It’s time to rejoice as sanity has prevailed. Valve has finally implementing a full refund policy and system for Steam, and it’s a lot better than we probably hoped for. From now on we can get refunds ”for any reason”.
There are conditions of course and it has to be within 14 days of purchase, and you have to have used it for less than two hours. This includes DLCs as well, unless it ”irreversibly” changes something like character level.
Until now Valve just didn’t do refunds without something extraordinary having happened like a complete disaster of a game launch, or it fell horribly short of what was advertised. Only pre-purchases had become automated in the refund process.
”You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it,” begins the Steam Refunds page.
”It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours.” They’ll hear and will ”take a look” at refund requests that fall outside the new 14-day/2-hour rules.
”You will be issued a full refund of your purchase within a week of approval. You will receive the refund in Steam Wallet funds or through the same payment method you used to make the purchase. If, for any reason, Steam is unable to issue a refund via your initial payment method, your Steam Wallet will be credited the full amount.”
What about bundles? ”You can receive a full refund for any bundle purchased on the Steam Store, so long as none of the items in the bundle have been transferred, and if the combined usage time for all items in the bundle is less than two hours.” You’ll be warned at the Steam Store checkout if the whole bundle isn’t refundable.
Cheaters beware: If the game you’re requesting for refund has you banned through VAC then you won’t get a penny back.
Visit the new Steam Refunds page for full details on the new policy. This should really help those post-Steam sale guilt spirals by letting us think again, at least for 14 days.
