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And no, it would provide far more confusion because people who bought a game, found that they could not play it on their system and then tried to refund it but couldn't even though they only have 5 minutes of play time on the day they bought it would be very ticked off at Valve.
But the main reason is legal reasons, because in some areas, they HAVE to give a refund option.
This is why you don't see a patch work of refund options. Refund option like we have now in Australia, No refund option in the US. Refund only if you have never installed the game in the EU. And so on and so on.
One refund option for EVERYONE and having that refund the same makes it less confusing.
And no it will not get rid of refund abuse threads because there will still be refund abuse threads for those games that would still have refunds.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/9/
I always use the vac discussion as an example pertaining to users reading important information. There's a pinned topic there that shows how a vac ban is received, that it is permanent and a separate pinned topic showing the same info about game bans (which are different from a vac ban). Despite that, there are a massive amount of topics there where users ask for their ban to be removed and that they either didn't cheat or that their account isn't linked to another that cheated. This indicates that they did not read the pinned topics and will even go as far to say (after being told to read pinned topics) "yes i read and understand but (insert another excuse as to why they should be unbanned). Within the vac discussions there are also users that think they are vac banned because they allowed someone to gain access to their account, the information on their profile was changed to make it seem as if they have a vac ban. This is due to logging into shady sites, again is something that is told to the user when they click a link in chat "Hey, ur venturing outside of steam, so be warned....". Again, did not read the warnings.
Having a warning/disclaimer about the refunds will A) be ignored by a lot of users, and B) those same users will still come to these forums to spam topics about how it's stupid that developers are allowed to NOT have refunds. Essentially causing another cycle of topics.
The AUS gov would basically sue every dev/pub that would refuse refunds.
Not happening.
When you refund something you bought at a store, do you go to the maker of the product and ask them to send you a refund? No you take the item to the store to get a refund for the item.
Valve is a store. You sent your money to the store. Valve puts the license for the product onto your account which gives you the ability to download the product. Valve holds that money for the required 14 days (the length of time the refund period is active for) and after that point they send the money to the maker of the product.
The maker of the product puts their product on Valve's store where you can buy it. You are not making a contract to buy something from a developer, you are making a contract to buy something from Valve.
So no, the developers can not decide that people that buy their product can not have a refund. If they want to do something like this, they can open up their own store and sell their game on their own store. BUT if they decide to sell somewhere that requires refunds, they can and will be sued. For example, Australia which I have described below.
Valve had a choice, they could keep selling in Australia and abide by the law OR they could stop selling to Australians. Valve continued to keep selling to Australians so they must abide by their consumer laws which require all products, including digital products like games to have refunds.
Since Valve didn't want a patch work of different refund policies which would be a HUGE pain in the backside they went with the 1 refund for all. The told the developers "this is what we are doing, this is why we are doing it, if you don't like it well too bad, we legally have to do it so you either stay or go". Though they put it a bit nicer than I have and covered it all with legalese.
So again no developers/publishers can not have different/no refund policies than whats on Steam. If they want different/no refund policy they need to leave steam.
Australia requires refunds for one which is why Valve was sued in the first place.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/valve-steam-refunds-violate-australian-law/
I'm sure if I kept looking I would find other places that require refunds, heck the European Union requires refunds, BUT gives an out by saying if you download the product you lose the right to a refund. So Valves refund policy is actually more fair than the EU version and the ACCC doesn't specify how long of an refund time there should be, so this is what Valve came up with, 2 hours of play time OR 14 days, which ever comes first.
So yes, removing refunds would be illegal in at least a few places.
I know thats the part that I quoted AND Bolded, but well the bold don't seem to stand out much, let me see if I can adjust that...
Edit
There we go, now it stands out more. :)
And technically I could argue that not having any refund system is a bad refund policy, but I get what you are saying. :)
Honestly want to see if austrailian law can win in an american court on american turf.
Except that it doesn't.... wow you just have no clue do you. What you are trying to claim is that it allows piracy, which it doesn't. There is nothing that stops piracy, why? because all the people do is download it off some other site and play it. Why would they download the version off of steam when they could download one from some pirate site that doesn't include any DRM...
Its not like your suggestion would stop piracy, person buys the game because they want it, they crack it and put it up on some pirate website. No refund system would stop that....
They have every right to enforce their laws on companies that want to do business within their borders.
The abuse was happening waaay before the refund policy came about.
I now see you have no clue what you are talking about.
Australian laws only effect people in Australia.... hence why its called Australian law... American laws effect people in America. Canadian Law effects people in Canada. EU law only effects people in the EU.... and so on and so on for every other country.
ya you really have no clue, or you are a troll at this point, I can't see any other options at this point. Sorry mods for being rude to the guy, but wow.
Also you misunderstand this bit about the time limits:The 2hr/2week limit is for Valve's voluntary refund policy, it does not and legally cannot limit Australians' statutory rights; those are two separate things. Our guarantees don't have static limits because they need to apply to every kind of product, and so the nature of the product and reasonable expectations about its use are taken into account.
Instead of saying I'm wrong, how about providing links to the actual laws to show that I am wrong. To show that its all voluntary.
Every single place I have looked says the ACCC FORCED refunds for digital stores to happen.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/accc-forces-ea-to-offer-refunds-for-origin-digital-downloads/
Notice the word FORCES. Not voluntary? Valve was sued by the AU government, and as I said they had 2 choices when they lost in court. To abide by the "must have refund law" and keep selling in AU, or not abide by the "must have refund law" and stop selling to the people of Australia. They chose to abide by it and even before they were finished in the courts came up with a refund system which they decided to be a "1 size fits all even if you don't like it and think it should be longer or not exist at all" system instead of a "we want to hear people whining about why this country has a better refund system than they do and they are right next door to them" system. Which system do you think is better? Personally I like the "1 size fits all even if you don't like it and think it should be longer or not exist at all."
The "1 size fits all even if you don't like it and think it should be longer or not exist at all" system doesn't stop whiners but you're gonna get them no matter what, just look at what we have just in this thread alone. People whining that the refund system should be removed. How many times have we seen the refund system should be made longer or shorter. It hasn't stopped the wining, but at least Valve is not getting sued and Australian's can buy games on steam.
Is the 2hour or 14 day which ever is hit first amount forced? No its not. It could be any amount of time but that is what Valve came up with and so far AU government seems to be ok with that as they have not been sued again.
And while there is nothing that I can find for "because I didn't like it" in the ACCC, there is also nothing saying they can't offer that and that its illegal. Valve is offering a no questions asked refund for the first 2 hours of game play. That is the number they picked, and the reason they picked. If you don't like it, well you don't have to use it do you? I have yet to use it and I have zero intentions of using it. If a dev/publisher doesn't like that people can refund for any reason at all, they are free to leave steam and sell on epic... oh wait, they have the same system, ok sell on origin... oh wait you can refund for any reason there too, ok sell on gog... oh right, same thing but longer, ok on origin.... oh right, same thing, refund for any reason....
Hmmmm guess they could go off on their own and not sell it on any stores but on their own website...