Refund for a game on Steam: instructions

Unfortunately, recently, computer game developers have almost completely stopped releasing demo versions (DEMO) of their products, which would allow people to test a particular project before making an immediate purchase. Therefore, honest gamers who prefer to purchase licensed products often have to put up with various problems:

• Poor performance. Often the system requirements stated on the game page do not correspond to the real state of affairs. Players may experience low FPS, stuttering and freezing.
• Bugs and errors, broken functions. Even with a whole staff of testers, some developers manage to release completely unplayable products. For example, the same Arkham Knight. Even powerful configurations did not support the game at release; we had to wait for several patches before the situation improved.
• The game does not meet expectations. Gameplay videos are a deceptive thing (especially considering the experience of Ubisoft and similar companies, whose videos usually significantly embellish reality). You may not like the new product you purchased.
• High price. Yes, it also happens that a person buys a game for a tidy sum, and the next day the service starts a sale with a 75% discount. The desire to return money in this situation is quite logical - even Valve themselves consider this reason to be valid and do not consider such a return an abuse.

One way or another, no matter which of these reasons prevents a pleasant pastime while playing, any buyer will regret the wasted money and want to return it. Luckily, the Steam store allows you to do this if you follow some rules.

October 2, Friday: Gaming industry news

• Cross-platform in Apex Legends will go live on October 6
• Amnesia: Rebirth Gameplay Trailer
• World of Warcraft: Shadowlands release delayed indefinitely
• Hyper Scape will be restarted
• Perhaps Silent Hill 4 will be rebooted
• PlayWay showed the first gameplay footage of Chernobyl Liquidators Simulator
• Review of Darksburg: Left 4 Diablo
• Sony showed the first footage of the Spider-Man remaster for PS5
• The release date for the Fallen God update for the game SpellForce 3 has become known

View all news

Refund conditions and how long to wait for them

In order for your application to be accepted, the following conditions must be met:

• The product must be purchased exclusively from the official Steam store. If you bought the key on some other resource, the money will not be returned to you.
• The game was purchased no later than two weeks ago.
• The user played the game for no more than 120 minutes.

Why are these restrictions created? Let's look at each requirement individually.

No more than two weeks should pass from the date of purchase. This rule primarily protects the developers themselves. If the user can return the money for the game at any time, they will simply work at a loss. 14 days is enough for the average player to form an opinion about the product and identify (if any) bugs, errors and other technical shortcomings in it. This period is also quite enough to find out whether the game lived up to expectations.

IMPORTANT! There are no refunds to Webmoney or Qiwi wallets. Funds arrive in your Steam wallet within 7 days. For Visa or Mastercard cards, the waiting period can exceed several months.

Playing time should not exceed 2 hours. In this case, this protects not the developers, but the Steam service, because if this rule did not exist, the player could enjoy the product for 14 days absolutely free of charge. Two hours is not too much time to form a full-fledged opinion about the game, but in general it should be enough time.

Step-by-step instructions on how to get your money back on Steam:

1. Initially, the user must make sure that the game he intends to return meets all the previously listed requirements necessary for a return.
2. Launch the Steam client on your computer.
3. Click the “Help” button on the application menu bar.
4. We select the game that we want to return and get our money back. If you have recently played it, then just select the “Recent Activities” menu item. If the game we need is not there, then select another item - “Purchases”.
5. The “Purchases” item will display a list of games that were previously purchased. This list will include games purchased over the last six months. This page will also show various cards and other goods that were purchased in the Steam client. In the list you will very quickly and easily find the game you need.
6. Next, the user is asked about problems associated with the game, after which the “I want my money back” button appears. If the game does not meet the necessary parameters/requirements, the user will be notified about this without fail - a special instruction will appear.
7. If everything is fine and the game meets the necessary parameters required for return, then we must indicate the reason for returning the digital copy of the game. A menu will appear where possible problems with the game will be indicated; in it you need to select the reason that is adequate in your opinion and click on the appropriate item.
8. After the completed manipulations, we confirm sending the request to tech. Steam support.

After completing all of the above points, the user will receive a notification via email (previously specified in the client), which will confirm the company’s acceptance of the request. After this, you just have to wait for the next letter, which will contain information that the request was approved or you received a refusal.

