10 ms·
I have a huge problem with Steam in general. It's nothing against Valve and nothing against the games on Steam store, but hear me out. Lets say you buy a game
by jamra 13y ago
I have a huge problem with Steam in general. It's nothing against Valve and nothing against the games on Steam store, but hear me out.
Lets say you buy a game on the Steam store. Now lets say that game is so bug-ridden that you can't play it. It's so bad that you can't even run the game. You check online and it's such a big problem that the CTO has publicly apologized. You contact Steam support to ask for a refund. They tell you to forget it, so you contact the publisher. You explain that you have liked their games forever but this game is not playable. You want your money back. The publisher will tell you that you need to get a refund from the retailer you purchased the game from. It's out of their control because they don't have your money.
You contact Steam again, they tell you that they will issue no refund. You threaten to file a charge back from your credit card company. Steam says that they will disable further purchases from the Steam Store if you do so. They actually state that they will not let you purchase any more games from them if you protect yourself as any consumer should be allowed to.
Somehow, I just can't imagine doing business with them anymore.
- smtddr 13y ago>>Lets say you buy a game on the Steam store .... >>Somehow, I just can't imagine doing business with them anymore. "Let's say"? Is this a hypothetical? If this didn't actually happen then what's the issue?
- CJefferson 13y agoThis kind of thing has happened to several people. Steam used to disable your access to all your games if you did a charge back, so things have got a little better.
- res0nat0r 13y agoI've heard of this actually happening. I think it is to prevent people from buying games, playing them, then trying to file a chargeback so they play the game for free. I guess the fine line from Valve is, there isn't really any way to differentiate people legitimately having problems vs. people trying to scam the system, so their default policy is if you file a chargeback your account is going to be suspended.
- lambda 13y agoSo, why don't they just have a policy that you have 24 hours to get a refund, like the original Android Market policy? Sure, I suppose if you are really dedicated you could play through a game in those 24 hours and get a refund to play for free, but that's a marginal enough case that it's probably not worth worrying about. Or they could just limit the number of refunds you can get, to say 1 out of 10 games that you buy, and no more than one per month. Or they could just refund you any time you want. Yeah, sure, a few people will scam them that way, but it's not like they have a huge per-unit cost for delivering the games to you. If it'll make users like the above more happy and more willing to buy from Steam, it's probably worth it in the long run.
- Goronmon 13y agoSure, I suppose if you are really dedicated you could play through a game in those 24 hours and get a refund to play for free, but that's a marginal enough case that it's probably not worth worrying about. I think your underestimating the number of gamers who would pull all-nighters to play through a game as fast as possible in order to play games for free. Heck, plenty of people already do that without the ability to get a refund once they are finished. Hell, if I was still in college I would seriously consider doing it as a broke student. Allowing for refunds within 24 hours is effectively a free 24 game rental for any game in the library.
- goostavos 13y agoI went through this. Spent a total of two weeks trying to get the game to work -- even went it and bought new hardware. I went out of my way to show record bench marking results. It's not my card, it's not my power supply, it's the buggy game. 2weeks of being jerked around by steam, doing every. Single. One. Of their suggestion AND logging that I did them. No result. The end result could be boiled down to "sucks for you. We don't give refund." In the end, I ate the $60. I wasn't going to risk my entire game library over one game. I must say though, the events certainly "raised my consciousness" to the fact that owning digital things is in a really crappy place right now. What other company do we allow the right to reach into our house and pull back things that we have rightfully purchased? It's really quite absurd.
- jamra 13y agoI believe they won't delete your game library, however, they will lock you out of future purchases.
- kbenson 13y agoDo they keep you from creating a second account for purchasing and gifting what you buy?
- ahomescu1 13y ago> What other company do we allow the right to reach into our house and pull back things that we have rightfully purchased? Amazon with Kindle books.
- goostavos 13y agoThat's true. And also why I don't buy from them anymore. I'm doing the best I can to vote with my wallet. Which means pretty much the only place I purchase ebooks from anymore is OReilly, as they give plain old, drm free pdfs.
- owenversteeg 13y ago
- jamra 13y agoHappened to me with Rome Total War II.
- Ralfp 13y agoMost recent case when big release flopped and guys behind it were apologising that I can remember is X: Rebirth from few weeks ago. Many people asked for refund but nobody got it.
- hkolek 13y agoThat's not true. I was one of the idiots who bought it on release day but I eventually got a (Steam credit) refund after a lot of back and forth. And there were several other people on the Egosoft forums who got a refund as well.
- analemma 13y ago>> "It's nothing against Valve..." Not sure what you mean by this. Who are you complaining about, if not Valve? It's not as though "Steam Support" is an entity independent from them.
