If it's really that important to you, I'm sure you can figure it out for yourself.

I suspect this will effect a lot of Ubisoft games given their history of hidden tagging for the double DRM that is Uplay in the Steam store and their history of broken title launches. It may also expose what a nightmare Steam Support is to a larger group that have typically never had to use it.

It's amazing how every story I've seen on tihs policy change has immediately painted consumers in this stereotypical negative light (with no provocation) yet somehow never ask why refunds on digital goods are not simply a law by now as they are with any physical product. These types of articles just expose the sources as being little more than press agents for developers and game companies.

A company is not doing you a favor by selling you a product, you are doing them one by purchasing it and they have a responsiblity to you that what they sell is not broken or shoddy. Consumers need to stop acting like Steam is doing them a favor as this will be an issue for every digital good they purchase online and ultimately only a law will ensure they can shop with some peace of mind.

p.s. In response to the Boogie video (which I thought was pretty decent), back in the day we didn't buy games and return them, we simply rented them from a video store (remember those) and returned them when we were finished. $70 SNES cartridges only came on xmas and birthdays.

What's different from GoG refund policy? If steam think the user is being funny, they will reject refund.

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Abuse

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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

hum, hum, for experiment purpose, I've just done some "abusive" type of refund request and it just took a few clicks. The request is pending now so we'll see how it turns out...

PS: Here's the procedure in French, pretty simple as you can guess:
http://www.gamekult.com/actu/comment-se-faire-rembourser-un-jeu-sur-steam-A148325.html

In this case directly pirating the game might be by far the easier option.

I case that if developers can set their time window until when a refund is possible that would be optimal. Short games might limit the time to half an hour, longish games might go up to 5 hours. Anyway for the paying customer it would be only good.

And for the cheating customer... well they are cheating anyway under any circumstances.
The newly proposed Steam policy allows more - it allows 2 hours of gameplay as replacement for a missing demo. That is better than GOG who do not even allow download - because there is no DRM on GOG games.

Basically Steam draws on the unique advantages of DRM to present a feature (time limited free gameplay for demonstration purposes) that GOG is never ever being able to match without DRM. A unique advantage of Steam over GOG.

Of course GOG could have that too. They could have a DRMed version with limited time gameplay which then automatically becomes un-DRMed after the first two hours. But hey, customers would not like this and would see this is further sliding down the slippery slope. Also most customers are unable to make these fine distinctions.

I suspect you maybe have limited experience with the business side of retail, and are approaching this completely from a consumer perspective. Retail purchase, much like traditional barter, is a system of reciprocation and mutual benefit. The company is indeed doing you a favor by producing or making available the thing you want -- without the company's existence you would not have the product you so longingly crave and which you are willing to pay for the privilege of having. The company also benefits since they are usually charging an amount that will allow them to pay their expenses as well as grow via profit.

The retail refund/return laws exist to ensure that consumers are not taken advantage of by sellers providing shoddy service or merchandise which does not meet the contractual obligations at the time of purchase. It's not really meant to be used in the way that a lot of American consumers abuse the system -- that is, to simply try before you buy or other more nefarious cases. Big American corporations have profit taking down to a science, and the money rolls in regardless. This allows them to offer in some cases some rather... consumer-friendly return policies and due to economies of scale they are able to weather the small dent in profits due to return policy abuse for the much more important brand recognition they receive for offering such loose policies.

Now, this is all well and good for large companies, and it is win-win for both the big corporations as well as the consumer. The problem is that small business has a tough time keeping up with the same sorts of loose policies and consumer abuse and fraud. Big corporations like this fact -- it helps ensure that their smaller competition can't match the same kind of generous policies and makes their brand seem better. Especially in recent times in which big business favors consumer protection (think PayPal here and the headache it can cause for small businesses dealing with fraud and other such abuses). In many instances, for small businesses and independent entrepreneurs like indie developers, the balance of power rests much more with the consumer and there are no legal protections for small businesses or independent proprietors against these kinds of consumer frauds. Small businesses also often are operating on finite resources and can't allocate the same kind of manpower or investment in fraud detection and prevention, nor do they have the deep pockets to be able to weather some fiscal catastrophe due to consumer/criminal abuse. The payment processors don't really care about small businesses either -- they are also tied in with the megacorps and are happy to give more power to whatever will maximize their bottom lines.

Which asks some interesting questions about the fate of DRM free games on Steam (Quite a few of these at the moment, but it may worry the devs and publishers that offer them).

I can't imagine someone with ill intent would waste their 'grace period' on cheap and or indie titles. The only way I could see people like doing anything with small titles or indie titles en masse would be if the dev rubbed so many people the wrong way with their behavior that people want to bomb them with shit reviews. I think the only indies truly at risk are the exploitative ones that have drawn negative attention. Otherwise the titles at the most risk are going to be the big premium titles the ones charging $60+.

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Personally:

I've made a lot of bad purchases over the years, some indie some AAA. The bad indie purchases I have no trouble writing off (I've wasted more money at the drivethru when famished). I can't think of one indie title where I have been so dissatisfied that I would bother doing anything over $3-10. Of my 400 games on Steam (don't judge me too harshly most are retail or bundles) there is only one that I'd even considered requesting a refund on when the refund system was introduced (and I own a lot of terrible just awful games) and it's a $60 pre-order I had made in the past.

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.

Steam might also look at when you download the game.

Suppose Game A is DRM Free, you download it on Sunday 1st August 2015, it's detected and marked by Steam.

If by two or three weeks you don't issue a refund, they automatically mark it as non refundable.

Well, just my random thought.

Are you trying to kill him?

Consumers abusing small producers.. until today I never really thought about this. It sounds a bit strange but thank you for this new way of looking at things. :)

As I see it one can hardly forbid the big companies to offer consumer friendly services like a 2hour free gameplay if they want so. I rather see the problem here in the thing that Steam wants to force everyone to do the same. At least it should be completely optional for the publishers because consumers have no right to it - it would be a pure goodwill thing. But surely nobody can prevent the big companies of going that way. The technology (DRM in that case) is there and is used.

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.

TotalBiscuit made a few tweets about this issue:
Tweet 1
Tweet 2
Tweet 3
Tweet 4
Tweet 5

"One change I'd make to the Steam refund policy is to refuse refunds for games that have been "completed", in order to protect developers of short games that are less than 2 hours. That said I think the paranoia about mass-refunds for short titles is somewhat overblown. If the player had a good experience with your game, they're not likely to turn around and screw you. If you have that little faith in gamers then I have to wonder why you're even making games for them in the first place? People generally get mad at short games for two reasons. 1) You left them wanting more, which is a good thing, your next game will sell even better. 2) You gave them an experience they felt wasn't worth their money, in which case, that's your fault, maybe reconsider making a game that short for that price next time, respect the customers limited budget and how hard they had to work to earn that money they just gave you. As usual it shouldn't surprise you that my stance on this is Consumer First."
"Oh incidently any games media taking the side of devs over consumers on consumer rights seems to have forgotten who their readers are"
"That said it seems to be a tiny minority of devs complaining, most realise on which side their bread is buttered"
"But yeah maybe if your game is short as hell, disclose that. Honestly if people want your game free, there are other, easier ways."
"Please note I am supporting a policy which literally makes my product less relevant to people, because I am not a twat"

Well even if I download the game but find it unable to run on my system I can get a refund for GoG.

Just that GoG does not allow refund if I play it and find I don't like the game.

But GoG are generous to refund even though you are not eligible because you ask nicely, sometimes not nicely too.
http://www.craveonline.com.au/gaming/articles/848655-gog-customer-service-argues-customer-pillars-eternitys-transphobic-joke