Refund Policy amendment to games with Launchers

[BeardedBuccaneer]

I just recently bought the Elder Scrolls Online to try and desperately get into an mmorpg without paying for a subscription I've played in two sessions for less than an hour per session and I see today it's on sale for 50% off of what I paid. Cool I look up to see options and boom it seems I meet the requirements for a refund.

So I go to double check my hours and see 19 hours... So naturally I'm like how is that I'm still at the beginning stages of the tutorial. Then it hits me this game has a launcher.... When you launch the game in steam it launches a launcher to launch the game. If you leave that open in the background while you sleep you are logging hours on steam.

So I go on describing this to steam in a refund request. I lay out the case and let Steam know I'm going to turn around and buy the game again at the discounted cost and buy the expansions with the remainder. Bam Refund Request denied because I've played over 2 hours.

This is super unfair because many times these launchers also require patches to be downloaded before you can start the game thus logging additional time to steam before the game even launches. In my case the issue was I quit the game from the in game menu thinking all was fine and dandy but unknown to me the launcher remained open while I was sleeping.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Yeah, this sort of thing really ought to track the actual game executable.

Unfortunately I think Steam just tracks the program that it directly opens...?

[LowJack_VA1]

Steam Support can't tell the difference between time actually played and time a launcher was left open. Be more careful in the future.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

Steam Support can't tell the difference between time actually played and time a launcher was left open. Be more careful in the future.

And frankly speaking, they ought to figure out a way around this. Now if they already have a way around this but the publisher/developer just isn't using it, then it's the publisher's/developer's fault.

But meantime, yeah, we as consumers need to be more careful.

[LowJack_VA1]

If you can think of a way to tell the difference between time spent playing a game and time spent idling overnight, I'd like to hear it.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

If you can think of a way to tell the difference between time spent playing a game and time spent idling overnight, I'd like to hear it.

This isn't about differentiating between two different types of uptime.

This is about differentiating between the uptime for the game application and the uptime for an application that isn't the game.

[Brujeira]

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

If you can think of a way to tell the difference between time spent playing a game and time spent idling overnight, I'd like to hear it.

It should be as simple as Valve adding a boolean flag to the game's settings labelled 'has_launcher' along with a field containg the name of the launcher process. If that process is running then the Steam client doesn't mark the user as in-game until the launcher kicks off the actual game executable.

Of course, that's the theory. Nothing's ever that simple, especially when it comes to Steam as Valve's ways of doing things can tend to... differ from the industry standards.

[LowJack_VA1]

Originally posted by Brujeira:

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

If you can think of a way to tell the difference between time spent playing a game and time spent idling overnight, I'd like to hear it.

It should be as simple as Valve adding a boolean flag to the game's settings labelled 'has_launcher' along with a field containg the name of the launcher process. If that process is running then the Steam client doesn't mark the user as in-game until the launcher kicks off the actual game executable.

Of course, that's the theory. Nothing's ever that simple, especially when it comes to Steam as Valve's ways of doing things can tend to... differ from the industry standards.

That seems more like a developer thing to me.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

Originally posted by Brujeira:

It should be as simple as Valve adding a boolean flag to the game's settings labelled 'has_launcher' along with a field containg the name of the launcher process. If that process is running then the Steam client doesn't mark the user as in-game until the launcher kicks off the actual game executable.

Of course, that's the theory. Nothing's ever that simple, especially when it comes to Steam as Valve's ways of doing things can tend to... differ from the industry standards.

That seems more like a developer thing to me.

Does Steam have this feature or a way to deal with this?

[LowJack_VA1]

Originally posted by Quint the Calavera:

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

That seems more like a developer thing to me.

Does Steam have this feature or a way to deal with this?

Not that I'm aware of.

[Count_Dandyman]

Steam do make allowances for games with a forced download through an external launcher the issue here is that it is very hard to believe it had a 17+ hour download so you are past that window of extra allowance time.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

Originally posted by Brujeira:

It should be as simple as Valve adding a boolean flag to the game's settings labelled 'has_launcher' along with a field containg the name of the launcher process. If that process is running then the Steam client doesn't mark the user as in-game until the launcher kicks off the actual game executable.

Of course, that's the theory. Nothing's ever that simple, especially when it comes to Steam as Valve's ways of doing things can tend to... differ from the industry standards.

That seems more like a developer thing to me.

I agree. All my Paradox games have a launcher, yet this problem doesn't happen with them.

To me it's badly made if the launcher doesn't close when you start the game from said launcher.

Though I also think that if the launcher window stays open, even after the game has shut down, it's the users error to not close it.
Thing is I don't know if Elder Scrolls Online has the launcher window open or if it's a process in the background.

[Count_Dandyman]

Originally posted by patje.lol:

Originally posted by LowJack_VA1:

That seems more like a developer thing to me.

I agree. All my Paradox games have a launcher, yet this problem doesn't happen with them.

To me it's badly made if the launcher doesn't close when you start the game from said launcher.

Though I also think that if the launcher window stays open, even after the game has shut down, it's the users error to not close it.
Thing is I don't know if Elder Scrolls Online has the launcher window open or if it's a process in the background.

The issue with ESO is that it doesn't download the full game through Steam so when you play it you have to wait for its launcher to download the game before it can be played.

[Start_Running]

This is an old problem sadly but its actually one that's well known. Unfortunately the caveats they keep for that would not apply to you OP. They do make an exception where what steam installs is just the games native indownloader/isntaller, ergo the time spent running it would be in part due to downloading and actually installing the game. They know about that and from what i've heard, exceptions are made.

There are even exceptions made where games have a known issue with not shutting down properly on some system ie the windows close. It's not considered a running app but the process is still running silently (The early dawn of war games were well knwon for this).

[ploppo]

It's a true fact.

Along with games that keep people playing 'on rails' or in a really long tutorial bit for like an hour.

Some games have unskippable, long, pre-rendered sequences on top of a really long tutorial, etc.

With some games, you can have gone way past an hour before you are experiencing the game.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Count_Dandyman:

Originally posted by patje.lol:

I agree. All my Paradox games have a launcher, yet this problem doesn't happen with them.

To me it's badly made if the launcher doesn't close when you start the game from said launcher.

Though I also think that if the launcher window stays open, even after the game has shut down, it's the users error to not close it.
Thing is I don't know if Elder Scrolls Online has the launcher window open or if it's a process in the background.

The issue with ESO is that it doesn't download the full game through Steam so when you play it you have to wait for its launcher to download the game before it can be played.

Good know, thanks.

In cases like these, Steam needs to take that in consideration.