Steam has started declining my refunds that are fully within the refund policy (14 days, less than 2 hours played)

[Fex]

Edit 16th of January: I really think that Steam should add a message to their automatic refund system decline messages that users can get their automatically declined games refunded by writing a Steam Support message.

Edit 11th of January: As indicated by Steam Support on my 4th of January interaction, I contacted them again to refund six more titles (last disappointing purchases from Winter Sale). All titles were refunded. Weirdly I was given the refund link for automatic refund as a part of the message. Seemed like a "script reply".

Here's a total summary of my Winter Campaign activities. My goal was to "purge" my bloated wishlist. I started with the worst reviewed titles to get rid most titles. Not a single title has been added to the wishlist that I wouldn't actually want to play. Every purchase was a potential game that I'd keep. I didn't purchase a single game with an intention to refund it. The game had to be disappointing to be refunded.

Purchased games: 45 (obscure indie titles)
Refunded games: 33 (to Steam Wallet)
Kept games: 12
Most expensive games kept: 12,25€ and 8,79€
Most expensive game refunded: 8,39€
Wishlist status: ~500 -> 420

I was really happy to find this many new proper games that I enjoy. I am also very happy that Steam Support told me that there was no abuse of any kind, although I started getting the automatic refund declines. They told me that I refunded games within the policy as intended and if the automatic refund system declines refunds (due to high amount in short frequency), I should simply contact them with a custom message to get the games refunded, like I did today.

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Edit 4th of January: Got a message from Steam Support where they confirm that I have NOT abused their refund system. Suck it, white knights. 🤣

Edit 3th of January: I got reply from Steam Support; from two actual humans. I was told the refunds are all automatic and when these automatic ones fail, they'll refund the games manually. And they indeed did that. Everything I wanted to refund is refunded from "current wave of purchases".

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With Xmas vacation, I've finally had time to actively browse through my wishlist of nearly 500 games. I've been exclusively purchasing games that are NOT early access and titles that have been discounted by the Winter campaign. I consider myself a sort of a "gaming activist" as a gaming journalist and checking the stats - I've ignored over 6200 games, meaning the ratio of games I add to my wishlist to games I've checked is somewhere around ~1:13.

To me the wishlist is nothing but a list of potential good games to keep in mind. I purchase the games from the wishlist based on discounts and keep the good ones. I'm in no way trying to abuse the system. However, I do understand that majority of Steam users don't ...use it this actively. Having different mindsets is what being human is.

Now with the Winter Campaign (discounts) I started purchasing items that were the WORST reviewed from my Wishlist, yet still seemed decent enough. I fully expected to refund some of the titles and keep the few "hidden gems" I might encounter. Exactly this has happened. Vast majority of these games have been terrible disappointments and thus I've refunded them after just few minutes of gametime.

Now, out of the blue, without any kind of warning Steam customer service has started to decline my Refunds with a reason of: "We will not be granting a refund because you already have a large number of recent refunds. Please remember that refunds are not a method for trying out games."

What? It literally states on their Return Policy that you can return the games for any reason, and it's mentioned as an example if you do not LIKE them. How am I supposed to know if I like the game or not without testing it?

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/#:~:text=You%20can%20request%20a%20refund,It%20doesn't%20matter.

"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.

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."

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I simply don't understand how this is fair. I feel misled. I've bought the games with no hesitation from the discount campaign since I've expected that if I don't like them, I can refund them as stated by the refund policy.

If they have some sort of "you can only refund 7 games per week", shouldn't the policy state that?

[Callahan420]

The refund policy is not there to demo games. They can revoke the ability to refund as well.

[Cathulhu]

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.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

And them refusing a refund is your second warning, you ignored the first.
If you keep it up, you will lose your privilege to grant you refunds, permanently.

[StDrake]

I'd suggeet watching gameplays on yt or wherever instead of buying and hoping thr reviews are wrong. As stated by others it seems support saw you use refunds too often and got suspicious of abuse

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Fex:

What? It literally states on their Return Policy that you can return the games for any reason, and it's mentioned as an example if you do not LIKE them. How am I supposed to know if I like the game or not without testing it?

It also states that if they feel refunds are being abused, they can take action. When the keep:refund ratio within a certain time period balances too much towards the latter, they'll do that.

Valve eats all transaction costs, also of the refunds. They'll do that courtesy, sure, but every courtesy has a limit.

Originally posted by Fex:

I simply don't understand how this is fair. I feel misled. I've bought the games with no hesitation from the discount campaign since I've expected that if I don't like them, I can refund them as stated by the refund policy.

May I suggest to better manage your expectations in the future?

[Ogami]

Congratulations, you are now part of a very small and elite club on Steam.
That of users that had their refund rights permanently revoked by Valve.
And make no mistake, this IS permanent.
You must have ignored a ton of warnings on previous refunds to arrive at this point, not many manage that.
Well, from now on you have to be much more careful in what you buy, because again, no more refl,nds for you on Steam. Ever.

