Long time viewer, first time forum poster. I started a petition for valve to allow game publishers the ability to offer returns. They would not be forcing game publishers to give out returns but rather give them the opportunity to offer them. The details are on the change petition but I would appreciate it if you could take a look at this and maybe talk a little about steam's return policy. I know you are a long time steam user and I would like you to address the issue of returns in the digital distribution arena.
It is not going to happen and if a game is truly bad enough to require this, looking at you Infected: Survivor Stories (previously War Z), Valve make arrangements. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121189-How-to-Get-Your-War-Z-Refund-From-Steam
Giving developers the opportunity to offer returns puts it on the developer to offer returns. When there is no infrastructure to offer returns thats valve's fault. Think of all the indie games you have been hesitant to buy. Would you be hesitant if they had a return policy? Indie devs can now remove that hesitation. When you believe in your product you have no reason not to offer a return of at least 7 hours. Soon it'll become a norm but in the first place there needs to be a system in place to offer returns.
Why should Valve have to pay for consumers not doing their research before making a purchase? Its really easy to actually avoid games you know you won't enjoy nowadays, so all a return policy allows is essentially a way to play games for free, especially with quite a few indy titles that can be finished in a few hours.
Well for one there is so my crap on steam right now that you have to do a lot of research. But yeah, returns and digital products don't always go along the greatest. Perhaps steam should make demos mandatory so consumers can get a taste of a game before buying it to find out if it's decent? The only problem is that then the less respectable devs will make really good demos to get the sale and then the rest of their game is crap. Steam could approve demos to make sure that they are representative of the rest of the game... but then of course they could just approve games that are on steam based on quality and get rid of lot of the crap the publishers are dumping onto steam. I fear Steam is very much going downhill.
Same can be said for every other industry. Why would you want a return policy on a car when you can watch reviews and stats on how often it breaks down? Why do we give the gaming industry a free pass to stuff other industries have to deal with? Sometimes a game just plain wont work on your hardware and you cant truly know well a game will play unless you play it yourself.
I think it's fair, I'll sign it. The Android app store offers returns, and so does GamersGate, why not Steam too? There's nothing wrong with returns being allowed within 12 or 24 hours, or something like that.
Well this won't happen and I will tell you why. In this country buy law you don't own the game. You are buying a licence to access the content. It is set up this way with disks to. But law also says you have a right to resale you physical property. With digital content publishers can make an argument with this in legal teams more so than with physical disks.
I think we need to have an argument about that first before we tackle this. The only reason Origin is doing it because they are despite and if they some how started picking up sales on steams levels that crap would go bye bye. Right now they have nothing to loose.
There is some good. Because publishers are more insured in making a profit on steam. Steam can get away with things like family sharing. And I'm sure Steam hates the idea of DRM too. But they still have publishers to deal with.
And like games unless the product is broken there is no need to return/refund. In which case you make your point and you get the return/refund, it works like this on steam now. I don't see the problem here.