Most digital game stores have decent refund processes. I think GOG was one of the first to offer and probably still has one of the most generous considering you get a DRM free copy of the game:
The updated policy lets you refund a product up to 30 days after purchase, even if it was downloaded, launched, and played. Yes, you read that correctly.
Steam has an automatic refund process for games that have been bought within 14 days and have under 2 hours play time. Outside of that you’d have to contact support and motivate. The Epic Games Store has the same policy.
This is all good for consumers, but have you ever made use of the refund policies? What game did you refund and why?
One of my most recent refunds was a game called Deadside.
The game wasn’t too bad of a DayZ clone where, instead of Zombies, the NPC’s you fight are bandits and outlaws. It could have provided a fair amount of enjoyment but the server latency had quite a pronounced impact on playing the game. No local servers obviously but even the Euro servers had too much latency to not affect gameplay.
Fortunately I hadn’t played more than 2 hours so it was a nice and simple refund.
I bought The Crew 2 on Steam during a sale as I was interested in playing the game on PC. I played the beta on Xbox and it was decent. But once installed the game refused to load, as recent patches broke any profiles older than 2 years completely. It was a know bug that Ubisoft was working on fixing, and because I played like 2 hours of the game on Xbox a few years ago, my account was one of the unfortunate ones to experience this issue. I askes Ubisoft support and they told me to either wait for the fix or refund. So I refunded the game.
I’ve only ever refunded one physical game and that was Half Life Orange Box on PS3. It wasn’t happy with the game and the online had really bad lag. (In hindsight, I should have keeped that copy. I think it’s pretty rare at this point.)
I’ve refunded 3 games on Steam so far. The latest being Ride 4. I really enjoy riding bikes in The Crew 2 but Ride is just too hard for me. I don’t have the patience to master the game. The other two were Resident Evil 6 (got on Switch instead) and House Flipper (just didn’t like it - it looked fun but I didn’t enjoy it).
Goldenaxe collection on the xbox store, bought it and it had issues finding the store page and it wanted me to repurchase the game to install it so i contacted ms and requested a refund which is received
I’ve refunded a few games when I have been caught off guard by the expenses of the month and required to make a plan to get through, games seemed like the obvious choice.
Circuit Superstars - Felt incomplete, it may have been early access.
Cyberpunk 2077 - Bad key rebinding at release made it impossible to play left-handed.
Among Us - It wasn’t as fun as Youtube made it look. I still like watching others play it though.
Teardown - Felt Incomplete
Space Block Buster - Can’t remember this at all
Deisim - Felt Incomplete
Noita - Too hard
Sayonara Wild Hearts - Didn’t like it
Final Assault - No campaign
Profundum - Too dark to see anything, in a VR game that’s super annoying
SWINE HD Remaster - Not as good as I remembered
RAGE 2 - Cancelled pre-order when the reviews started showing up.
Assetto Corsa - Wanted to play VR but the VR support was kind of bad.
Eleven Table Tennis - Too realistic and I suck at table tennis.
Ocean Rift - Only entertaining for about 10 minutes
Blade & Sorcery - Was too incomplete at the time
Kerbal Space Program - Didn’t like it.
Redout - Can’t remember
12 Is Better Than 6 - Didn’t enjoy it.
Then there was also Batman Arkham Knight which was the only game I think that Greenman Gaming ever allowed refunds for. Interestingly the refund took so long that I was able to complete the game almost 100% before it was removed from Steam.
Arma 3, A friend asked me to get it with him, unfortunately it did not turn out as fun as he thought, he did apologize to me as he felt like he made me buy it, but honestly I wasn’t bothered, and I get it, that game looks really fun when you watch videos like the ones SovietWomble makes on youtube, or like roleplaying videos.
But it takes time to learn that game and a right mindset to get into a game that tries to be a bit simulator-y like that.
A game I wish I could refund, but unfortunately came before the refund policy came into effect, and also I have played it over 2 hours: BRINK. boy, what a disappointment that game was
I’ve refunded a couple games a while ago after Valve said they don’t have any issue with refunding games that have gone on special and rebuying it at the special price.
Recently I only refund VR games, about 4 or 5 so far, because no amount of previews, gamplay footage, trailers, etc, can prepare you for what a VR game feels like once you put the headset on.
