"It's now available cheaper"

[bernz]

Bought Cities Skylines 7 days ago. Now its on sale. Forgot about the Winter Sale. Played it for 23 hours. Of course I'm going to play the game. And of course my refund gets rejected.

Anyone have luck with this?

Might be time to move to Epic Games.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por Teksura:

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

No, not exactly.

Valve aren't screwing anyone. Their general terms are 30% of sales. This is NORMAL in the industry as similar to PSN, XBL Nintendo, Apple and more.

If it were out of the ordinary then publisher simply wouldn't sign agreements would they? Nobody forces them.

And even then, look at the basic maths here.

It's all very well for Epic to come along and do the whole fake white knight thing and claim they're helping the industry by offering less of a cut.

But here's the kicker - there's NO physical product so it's kind of moot. No haulage costs per unit, nor manufacturing. So units aren't that relevant, only gross sales.

And even if you surrender 30% of your take, when Steam offers FAR more sales in gross, does it really matter?

Say you sold 100,000 "copies" at £10 a pop on Epic. Even if they offered just a mere 15% take, that means total £850,000.

However, Steam generates more sales so if that were 1,000,000 sales at £10 a pop still, but with 30% taken off, your take will be £7,000,000.

And I'd say that £7 million after deductions is better than £850,000, never mind the rate of deductions. You see?

There is more to it than that. The same pattern repeats itself an awful lot across multiple industries, it's a common tactic for one business or another to offer some sort of enticement to get you hooked. Then once they have a big enough marketshare that they don't need to focus on building it up anymore, they turn around and abandon everything they originally pitched themselves as being all about and focus on maximizing their bottom line instead.

Epic is currently in their growing phase. they're trying to entice developers with a bigger cut of the sale, and trying to entice users with free giveaways and signing off exclusivity deals. Let's not be fools here, their goal is nothing more or less than to build up a competitive userbase. I give them 5, maybe 6 years before they feel comfortable enough to drop the act and do the industry standard.


Now, if you really want to support developers, Humble Bundle used to let you choose how much went to the developer. I'm actually not sure if they still do that, but it's good to look into. Many developers also sell keys on their own websites, which is a great place to go for their games, too.

Yes, that's what loss leaders ARE.

I would add that there's already evidence they're not good for consumers as they've demonstrated it well by rolling out the store before it was ready causing issues like basic purchasing to be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ in some cases (and such a thing as a basket).

So a lot of people are going to have a rude awakening when their projection ends.

As for Humble Bundle, yes they still do this. I only checked this last week after I posted something about it here or elsewhere. The split is still three ways - Humble, devs, and charity. When it's AbleGamers, I ALWAYS give all of it to them ;)

[bernz]

Publicado originalmente por Ogami:

Cities Skylines was just free a week ago on the EPIC GAMESTORE.
As in, free and keep forever. Basically on the day you bought it for full price here.
That would have been the best way to get it.
Ah well.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, I noticed that after I made this thread. That ♥♥♥♥ pisses me off. Oh well. Lesson learned.

[nullable]

Publicado originalmente por fernz:

Bought Cities Skylines 7 days ago. Now its on sale. Forgot about the Winter Sale. Played it for 23 hours. Of course I'm going to play the game. And of course my refund gets rejected.

Anyone have luck with this?

Might be time to move to Epic Games.

Well if you buy a game there a week before a sale, play it for two dozen hours, do you think they'll refund you? Or is it just idle threats any time you can rationalize being unhappy?

[bernz]

Publicado originalmente por Brockenstein:

Publicado originalmente por fernz:

Bought Cities Skylines 7 days ago. Now its on sale. Forgot about the Winter Sale. Played it for 23 hours. Of course I'm going to play the game. And of course my refund gets rejected.

Anyone have luck with this?

Might be time to move to Epic Games.

Well if you buy a game there a week before a sale, play it for two dozen hours, do you think they'll refund you? Or is it just idle threats any time you can rationalize being unhappy?

"It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look."

If you fall outside of the refund rules...they'll just quote the two hour rule...yes 23 hrs is a lot, but not for a game like Cities Skylines. I only began to scratch the surface of that game. I could understand the refund policy for a game like Cyberpunk 2077 where it has a story line.

"ABUSE
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price."

I've only refunded one game in 16 years...and would rebuy the game...

[Brian9824]

Publicado originalmente por fernz:

Publicado originalmente por Brockenstein:

Well if you buy a game there a week before a sale, play it for two dozen hours, do you think they'll refund you? Or is it just idle threats any time you can rationalize being unhappy?

"It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look."

If you fall outside of the refund rules...they'll just quote the two hour rule...yes 23 hrs is a lot, but not for a game like Cities Skylines. I only began to scratch the surface of that game. I could understand the refund policy for a game like Cyberpunk 2077 where it has a story line.

"ABUSE
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price."

I've only refunded one game in 16 years...and would rebuy the game...

I've had them refund me a game at 6 hours. The exceptions exist, but 23 hours is more then 10 times over the limit. So they considered it and denied it.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por fernz:

Publicado originalmente por Brockenstein:

Well if you buy a game there a week before a sale, play it for two dozen hours, do you think they'll refund you? Or is it just idle threats any time you can rationalize being unhappy?

"It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look."

If you fall outside of the refund rules...they'll just quote the two hour rule...yes 23 hrs is a lot, but not for a game like Cities Skylines. I only began to scratch the surface of that game. I could understand the refund policy for a game like Cyberpunk 2077 where it has a story line.

"ABUSE
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price."

I've only refunded one game in 16 years...and would rebuy the game...

Not quite.

For a start, yes, there are always edge casses which is why the discretionary rule of refund is there. because there are ALWAYS extenuating factors. I've seen quite a few on here, and Valve seem to be pretty forgiving.

However, that will NEVER cover something wildly out of scope like 23 hours. It doesn't matter that it's not much for a game like it is, that is a false claim.

If it were relevant, then don't you think it would say so in the refund terms? And besides, it isn't intended as you think. 23 hours is WAY too long to find out if the game worked or not.

[nullable]

Publicado originalmente por fernz:

Publicado originalmente por Brockenstein:

Well if you buy a game there a week before a sale, play it for two dozen hours, do you think they'll refund you? Or is it just idle threats any time you can rationalize being unhappy?

"It doesn't matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look."

If you fall outside of the refund rules...they'll just quote the two hour rule...yes 23 hrs is a lot, but not for a game like Cities Skylines. I only began to scratch the surface of that game. I could understand the refund policy for a game like Cyberpunk 2077 where it has a story line.

"ABUSE
Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price."

I've only refunded one game in 16 years...and would rebuy the game...

The type of game doesn't factor into the request.

The refund policy has only existed since 2015, you haven't refunded a game in 5.5 years.

Not using the refund system doesn't accrue you exception points or access a one time "Xtreme exception" or any other route where you get what you want regardless of the circumstances.

They have policy. They have the ability to grant exceptions. But that's not to say every scenario an exception is requested is reasonable or granted. With 23 hours of game time, how ever you want to rationalize that, you're not refund eligible and you're probably not in the territory of getting an exception. It's not personal. Clearly you don't like being told no. But sometimes no is a fair and reasonable response to a request.