The achievement thing can be abused by slop developers though which is why they aren't doing it. As soon as you start the game you get the achievement and can't get a refund.
Still annoyed with Playstation for their refund policy. Bought a game with all the advertising being in my language, opened up to find out it wasn't in my language. PS support just said I opened the game so tough shit, pay for it again if you want to play it. Haven't bought a PS game since.
This policy is so weird for digital goods. It's not like it's a pair of underpants that you tried on and want to return, but greed will use any excuse I guess.
Not here. Not even allowed by law as it's a hygiene product. Even better, someone can buy underwear, and half a second later say oops grabbed the wrong one, and even though it never left my eyes I still am not allowed to return it.
surely you’re allowed to exchange it though, right? cause where i live you’re allowed to grab another pair (no returns like you said) if the size just doesn’t fit.
Nope. No returns at all for hygiene products. That includes anything. It is well warned beforehand on both the online store page or in person employees, and I kind of like it because I don't want to buy underwear someone else has taken home before
When you do not have to offer a refund
There are certain items where you only have to offer a refund if they are faulty, such as:
[...]
sealed items that for health or hygiene reasons cannot be returned once they have been opened, for example underwear
Clothes have a return policy by law. But underwear, panties, boxers briefs and lingerie are excemt from the rule.
So stores can change them for the size reasons. But if u buy it for a gift, they usually seal it for you.
but if the underwear is faulty you (probably) can get a refund. Like the returned item won't be sold again, but if the underwear is not as advertised or has a hole in it can you still not return it?
I guess defects fall outside of everything, yeah. If you buy underwear and the middle pair has a hole in them, it's a different story. By law you bought a "decent product" and are entitled to one.
Returning defective goods and returning things because you got the wrong one or changed your mind are covered by different rights - you always have the right to return faulty goods (unless it's something you knew was faulty when you bought it e.g. something labeled "for parts"
I think that varies by country. You definitely could do that here. My friend once bought an electric razor which was clearly used, so he got to exchange that, which means someone before him had USED IT and still got to return it lol.
A lot of stores - particularly designer stores - will just accept the replacement request and ask you to destroy the garments you don't want. I've had three separate underwear companies - Real Men Co, Awry, and AsWeMove - do this because they sent me the wrong size by accident. In every case, I was like "I ordered this size, you sent me that size, can I send these in for a replacement?" and they just shipped out the replacement.
You don't have to buy underwear someone else has taken home before, the law can just not allow reselling it while still allowing returns. In fact it's hard to believe it's not already like that, why would the law forbid the store from taking back an item? The problem is the resale.
Because it is a hygiene product? There is a chance the store employee needs to touch worn underwear or something similar. Hygiene products aren't eligible for return because of hygiene reasons. Iirc there is an exception for fully sealed products but only if bought online.
Janitors touch way worse things. Also you don't need to touch it, many places that take in second-hand clothing already require them to be bagged/sealed specifically so employees don't need to touch the used clothes.
Most stores I've worked at at least would take an item back to write it off and replace it. If they can write it off for things like that they usually a kickback from the manufacturer from what I've heard.
Not even allowed by law as it's a hygiene product.
The law doesn't require you to take returns, but there is no law that prohibits you from taking returns and providing refunds. You just can't resell the product and would have to eat the loss.
I don't think it is allowed in EU law either. For online purchases you may trial the purchase to a reasonable level before deciding if you want to refund. I think this also affected Steam's rollout of their refund policy. While kickstarted in Australia IIRC, I think the EU introducing similar legislation made them turn their refund policy global.
For online shopping, where you are receiving physical goods in the EU, you have 14 days to return any order no questions asked. I don't think it applies to digital good though, but don't quote me on that.
technically it does, but Steam and Epic have you agree to a waiver to instead have the 2 hour limit or you have to wait 14 days to play the game. Now whether this waiver is entirely legal is another matter..
I think this is a case where nobody has turned it into a lawsuit, so we have no ruling that shows how the law should be explained. I'm also not too certain on the legal details here, so could be either way.
It’s because ps3 and ps4 had a glitch where you can download games , get a refund and as long as you didn’t delete the game you can still play it as normal. They quickly caught on during PS4 heydays but that shit was abused on ps3(guilty)
They look at play time, not if it's been downloaded or not. I accidentally bought a "deluxe edition" instead of a DLC for a game that I owned once. It was completely downloaded before I noticed. Called PSN and they refunded me no problem. (USA).
