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Steam :: Introducing Steam Families
(steamcommunity.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Small nitpick, but it’s funny that you specifically listed their refunds first. Because they were forced into that. Some may remember how comically awful Steam’s customer support used to be. It was genuinely horrible, with resolution turnaround times measured in days and weeks instead of minutes or hours. There was no instant messaging or automated system; You had to email a sketchy email address, then wait days or weeks for them to finally respond. And chances were good that the response would basically boil down to “lul git fuckd loser, sux 2 b u”
Europe started pushing for them to be more customer friendly, because their refunds in particular were breaching some local European laws. In order to keep operating in Europe, they revamped their refund process entirely and recommitted to better customer service going forwards. But they only started the entire refund revamp in 2015 because they were going to be pushed out of European markets if they failed to comply.
I brought it up because until Steam did it NO digital game marketplace had refunds. Whether or not they got sued, Steam led the way
And its also frecking 10 years ago now they added refunds. It's like people like using "thet got sued to add it" as some sorta "gotcha" that steam is bad, I don't get some people
I'm starting to think these people think we use steam because we have to, and not because its a legitimately amazing games catalogue/storefront. It makes the "Steam is a monopoly" and "What happens when GabeN dies and Steam goes down the drain" comments make sense
You have to have never seriously engaged with the details of the Valve monopoly if you think that's what we are upset about.
We know Steam is an amazing storefront—I buy my games there because it's the best experience for the cost. But Steam charges a premium. And despite taking smaller cuts, competing platforms like Epic cannot actual pass those cost savings to consumers because Valve is strongarming game publishers into fixing prices.
The fact that you think Epic is consumer friendly in any way tells me all I need to know about engaging you any further on this topic.
I said no such thing. Please come back to this later with a fresh mind, and remember how wrongly you interpreted what was actually said for the sake of trying to fire off a quick response.
But if you'd rather disengage altogether then it is what it is. Cheers.
@Kedly What? This is flat out untrue. Back in 2008 Stardock's attempt at a storefront via Impulse offered refunds: https://web.archive.org/web/20080708091849/http://tgnforums.stardock.com/315290
Later in 2013, EA of all companies would also offer refunds on their storefront, Origin: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/08/ea-begins-offering-refunds-for-its-digital-game-sales-on-origin/
And later that same year, GOG would offer refunds: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/gog-s-new-money-back-guarantee-is-more-about-trust-than-refunds
It was only a couple years after EA & GOG, in 2015, that Valve began offering refunds on Steam: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/valve-begins-offering-refunds-for-all-steam-games/
Impulse offered refunds for technical issues, and I could easily find examples of Steam doing the same in 2008 for GTAIV, EA only sold its own games, which made the legal hurdles it needed to jump through and the amount of developers it needed to get an ok from significantly lower, and GoG is GoG, an actually decent competitor to Steam, so sure I'll give you that GoG beat Steam to the punch there
Your initial claim remains false.
As indicated, digital game storefronts offered refunds explicitly prior to Steam, and it wasn't leading the way, especially given its policy was that all purchases were not refundable, up till 2015's changes.
Leading the way isn't making some exceptions to their policies occasionally, it's making refunds a part of the policies from the outset when others aren't.
Fine. My initial statement was incorrect. I still think Valve put a lot of leg work into getting fairly easy refunds in place for a digital storefront that thousands of different developers sell their games on, and that that is an insanely bigger beast than the other examples outside of GoG's example, which I havent fully looked into, but my initial statement was more specific than that and thus wrong