- Angostura 13y agoHe's saying that he doesn't have a problem with Valve in general or in other regards, just with this specific policy.
- kin 13y agoWhen did something like this ever happen? Per Steam's policies, whenever a game like this exists (The War Z for example), Steam will pull it from their store. Plus, with all the Steam sales how do you not want to do business with them? I have so many games from Steam that I just have but have yet to play. Also, why would you buy a game without first reading reviews?
- jamra 13y agoWar Z is the only one I heard of. The game in question is Rome Total War II. It is from a more reputable publisher even though they apologized for the bugs and I waited for the first patch to solve this very well known issue.
- dmart 13y agoOkay? Sorry, but your personal Steam Support horror story doesn't really contribute to discussion of the Steam OS platform itself.
- jamra 13y agoYes it does. It's worth bringing up. If you go through the trouble of installing an OS whose existence is based on this policy, you should know if your rights as a consumer will be ignored.
- cm127 13y agoI don't get this. We never discuss iOS App Store or Android's Play Store when an OS update comes out. It's just a program to a new Operating System.
- cloverich 13y ago> when an OS update comes out. Er, maybe not when an update comes out, but about iOS in general? I've sure heard and read plenty of discussions about the app store. The iTunes / App stores is specifically the reason I do not want an iPhone (again). In this case, I get that its linux, but its Valve's branded linux. Complaints about Steam, the impetus behind the distro, are completely relevant.
- cm127 13y agoThe Steam Store has been around longer than the iOS App Store. I guess that's why I was hoping for a discussion about the OS that came out today. I guess we can just talk about the OS some other time.
- MaulingMonkey 13y agoDiscussion of the Steam store's implications for SteamOS does not preclude simultaneous conversation about SteamOS. You can find such alternative conversation by scrolling down past this first thread. I can heartily recommend doing this! I'm sure you'll enjoy it more than focusing on the fact that there's an entire one thread of people not as bored with the topic of the steam store as you appear to be.
- Sheepshow 13y agoAnecdotally, I bought Dark Souls not knowing it required a Microsoft game profile to save your game at all -- no local saves whatever. I wrote a (really bitchy) email to Steam and was promptly offered some sort of "special circumstance" refund. Incidentally I didn't even follow through with it, though I never played the game even once...
- dereferenced 13y agoJust take the 5 minutes it takes to make an account and enjoy an awesome game. Use a fake email if you must.
- anon4 13y agoThat's not really possible now that Microsoft shut down GFWL. Just grab the pirate version.
- rg3 13y agoI'm currently playing Dark Souls under Windows (I bought it during a Steam sale some days ago), and don't understand this. When the game launches it needs and account in "Games for Windows Live". I created an offline (local) profile without any trouble. Honestly, I don't know if my saved games are going to the cloud or not, but the game is working and I didn't have to sign up for any service or give an email address. Here's a short (less than one minute) video on how to create a local profile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_jRZ_Sic4k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_jRZ_Sic4k
- pyrocat 13y agoUh, that's never happened to me, nor anyone I know. And Steam Quality Control is good enough that games that bug-ridden will very very rarely make it through.
- dekken_ 13y agoYou played Nether recently? I haven't, that's how much it sucks. I'm still hoping they pull it together but the last time I looked at it, it was atrocious.
- werid 13y agoYou mean the game that's in EARLY ACCESS? You got what you bought there.
- Macha 13y agoCrasher, WarZ, those are the two I can think of off hand.
- nacs 13y agoThey removed WarZ and even offered refunds after a bunch of complaints.
- Liru 13y ago>They removed WarZ Actually, they didn't. All the developers did was have it relisted under a different name ("Infestation: Survivor Stories"). http://steamcommunity.com/app/226700 http://steamcommunity.com/app/226700
- Kudos 13y agoActually they did, and then had it relisted. It was later renamed because Paramount filed a lawsuit against them.
- Espressosaurus 13y ago
- cmaggard 13y agoI've had this happen with me- I preordered Leviathan: Warships, and upon launch was completely unable to access multiplayer through their buggy account system. The publisher acknowledged my issue but declined to answer further support requests. Valve issued credit to my account in exchange for removing my game from the library within hours of asking for it.
- jamra 13y agoPreordered games somehow are cancelable. It's in the terms of service.
- Brakenshire 13y agoSeems like a valid complaint against Steam, but with not much to do with Steam OS. The whole point is that this OS is in some ways irreversibly open. No single company ever has the power to control the platform entirely- if Valve have bad policies, you at least have the option to install another marketplace.
- jamra 13y agoIn the screenshot on the github page, you are signing a terms of use. I guess I am wondering if it's even possible to install another store.
