Today we have updated a portion of our Refund Policy regarding pre-purchased titles. This change covers titles that are in pre-purchase and offer “Advanced Access”. Playtime acquired during the Advanced Access period will now count towards the Steam refund period. You can find our more information regarding Steam Refunds here.
Early access games can change drastically over the course of development. And can turn into a different game at release. I’m my opinion that’s still not a valid reason to get a refund if you put in many hours into the game already. As a consumer you should know that something like that can happen with a game that is still in development. You assume that risk.
I think this is more for “preorder pig fucker 6 and play a day early!” type of things, the refund timer probably didn’t start until the game actually came out so you could play 24+4 hours before being denied a refund
I’m not familiar with advanced access but I suppose the worry would be whether the game could be changed between then and the final release. If it can, then your play time might not represent the final product.
I think that’s the thing where if you pre-order the Collector’s Edition or whatever, you get the game 3 days earlier than everybody else, but I could be wrong. If that’s the case though… It seems like yeah why wouldn’t it count toward your refund window?
It’s hard to imagine the game changing much in that window… But maybe it matters for zero-day patches or something.
This seems fine? Is there an anticonsumer angle or something that I failed to notice?
Early access games can change drastically over the course of development. And can turn into a different game at release. I’m my opinion that’s still not a valid reason to get a refund if you put in many hours into the game already. As a consumer you should know that something like that can happen with a game that is still in development. You assume that risk.
I think this is more for “preorder pig fucker 6 and play a day early!” type of things, the refund timer probably didn’t start until the game actually came out so you could play 24+4 hours before being denied a refund
How dare you make this comment and not drop a link to the game. You must hate indie devs!
Honestly you’re not missing anything. The Pig Fucker series peaked at PF3: Stuck Pig. Four and five were clearly low-effort cash grabs.
I’m not familiar with advanced access but I suppose the worry would be whether the game could be changed between then and the final release. If it can, then your play time might not represent the final product.
I think that’s the thing where if you pre-order the Collector’s Edition or whatever, you get the game 3 days earlier than everybody else, but I could be wrong. If that’s the case though… It seems like yeah why wouldn’t it count toward your refund window?
It’s hard to imagine the game changing much in that window… But maybe it matters for zero-day patches or something.
Pretty sure that’s exactly what this is and doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.