In my mind there should be a refund from Steam either way: - If Steam has a thorough quality control, they (sort of) tell you that the game is OK, no obvious b

In my mind there should be a refund from Steam either way: - If Steam has a thorough quality control, they (sort of) tell you that the game is OK, no obvious bugs. But there could still exist a serious bug that you can find, and I think they should give you a refund. They said it would work and it didn't. - If there's no quality control to speak of (i.e. they just sell whatever the developers are shipping) and it turns out to be crap, it's still Steam who has sold it to you. In my mind they should still give you a refund, apologize a bit, and then deal with the developer. I can't see that it's Steam's responsibility to test the game, but it's in their interest to provide high quality, so they ought to do some smoke tests at the very least. But no testing (from Steam and/or the developer) can guarantee that there's no problem with the software, and if there is, I think it's obvious that Steam should handle the refunds to the customer (since it's Steam's customer), and then Steam should handle it with the developer.