Key Takeaways
- Steam has changed its return policy to prevent users from exploiting a loophole.
- Gamers can now only return titles within two hours of playtime and within 14 days, including titles from Early and Advanced Access programs.
- Buyers will need to be mindful of playtime when purchasing games on Steam to avoid not being able to return them.
Valve has had a pretty generous return policy for products purchased on Steam, allowing players to return a title so long as it was within 14 days and less than two hours played. From a consumer perspective, this is a very reasonable policy, allowing players to experience some of the game, and just return it, even if you just don’t like it.
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While this process should be pretty straight forward, there’s actually been a loophole that has been present for quite some time, allowing users to purchase and play games over the two-hour limit and still return them. But that’s all changed now, with Valve putting a stop to it effective immediately.
Will this change impact buyers’ future purchase decisions?
Source: Steam
The news released through Steam and spotted by The Vergewhich will see a policy change that could heavily impact some users. The new change will now take into account all playtime for a game, which means, if you play over two hours in Early Access and Advanced Access programs, you will no longer be able to return the game anymore.
The company has offered gamers an early look at games through its Early Access and Advanced Access programs for quite some time. While both programs are slightly different, the end result is the same, providing users with a way to play a game early. While great, these programs also introduced a loophole, allowing users to play these games, without ever crossing the two-hour threshold set in the return policy.
And when the game is released, this would leave players with the ability to return these titles, even if they had played well over the two-hour mark. Since both of these programs have been around for a little while, we can only speculate how long this loophole has been exploited and by how many.
So if you’re planning to buy any games from Steam going forward, you will have a 14-day window to return a game, so long as you don’t cross the two-hour marker when it comes to time played. And if you’re not looking to buy games but want to download some for free, check out some great (legal) options for doing so.