praying it won't crash ^o^
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionSteam now offers refunds, and I'm out of a job(472 posts)(472 posts)
(472 posts)