They can't, Steam doesn't see a single cent from third party sales. The third party resellers may refund you tho, given a good reason. Probably won't. But might.

I don't believe that GabeN will return money so easily and automatically.... I think this is a case by case scenario..

If the game has a playable DEMO, then I think no refund for you..

In my opinion, for several years, most of the devs (big, medium or small) refuse to publish playable DEMOS..

Since a LOT of years, We, the videogame consumers, were forced to buy games only based on the CGI teaser trailers (I remember the Crysis 2 fiasco)...

As much, we decide to buy a game thanks to an ingame video made by someone who DID have access to an exclusive playable DEMO released only for the press...

Well... The lazy devs now must pay the price... If you release broken games, pay the price.. If you try to cheat the gamers with CGI videos and if you don't allow the them to try the game first with a DEMO, pay the price..

I would think a fairly simple fix would be to make it up to "X hours played or y% of achievements completed."

Someone with 2 hours play time but 90% achievement completion is generally quite different than someone with 2 hours and 5% completion.

Like any system there are ways both developers and players could potentially game it, but it should be less vulnerable than just something time-based. Provided, of course, the game is accurately portraying its length to play through.

Well you'll see how it goes :) Personally I wouldn't return a game even if I completed in in the given time limit - I will save it for later replay, even if the story is memorable the details are not!

Btw it is very good from steam's site to offer this "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." so good I couldn't believe it :D

Well, I'm trying it, even though it's been over two weeks. I didn't realize a game I bought was for 64-bit, not 32, so I haven't done a thing with it. And not surprisingly, their "select an option" options are rather limited. I didn't even see anything directly related to getting refunds; it's like they want to frustrate you into giving up.

How something like this works is that you are given a number of refunds before being considered a problem customer and being given the boot.

This is how all business operates like retailer or video stores with a refund policy. The business keep track of the customers who are getting refunds and if it gets abusive (depends on the retailer as to when this happens) they just tell the customer that they can't do business with them anymore.

Makes sense since there will be those that abuse it.

This is great news but they should of offered refunds years ago.

I remember the Amazon rep who used to post Amazon deals on the forums got grief from one of their departments because he had been helping people get refunds for games if they messaged him and apparently one of them was a a *massive* abuser of refunds.

Depends.

- Well-known torrent sites dropping like flies, many countries (incl. my country) blocking torrent sites still standing etc. I think the Swedish officials already captured the well-known PBay URLs. So even locating the still standing torrent sites (whatever their URLs are this week) and working around the ISP blocks can be too much hassle for many.

- Tracking down the up-to-date version, instead of the initial buggy 1.0 version.

- Generally it feels safer to download your game from a known store, instead of Russian and Chinese seeders on the bittorrent network.

I think the main argument against misusing the refund system is that if one person keeps repeating it quite often, Valve will probably just refuse refunding him/her from there on. So there will be limited number of chances for misusing it, I guess.

Another one, you will not be eligible for the service for that game anymore, like further updates, if any.

Oh lord.

Just got told by someone on Twitter that he "has little sympathy for games with single digit runtimes."

Impressive!
Have you tried to get them on GOG?

The question would be did you check Store Requirements before purchasing? Was there a notification that the game was 64 bit only?

If there wasn't, contact them and ask to issue you a refund, since it's clearly their fault.

If there was, eat your loss and act like a man.

praise gaben.

we will mail him pizzas and send callgirls to his offices wearing bacon bikinis.

this'll sure throw a kink in the wheels of all those trying to get a bandwagon going that valve is "selling out" and steam isn't good anymore especially after the mod trainwreck.

Yeah, they don't want them.