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

And them refusing a refund is your second warning, you ignored the first.
If you keep it up, you will lose your privilege to grant you refunds, permanently.

Actually he already has reached the permanent stage. Second warning is still " if you keep this refund behaviour up we will reserve the right to refuse future refunds".
Only if you ignore the second warning and keep refunding do you arrive at the stage where they start to decline refunds for real.
And at that point its permanent.

[StickyPawz]

OP ... you were refused refunds due to your excessive *frequency*, not for your "I didn't like it" reasons.

[Fex]

I haven't had a single warning. Getting refund denied isn't a warning. It's a denied refund.

Their FAQ says the following:

"My refund request was denied. Can I contest this decision?"

If you feel that there has been an error in the handling of your refund inquiry, please submit another request at help.steampowered.com. The request will be reviewed by another Valve employee."

= Steam is literally telling you to do it again if you think it's not correct. And in my case it certainly isn't. I've a lot of refunds (talking about 1-8€ indie titles) as they don't match the quality and expectations the advertisements set for them.

These games don't have demos available either.

No where in their policy do they mention that they are tracking how many games have been refunded or that it would matter to the process.

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At the same time, some refund requests are getting through - some are constantly denied. I see no logic in all of this. A cheaper game can be denied with less playtime (eg. 7 minutes) over a game that costs euro or two more and I might have 30 minutes of playtime on.

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by Fex:

These games don't have demos available either.

Which doesn't mean you can use abuse refunds to demo games.

[Pscht]

Originally posted by Fex:

"you can only refund 7 games per week"

And that mindset shows why you got in trouble. I haven't refunded seven games my whole life, and you want more than that every single week.

[Fex]

But people are different? I'm pretty sure majority of the users on Steam aren't as active as I am either on browsing the games either. I've ~6200 games on the ignore list, meaning roughly 1:12-13 games seen is something I add to my wishlist, since I ignore 99%+ of the titles I don't add on the list. I've ~2500 games checked through discovery queue as well.

I consider the wishlist sort of a "backlog" and the fastest way to get through it is to always start with the worst games on it, that would most likely get the least amount of playtime.

My only mindset is that I am upholding the policy and acting completely within the rules that Steam has set:

"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.

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."

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It says right there that upon a request Valve will refund your purchase...but they actually don't.

There are unlisted caveats, which is my whole point of posting this. These should be listed. Abusing a system means using a system in a way that it's not intended to. But if there aren't any ways listed as "the ways it's not intended to", they sure could improve the policy easy? ...by listing these ways and enabling players ways to follow how they are doing?

Nowhere in the policy do they say that you couldn't refund multiple games in a short period of time. They don't say that you couldn't test the games if you like them or not; instead they specifically mention that if you do NOT like it, you can get it refunded.

My goal is to find, purchase, play and keep the good games. As the policy allows returning the titles I don't like (literally says it), I have been doing exactly that. If that's wrong in some way; Valve absolutely should list the details on their policy / FAQ.

[Cathulhu]

Maybe, and that sounds silly, you could do your research BEFORE you buy a game.

[Fex]

Yeah, I did. I was advertised a product on the page. I bought the game and acted within the policy as I didn't like the game.

"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.

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."

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It's been a while since I've seen such white knighting. 😅

[The End]

Originally posted by Fex:

But people are different? I'm pretty sure majority of the users on Steam aren't as active as I am ...

The rules are the same for all customers, no matter you believe to be different than anyone else.

Valve has found you were abusing the refund policy.

Nothing the forum users can do about it. You can try to talk to support about it, but do not spam support-tickets. If you do, you might lose the ability to make more support-tickets too.

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Maybe, and that sounds silly, you could do your research BEFORE you buy a game.

Exactly, there is a ton of info on almost every game sold on Steam. However that would demand some footwork. Some people try to take the easy solution and find out that it was not the best idea.

[StickyPawz]

OP ... This is also mentioned on the same refund page:

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.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by Fex:

It's been a while since I've seen such white knighting. 😅

It's only white knighting because it's not aligning with your perception of the refund policy.

Originally posted by Fex:

Yeah, I did. I was advertised a product on the page. I bought the game and acted within the policy as I didn't like the game.

"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.

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."

You keep wanting to quote the portion of the refund policy that fits your narrative while ignoring the part that matters most for your outcome which is that they can refuse refunds if they deem a user is abusing the policy. This was already pointed out to you but you either continue to ignore it or don't believe it applies to you.

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

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.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/

This portion of the policy is still applicable. You don't get the pleasure of picking it apart and only referencing the pieces that are in your favor.

Refunds are meant to be an exception to the purchasing process, not an expected part of it. It's meant as a life boat for those rare instances that your ship is sinking. If you're having to use that life boat a lot, there's something wrong with your ship.