Gaming firm Valve, whose Steam platform dominates online game purchases, just made some major changes to its refund policy. Starting today, players can get a refund for any reason as long as the game has been purchased within 14 days and played less than two hours. The policy is a major change from Valve’s previous refund system, which only allowed refunds under limited circumstances.
According to the new policy, “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.”
Valve’s about-face points to an increasingly competitive gaming market: Competitor EA offers seven-day refunds through its Origin platform, and Apple has increasingly liberalized refund policies for iOS.