- toki5 13y agoUm, yes, it's possible. SteamOS is an open-source Debian fork. The only thing proprietary in the whole package is the Steam client itself, which you aren't at all required to leave installed.
- warfangle 13y agoNot to mention the improvement to drivers, etc, will rise the tide for everyone.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoYou could install wine on it and use it to run photoshop if you wanted whie mining bitcoins and running an apache webserver. It is a linux box on pc hardware. Never mind install, you could develop another store on it.
- rch 13y agoGet your credit card company on the phone. Explain the situation clearly and back up your claims. They may ask you to call the retailer with the credit card company representative listening in (you'll get instructions on what to do). How the conversion goes from that point could be very different from you working on your own.
- mmuro 13y agoWhy would this be limited to Steam? I bought a game on the PSN Store that wasn't even playable. I asked for a refund and didn't get it. As someone who sells a digital product, I completely understand the No Refund policy.
- mililani 13y agoWow, this is why people pirate.
- iends 13y agoThis is why I issue chargebacks.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoYou have an account per game? Because otherwise steam will revoke your access to the rest of your games if you try this approach. In general, teh better approach is to read reviews and watch gameplay videos.
- tankenmate 13y agoThe you get your card company to chargeback every single purchase you made.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoYeah that's not going to happen. Cc companies don't charge back really old transactions.
- vidarh 13y agoIn which case they'd find themselves sued if they pulled that on me, and that's the approach everyone should take to that kind of customer hostility. Small claims courts / magistrate court filings are cheap pretty much everywhere, and does not require a lawyer. But it would tie up some exec and someone at their law firm for enough time that it'd be a loss for them whether they in or lose. And in the EU at least they'd also face a near guaranteed loss in most countries if they tried to punish a customer for taking advantage of their rights to return a product that did not work as advertised.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- benihana 13y agotl;dr: I had a bad experience once and now I don't like them.
- shiven 13y agoNothing wrong with that now, no? My computer, my rules.
- leoc 13y agoI know one person who bought the wrong game on Steam by mistake: he couldn't get a refund but he was able to persuade Steam support to add the value of the purchase to his Steam wallet. Nonetheless, this seems to be a good place to mention GOG's 30 day money back guarantee: http://www.gog.com/support/website_help/money_back_guarantee http://www.gog.com/support/website_help/money_back_guarantee
- ansimionescu 13y agoJust posting to confirm that this is indeed the case. Paid like £7 for an indie game that doesn't work on Mavericks and never even had a chance to open it.
- r0s 13y agoThis exact scenario happened to me with the second Penny Arcade game. But I don't care. I'm disappointed, sure. On the other hand it's a generally very rare occurrence, mainly limited to indy titles, and it's very likely most games will get fixed and patched. The deployment of fixes is a major benefit to Steam in general. If you think there's a retailer on earth who won't give you some edge case runaround in a similar way you're naive.
- ekianjo 13y agoyour post is really out of topic. Your comment has nothing to do about this news on steamos.
- werid 13y agoIf you chargeback any online service like this, they will cancel your account. Origin does the same.
- free652 13y agoX-Rebirth isn't? Yea, they refused a lot of refunds.
- jebblue 13y agoI paid $49 for Unreal III, it still sits in my drawer unused and unopened. Why? Because Epic promised to have a Linux port soon after release like they did with UT 2004. That had been the 3rd game I bought from them. I've bought none from them since. I have not had a single negative experience with Valve. I started with them on Windows years ago and when they came out with Steam for Linux last year I installed it and got all my games (that ran on Linux and more since that have been ported) in the same UI, better experience, faster, I have zero complaints with Valve and Steam.
- Hansi 13y agoThe few instances those things have happened they've issued refunds....
- Tomdarkness 13y agoI think this depends where you live and your consumer protection laws. While I've never requested a refund I know several people in Europe who have had successful refunds.
- zmb_ 13y agoI had a similar issue, except it was with their Steam client (on Mac). It started hanging and crashing on every launch. I sent them crash traces and tried to get help figuring out what was wrong. However, their customer support is one of the worst I've ever dealt with. I got no help at all, just a canned reply after canned reply that told me to follow the steps I had explicitly told them I had already followed. After trying to get it to work for weeks, I finally told them that their product is faulty and they're not doing anything to fix it so I would like my money back. Of course they refused over and over. Since I only had a handful of cheap games bought at sales, I decided to write the whole thing off as a loss and uninstall it.
- keypusher 13y agoI have a hard time believing this happened to you, as I have had interactions with Steam customer service for similar issues and they usually gave me credit. If you really think Steam's return policy is bad, let me know how Best Buy or Gamestop treats after you bought and played a game and want a refund.