How to request a refund on Steam?

If you meet the above conditions and you are determined to return the money, we will tell you how to do this. Finding the magic return button on Steam is quite difficult. But we will show you the whole process step by step. Just follow the instructions below:

1. On Steam, go to Help -> Steam Support .
2. Select "Purchases" .
3. Open the "Full purchase history" and select the game for which you want a refund.
4. Click "Product did not meet expectations" . For some reason, for Steam this reason is more valid than some technical problems.
5. And at the end, click “I want to request a refund” .

The return procedure will begin. To request your money back, do the following:

1. Indicate where the money should be returned. This could be a bank card, Steam wallet, payment systems. The fastest way is to return the money to your Steam wallet—within 7 days. But withdrawals to a bank card can take up to two months.
2. Provide your reason for returning the game by selecting it from the list.
3. Add a note if necessary and click the Submit Request .

Your request will be sent to Steam technical support. If you comply with the return conditions, you will receive your money back within some time.

Is it possible to get a refund for a game if the user played for more than two hours?

It is almost impossible to receive confirmation of a refund if the game lasted more than two hours. Most often, users are refused. Do not forget that if a game is part of a set, then 120 minutes are given for the entire set, and not for individual games. In theory, Steam managers can accommodate their client if the game period has been exceeded slightly (a couple of minutes), but this information has not appeared on the forums or other resources, so there is no point in talking about this yet.

IMPORTANT! According to advanced users, the chance of returning a product to Steam if you don’t like it or don’t meet the technical specifications is extremely high. The main thing is that you use the product for no more than 2 hours. You are guaranteed to get your money back even after six months/year, but only if you have never logged in or activated it.

The only exception to the rule was the game No Man's Sky. This game made a lot of noise among gamers and the press. The Hello Games product has become a real disappointment of the year, and the case of refunding money for the game to absolutely all users of the Steam client without exception is a precedent.

The essence of the problem of the game No Man's Sky is as follows: a competent and successful advertising campaign and assurances from the developers gave an unsurpassed result - 700 thousand copies sold, taking into account pre-orders in the first week. But as soon as the players received their treasured game, it turned out that there was no multiplayer in it (the developers promised and claimed even after release that it was there), and the game itself, after an hour spent in it, became incredibly dull and monotonous. To top it all off, the graphics are of poor quality. There was no plot as such either.

14 days after release, the number of users playing this game dropped by 90 percent, which is extremely strong evidence of a mistaken purchase and a complete failure. In total, 19,000 players spent time in the game, which is an extremely insignificant figure considering such successful sales of digital copies in the past.

Return game after 2 weeks

The standard law “On the Protection of Consumer Rights” applies here. Almost any product, including games, can be returned within 14 days of purchase. Valve follows this policy, but if you want to return the product after this period, then technical support (steam support) will simply send a policy stating that the refund is denied because more than two weeks have passed since the date of purchase.

Using Audacity - instructions for using the application in Russian

The result of the precedent with No Man's Sky

Representatives of Steam and Valve itself value their reputation very much, so they considered this case to be out of the ordinary. They satisfied almost all the players' claims and returned their money to them. Many of the plaintiffs played this product for more than two hours, but still received their money back. How did this happen? The fact is that it is simply impossible to understand an open-world sandbox game in an hour or two. Steam managers are well aware of this, so they satisfied the requests of their users.

To prevent this from happening again, Steam warned that if the developers continue to deceive players and not fulfill their promises, then they will always do this (refund money for bad goods). Perhaps this situation will have the desired impact on the developers and they will not mislead users before the official release.

Valve controversy

The Russian gaming community may have some difficulties when returning funds to domestic payment systems: WebMoney, Yandex.Money and QIWI. In such cases, payment for the video game will be refunded to the Steam wallet, from which it is impossible to withdraw money. To avoid such problems, we recommend using the following payment systems :

• PayPal;
• Visa;
• MasterCard;
• American Express.

Hornet – a unique dating site for gays

It is impossible to challenge the decision. Formally, the user has the right to submit an application, but in most cases it will not be approved. On other controversial issues, Valve is guided by the rules of the trading platform, which are publicly available.