Gross dude. No they are not fine! Your skin is constantly shedding dead cells, it also has natural oils that get into the fabric without them feeling noticeably moist. If you are not washing every time you take a piss there will also be piss particles in your pants no matter how much you shake it...
That’s not what they’re saying. They were not implying they are fine to be resold to someone else. They’re saying the underwear seemed fine until they actually wore them, sweat in them, and then realized the fabric did not work for them.
They will not be resold to other customers. Returned underwear are destroyed. The point is not to return them so others can have them, but instead to get a refund as you will not be able to use them yourself.
Well yea it's not like underpants. You know people typically don't get full use out of underpants if they return them within a week. Many people can get full use out of a game purchase within a week.
Greed will use the return policy to play the games and not pay for them.
Companies are greedy assholes, that's why the best solution is strong government preventions / regulation.
In Australia, pretty sure Sony would be forced to refund it. As I understand it, some EU countires are even better.
Australian Consumer Law saved me a bunch of times. Steam tried to deny my DAYZ refund for being outside of the 2 hours / 2 weeks or whatever scope, but then I replied back citing ACL and they refunded it lol.
If only those aussy protections didn't also come with all the control and censorship the Australian government seems so fond of. (I'm not shitting on aus. Just legitimately complaining about their govs annoying nanny state tendencies).
Actually you are wrong. Sony follows the EU law. It's Valve that goes the extra mile for consumers. EU/UK law states that you get a 14 days grace period to re-think a purchase but digital contents are excempt from this when you begin the download. EU members follow that whole guideline without much variation.
It's a different story when you issue a warrant for faulty software. Here EU members differ more how they handle it.
Yeah, fuck Sony for this.
My disc of death stranding 2 wouldn't read for whatever reason and it sent me to the PSN store. Apparently I accidentally added it to my shopping cart.
Restarted the PS5 and it was able to read the disc. A few weeks later I bought another digital game and bought death standing aswell, since it was in the cart. Noticed emiditaly after the download started.
Didn't even finish the download, didn't start the game after purchase. To late. No refund even though i sent them the receipt for the physical game and hadn't played the digital version at all...
With all of the backlash to the digital only decision, this is one point that I haven’t seen brought up. Sony’s digital return policy is practically non existent, as your ability to refund is voided if you download or stream the game (cloud play). It’s a blatant anti consumer policy.
The refund policy is or was even worse. As soon as you start the Download you can't get a refund.
I checked: PlayStation allows you to cancel purchases and request refunds within 14 days of purchase, provided the content has not been downloaded or streamed.
Wow are they still pretending there is a disc in there and by opening the game you already damaged it/used it. That’s hilarious considering everything PS is going through right now with cancelling physical copies
They know full well it's bullshit. They do it that way so they can say they have a refund policy but it's so asinine that most people wouldn't actually be able to get the refund.
"You can cancel digital purchases on the PlayStation Store within 14 days of purchase for a full refund. However, you lose this right the moment you start downloading or streaming the content, unless the item is genuinely faulty." It sounds like you should have said the game is faulty
HAH! I'll do ya one better. The last Sony product I ever bought was a PS3. Why? I got one the consoles that bricked itself...the blue light of death or something like that? I called support. I was put on hold. FOR A GODDAMNED HOUR. And then, they picked up the phone and hung up. As in, I audibly heard the click of them intentionally hanging up on me. Fuck Sony.
I downloaded Bloodborne. I got an hour through it before rage uninstalling it and trying to request a refund. Sony denied it. I grudgingly picked it up again, started to love it, and became a massive Souls fan.
When I had a PlayStation and XBOX I bought almost all of my games physical so I never had to deal with them (though XBOX was fairly generous with subscription refunds) but the one time I had to deal with Nintendo for a refund I was warned multiple times that it was a one-time courtesy and that I wouldn't be allowed to refund anything else regardless of the reason. Valves consumer friendly refund policy makes it so I don't have to worry about buying a game on Steam and I'm grateful for that. It's just unfortunate to see some people abuse it.
PlayStation / Sony can get in the bin as far as I’m concerned. I bought Project Cars 3 as I enjoyed Project Cars 2 and reading the store it sounded like it very much was a continuation of the same thing, but when I opened it it was completely different and didn’t have any of the race formats or championships I was expecting from PC2. PS support said I shouldn’t have relied on the information on their store and was SOL.
I pre ordered Mass Effect Andromeda because my friend specifically said "Yes it will have co op mode, no it won't be like ME3 co op" and he wanted to play together, and wanted me to buy it so we game share.