- k-mcgrady 13y agoI had almost the exact same thing happened. I bought Super Meat Boy for Mac. Checked the specs and I was above them. The game worked once or twice but then crashed every time I entered the level screen. I contact Steam who told me to contact the developer. The developer said that it was a problem on the latest version os OS X and wouldn't be fixed soon. They said I can get a refund but it has to come from Steam. I actually showed Steam my email from them and still had to fight for it. In the end all they would give me was credit for the Steam store, they wouldn't refund me. I thought this might have been a one-off (maybe I just got a bad customer service person) but apparently not. If I were a game developer I'd be pretty worried that the blame fell back on me for bad customer service like this.
- robinduckett 13y agoThe problem is, that if you tried to take a PC game back for being faulty at a GAME/Gamestop brick and mortar shop, more often than not, they will only give you a replacement game of the same title. If it's faulty because of software bugs, probably the BEST you could get is store credit, and only after you've shouted at everyone for a while. It is GAME's policy in the UK to NEVER refund/allow returns of PC games after they've been opened because of piracy, and quite frankly, is exactly the same reason Steam have their own similar policies in place. If you don't like it, buy console games.
- mike-cardwell 13y agoIf GAME wont give you a refund, you issue a chargeback on your credit card to get your money back.
- vidarh 13y agoOr drag them in front of a magistrate and watch them try to explain why they think it is acceptable to scam people by selling a product that does not work as expected. The reason they have these policies in the first place is because so few people stand up for themselves in these situations.
- kalleboo 13y ago> It is GAME's policy in the UK to NEVER refund/allow returns of PC games after they've been opened Isn't that illegal under EU consumer protection laws?
- Lazare 13y agoIf I go out to check the mail, there is a chance I may be hit by a bus. I still walk outside my door. Purchasing from Steam has risks and benefits, just as purchasing from any other store does. You highlight one risk, and it is a real risk, but you don't really indicate why it outweighs everything else. Let's assume that Steam games are generally 20% cheaper than boxed games from my local game store (actually, they're much cheaper than that, in this part of the world). Let's assume that one game in ten is a dud (actually, much less than that, in my experience). So we have two options: Buy 10 games for X locally, get a refund on one game, ending with 9 good games for 0.9X. Buy 10 games for 0.8X locally, get no refund, ending with 9 good games for 0.8X. Obviously, option 2 is better. Same games, less money, even AFTER the refund. Plus I didn't have to go outside to be hit by a bus. :) (Plus, my local game store has a poor selection.) Your argument seems to be "hey, options 2 is so terrible I will never use Steam", but I don't see what's terrible about it; it sounds like a great deal to me. Plus, many brick and mortar stores will quibble over refunds; many will absolutely refuse to give a refund if the box has been opened. How is this better? "Steam isn't perfect" isn't a good argument. "Steam isn't the best option" is a good argument, but you might struggle to make it. :)
- jamesjguthrie 13y agoThe only thing that matters is that it's against the law to sell a broken product and not give any kind of refund. You can't say that because it may be relatively cheaper to buy from Steam that we as consumers should just metaphorically take it in the arse.
- jessejmc 13y agoThis happened to me with Batman: Arkham Asylum. Not saying that the game was bug-ridden, but I couldn't get it to run on my computer. I had previously spent thousands of dollars through Steam, and after they wouldn't refund a $5 sale, I quit buying games through them. I even mailed a letter to Gabe Newell at their corporate headquarters, and while this has worked successfully with other companies, I never received a reply. I also won't buy games that require Steam activation, which sucks sometimes. Shadowrun Returns was one such game, but it looks like they now have it on GoG, so I have something to play this weekend. I'd start doing business with them again for a $5 store credit and an apology, but I have little hope that will ever happen.
- crusso 13y agoHappened to me with one of the Mass Effect games I bought through Steam. Crashed on me too frequently to play. Never had any problems with any other game I'd ever purchased. I told Steam about it. They said, "no refunds". It's not that I made some kind of vow to never use Steam again, but basically that was the disappointment that pushed me over to using my PS3 for all new games and I haven't bought another Steam game since. That was a few years ago.
- PagingCraig 13y ago"You contact Steam support to ask for a refund. They tell you to forget it, so you contact the publisher." This has never happened to me. I've always gotten a refund.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ChikkaChiChi 13y agoI was just issued a refund for a game I purchased several months ago because it's unplayable (Super Street Fighter IV). This also isn't the first refund I've gotten? Are you all using the same support ticket system?
- ensignavenger 13y agoI heard that one guy had his steam account closed so he couldn't access or play any of the games he had bought after processing a chargeback! Small Claims court can be the consumers only friend in these situations.