Refund for a gifted game

Previously, an item received as a gift from another Steam client user could only be returned before the product itself was activated. The company's managers took into account the requests of their users and softened some of the conditions for returning the donated game. Now, even after activating it, you can return the amount spent on it.

To do this, the recipient of the game must officially begin the return procedure, but the funds will not come to his card, but to the person who gave the game. The return of money spent on a non-activated game is carried out according to the usual procedure and without any special problems. Almost everyone who filed a refund received their money back. The rules in both cases do not differ from the standard ones - no more than 14 days from the date of purchase of the digital game, and no more than 2 hours spent in it.

In what cases will Valve return the money?

In some cases, money back is guaranteed:

1. 14 days have not passed since the date of purchase , and the user did not have time to play for 2 hours.
2. In some cases, additional content . When purchasing, the user will see whether the product is “returnable”.
3. Refunds for purchased sets provided that the total time spent in all video games is less than 2 hours.
4. In-game purchases within 48 hours if they remain in their original form.
5. When transferring to a Steam wallet, you can return the funds back to the payment system within 14 days, provided that the gamer did not use them.
6. When purchasing a pre-order, during the entire trial period + 14 days from the date of official release.

Please note that if the function is used frequently, the company may suspect the client of abuse. There is a possibility of blocking the return option for an individual user.

Can I get my money back if the game was activated with a key?

Filling out an application for a refund is carried out according to an absolutely standard procedure. If you purchased a key on the Steam site, then this product (in our case, the activation key) is an official Steam product, so after purchasing the key the user officially becomes a consumer. In this case, all his rights are protected by law in the same way as the rights of buyers in regular stores.

IMPORTANT! To return, you must activate the game, that is, use the key. After this, the user reserves the right to return the money. The main thing is that you adhere to the standard rules for “trying” the game (14 days from the date of purchase and 2 hours spent in the game).

Money for the goods (game activation key) will arrive within two weeks. To reduce the risk of abuse of this procedure, Steam has introduced the possibility of returning money for a game within a strictly limited period.

Money is returned to your internal Steam wallet without commission. If the user has lost a certain percentage of his finances when replenishing his account, then compensation may not be expected.

When you withdraw money to your card, you will be charged a certain fee for using the PayPal payment system. For residents of the European Union, withdrawals to a credit card are carried out without withdrawing an additional amount.

Conditions and terms for reviewing an application to roll back a game purchase transaction on Steam

Steam is a global player in the gaming industry, and therefore must obey and put up with international and state legislation in terms of protecting consumer rights . With the rare exception of some countries, the conditions for reversing a transaction for a low-quality product that does not suit the consumer are the same for everyone: two weeks from the date of purchase. Otherwise, it is considered that you have already “used” the purchase enough and do not have the right to return it to the seller.

On Steam this rule works exactly. However, taking into account the specifics of the goods offered, the site added its own rule, which in no way contradicts the first one. If you have spent two hours or more in the game (120 minutes), you also cannot request a refund. It is believed that such a period is more than enough to understand whether you like the game or not. Overall, this is the main thing to remember if you are afraid to buy a game and are afraid that it will not suit you.

Steam refunds are possible if certain conditions are met.

Of course, there are other pitfalls. For example, you bought a game, and in the game itself you purchased a costume for your character. But you didn’t like the clothes and want a refund for them. In this case, Steam will not help here - you need to contact the game administration directly.

The return period depends on the payment option for the service; if the funds were withdrawn from a Steam wallet, then after approval you must wait up to two weeks (usually 1-4 days), and when the payment was made directly from a bank card, the return period is up to 60 days. In this case, the review of the application itself lasts up to a week.

Table: conditions for rollback of a deal for the purchase of a game and other content on Steam

Is it possible to appeal Valve's decision if you receive a refusal?

If the user believes that the decision of Steam managers was unfair, he can submit an official request for a refund again. In this case, it will be reviewed by a completely different employee (not the one who was there before). There may be a chance that he will make a different decision and approve your application. The requirement for a game to be returned does not change.

Can I cancel my return request?

It is possible to withdraw a return request before it is reviewed by support. To do this, select the “Support” item for the product for which you submitted a request. On the support page, click on the “Cancel request” line.

A window with payment information will appear. Click “Cancel...” again.

In the window that appears with a message about successful cancellation, simply click “OK”.