Refund policy and access to customer support

[neil.mc-d]

I've been trying to get a refund for Hitman 2 due to increasingly frequent crashes to desktop. First level or so wasn’t a problem but as the game has progressed, I am now getting them about every 10 minutes of gameplay. Have checked online, tried the range of solutions offered, repeatedly reloaded and rerun levels, but nothing works. The game is broken - and now I've looked into it, people have been complaining about the 0x80000003 crash bug since 2018, but it hasn’t been fixed. So I asked for a refund. And was refused because I have played over 2 hours - in fact just under 7. I have explained that much of that was trying to fix the bug or rerunning sections of levels again to see if it was fixed. Still rejected, but as far as I can see, EULA notwithstanding, this game has been sold knowing that it is bugged and the bug has gone unfixed (see steam community, reddit etc) so is in breach European and UK law. The UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires that all products must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described and this includes digital products. This game does not meet these criteria – specifically it is not fit for purpose.
Does anyone have any advice about possible next steps?
Or maybe there is even real Steam customer support out there who might like to comment?

[Darth Alpharius]

You have to take it up with the devs (if they are still around) for the crashes and the Law only Applies to the Publisher and Developers not Steam.

[Zaskar]

Find the purchase... https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPurchase
Choose "I still have a question..."
Explain the issue politely and hope for a different answer.

But don't get your expectations high, you're way over the policy.

Also, Valve aren't the one you have to reach for in-game bugs as developpers patch their games, not Valve.

[neil.mc-d]

But surely they are the vendor - they sold me the product and so my contract is with Steam, not with the developer or the publisher? So where do you get the claim that consumer law doesn’t apply to Steam? And I have tried explaining politely but just got bounced, Thing is they are still selling what is essentially a faulty product that isn't fit for purpose and they know it is as well since, now I've looked, there are numerous form articles as well as pages on reddit. And given the time spent fiddling with the thing I don’t think 5 hours is way over the policy - but of course it is over. However I'm not sure they can hide behind a refund policy when they are retailing something that isn’t fit for purpose. EULAs don’t trump the law......at least I wouldn’t have thought so? Question is who do you talk to at steam - no customer support email, I suspect that my refund request was managed by a bot - so where do you go for a reasonable conversation?

[Yasahi]

All refund requests go through a human. If you want to pursue your refund, do as Zaskar pointed out in post #2.

[Zaskar]

If you did what I said, the answer was from a human.

Also, more than 2.5k users played that game in the last hour, so I would not say that the product is faulty and doesn't work at all for everyone. Like I said, if you have trouble with a bug, ask the community for a fix or reach the developpers.

[Kikinaak]

No, EULAs do not trump the law though many pretend to. But if steam refuses the refund you would have to spend far more money than the cost of the game to challenge it in court. And you'd probably get banned and lose access to the rest of your library too.

[Crazy Tiger]

The issue is that terms like "satisfactory quality" and "fit for purpose" are very vague. Good luck trying to prove that.
Also keep in mind that a vendor is not responsible for the quality of the product manufactured, or created, by others.

[Count_Dandyman]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

The issue is that terms like "satisfactory quality" and "fit for purpose" are very vague. Good luck trying to prove that.
Also keep in mind that a vendor is not responsible for the quality of the product manufactured, or created, by others.

Less about them being vague and more about them not being for you personally as an individual when dealing with software that is identical for every user and instead being about an acceptable percentage of those using the listed system specs.

[neil.mc-d]

2.5 k may have played it in the last hour - but did they continue playing it successfully or did they do what I did - waste hours trying to fix it. If you type "hitman 2 0x80000003" into google you get 35000 hits - that’s not just a few people reporting a range of crashes – that’s the very specific, well documented crash that I'm experiencing. And Steam know very well that its bugged and prone to crash but are still selling it.
And to be honest fit for purpose isn’t that vague - for a game, being unable to play more than 10 minutes before it crashes to desktop isn’t fit for purpose. So I would have thought that, given the known problem, my experiencing it and reporting it after reasonable amount of time trying to fix it would generate a refund. It doesn’t matter if the majority can make it work – if there is a known problem that affects a significant minority of players it should either be fixed or refunded. And Steam are the vendor – not the publisher or the developer. If you bought a washing machine that was known, even in a minority of cases, to stop working after a couple of uses – would there be any challenge to expecting a refund if it did just that? Absolutely not. But apparently Steam don’t think they need to comply with consumer law or even reasonable practice. Sorry but its not right.

