Steam now offering refunds

Valve has announced Steam will begin offering refunds for nearly any purchase made on the digital distribution service.

A new page on Steam’s website details the new policy, which states users will receive refunds requested within two weeks of purchase – provided a few usage milestones haven’t been crossed.

"You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam — for any reason," the page states. "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."

"Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details [on the page] 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."

DLC may also be refunded, though Valve notes "Steam will be unable to give refunds for some third party DLC (for example, if the DLC irreversibly levels up a game character)."

Beyond that, the basic rule for most games purchased via Steam state that if the product was played for under two hours a user can get a full refund within 14 days. It’s possible a user can still see a refund in other situations as well, depending on Valve’s evaluation of the situation.