Steam Now Offering Refunds on Almost Any Purchase for Any Reason

One of the main problems with switching to the all-digital future of video games is the fact that, until now, most digital game stores didn’t offer a refund for your purchases, even if there was an issue. EA’s Origin service introduced the feature a while ago, but Valve’s Steam storefront held back. That has changed today though with the announcement of a robust refund policy that encompasses almost anything purchased on Steam.

“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. It doesn’t matter. 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.”

Refunds that fit the criteria will be serviced within a week of being approved. The funds will be directly refunded to whatever source of payment you used, whether Steam Wallet, credit card, or otherwise. You can  see what payment methods are supported by Steam Refunds in your individual territory on this special site. The US works with PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB.

The entire description of the process, and all of the fine print can be found on the policy page. Essentially, if you purchased the game yourself directly from Steam (gifts and off-site codes don’t apply), haven’t played a bunch of the game, and it hasn’t sat in your Steam Library for weeks, you can probably get a refund for any reason.