[Zekiran]

Originally posted by neil.mc-d:

2.5 k may have played it in the last hour - but did they continue playing it successfully or did they do what I did - waste hours trying to fix it.

They were playing. Because there weren't suddenly 2500 more people complaining about this.

But apparently Steam don’t think they need to comply with consumer law or even reasonable practice. Sorry but its not right.

It's not Steam. It's your side of things and the way your computer interacts with the game's software. Neither of that is Steam's problem in any way shape or form.

[Zaskar]

Originally posted by neil.mc-d:

2.5 k may have played it in the last hour - but did they continue playing it successfully or did they do what I did

There's still 1.7k users playing it in the last 30 minutes at the time I write this, so again, the game doesn't seem to be unworking for everyone.

Originally posted by neil.mc-d:

And Steam are the vendor – not the publisher or the developer. If you bought a washing machine that was known, even in a minority of cases, to stop working after a couple of uses – would there be any challenge to expecting a refund if it did just that? Absolutely not. But apparently Steam don’t think they need to comply with consumer law or even reasonable practice. Sorry but its not right.

Actually, if you buy something from a local store and it stop working after sometimes and you're over their refund policy, you'll be told to get in touch with the manufacturer(in that case, developpers/publisher).

Again, this isn't on Valve to patch a third party game. So, get in touch with the game developpers.
https://www.hitmanforum.com/t/official-hitman-2-technical-support-thread/26144
https://wbgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002063008-HITMAN-2-is-Crashing-on-my-PC
https://steamcommunity.com/app/863550/discussions/

[Count_Dandyman]

Originally posted by neil.mc-d:

And to be honest fit for purpose isn’t that vague - for a game, being unable to play more than 10 minutes before it crashes to desktop isn’t fit for purpose. So I would have thought that, given the known problem, my experiencing it and reporting it after reasonable amount of time trying to fix it would generate a refund. It doesn’t matter if the majority can make it work – if there is a known problem that affects a significant minority of players it should either be fixed or refunded. And Steam are the vendor – not the publisher or the developer. If you bought a washing machine that was known, even in a minority of cases, to stop working after a couple of uses – would there be any challenge to expecting a refund if it did just that? Absolutely not. But apparently Steam don’t think they need to comply with consumer law or even reasonable practice. Sorry but its not right.

Fit for purpose is not a magic get out of responsibility free card for YOUR requirement to provide a suitable system for the game to run on and yes when YOU are having an issue that the vast majority of users that have the exact same software are not having that makes it a failure in YOUR system not the game.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by neil.mc-d:

If you bought a washing machine that was known, even in a minority of cases, to stop working after a couple of uses – would there be any challenge to expecting a refund if it did just that?

Often enough it falls under the warranty of the manufacturer, so you'd have to contact them to send a mechanic to fix it.

Originally posted by neil.mc-d:

But apparently Steam don’t think they need to comply with consumer law or even reasonable practice.

They do comply with consumer law. The game works fine, as shown by the people playing it.

Your issue is not with Steam, they don't owe you a refund. Your issue is with the game dev/publisher and you can always ask them for a refund.

[XistenZ]

There's very few possibilities, all of which have been discussed already.

1. Try and fix your issue (as you and about 35 000 others seem to have tried to no avail)
2. Contact the developer, I'm sure they'll be thrilled for some QA
3. Take it to court. Not even lawyers have any idea what they're doing, the output is a gamble even if you know you're right. During the process you'll have to pay for your side of things (which can be alot). The other part (be it steam, the publisher or the dev) will drag it out indefinately, making sure it never reaches a verdict until your funds run out (theirs won't). In the end you'll have to pay their costs as well, and still have a faulty game.

Yes the world is a cruel place. Working as intended.