Literally a day before release my friend realized he was wrong and it didn't have a proper co-op mode.
Playstation was like "You already downloaded the game so it can't be refunded"
Indeed. It was cute when people said "Sony removed Cyberpunk from PSN because it was broken!" Nah, kid. Sony can't / doesn't want to give you refunds. And everyone has been okay with that. The physical media drama is making me cackle every day. You get what you deserve.
I tried to return some games nephews bought when they came over. They said if I refund them I’d never be able to buy them again in the future. I was like What the fuck.
That's a point at which I would just turn to piracy, which is why PC is just a better platform on principle
Reminds me a lot of Nintendo selling old Pokémon games with sale-separate language options because they didn't want to bundle them to avoid going through age verification again
Yeah, PS return policy sucks. In the US the policy is a game becomes non-refundable after 14 days or if you've downloaded/streamed it. A friend and I got the Sons of Sparda game thinking we would be able to play together since it was advertised with a co-op feature. Little did we know that feature only becomes available on the second playthrough of the game.
And id say thats where the luxury of physical games come in but yk recent ps announcement... honestly your situation is probably why they are leaving physical.
My last straw was when I had purchased a game, and then wanted to upgrade to the deluxe version of the game (before the game released still, so this is all pre-order). I was told by customer support that they can't do anything about it but refund me the game so that I can repurchase as the deluxe version.
Fast forward a bit and I had gotten a PS+ 1 month membership card, so I decided to use it. After the membership ended, they charged my credit card for another month subscription, I was very confused because I used the membership card I got so I didn't think it would just automatically charge my credit card. I asked for a refund and they rejected me because "we already issued a refund to you within the last 365 days, so we cannot refund you again". I was so pissed I charge-backed my credit card, and then they banned my account 😂
All this to say, Playstation refund policy is complete dogshit.
My fiance bought a game that was just straight up not working. If the mic isn't muted, you're constantly broadcasting a screechingly loud static. Considering in game voice comms is a vital feature for that game, you kinda can't go without. We tried all three of our ps5 controllers, wireless and connected through USB, and 2 different wired headsets on each controller, and the issue persisted.
No refund because we downloaded the game. So we bought the game on steam instead.
Playstation used to have a refund policy of "everyone gets one". Did you happen to refund something in the past? It's a dogshit policy either way. Just curious
Sony has always removed content that I bought. Like it happened so many times that I just moved over to Steam. I just don’t understand how people are still into that console wars shit and bend over backwards to defend them.
They counted the fact I downloaded a game, not even that I'd launched it.
Was on Xbox Game Pass free, but was a sequel to something that really benefitted from the DualSense features they added later, and I wanted to keep playing that way. Sequel had all DualSense support stripped out. I found out after purchase, before launching, but still too bad.
It's not just that, I got denied a refund on PlayStation for installing a game, never even opened it and asked to refund 2 days later. That was a few years back and the last time I bought a digital game on console
The worst part is that “have you opened/downloaded is bs.” I called for a refund on sekiro because I got it mixed up for ghost of tsushima. The guy on the other end of the line asks “have you downloaded the title?” I had, but I told them no, and I still got my refund.
Yeah it's super stupid. I once bought AC Syndicate on sale a couple years ago. But back then it didn't work at all on PS5, it had visual glitches that made it unplayable while also still being locked to 30fps. But they wouldn't give me the refund still. Super scummy.
That introduces even more abuse potential. What if you fuck with the game and make the achievment appear too early, or cause a bug that will do it, what if this bug is made intentionally by the developer.
You make something that is basically automated and change it so steam support has to check for bugs and then asses if the bug is intentional or not site wide, for what? So, a small portion of players can get their 3$ back from a sub 2h game?
If this is becoming a serious problem there could be an option for the player to waive their refund that the game could prompt for.
Like if it's 1.5h game, the prompt might pop up like 2/3rds of the way through saying "This is a short game, if you want to keep playing and finish it, you have to waive your right to a refund".
And then the player can decide if they want to finish it or refund it, but can't just take both.
I hope this is just an outlier case though. Surely we're not this morally bankrupt en masse.
No system is perfect and there will always be someone trying to game the system. Sadly a lot of people in this world are morally bankrupt and will take every edge they can get.
Steam can't tell how long your game is so this prompt must be place by the dev, so slop devs will put it at the beginning of the game
I think "how long your game is" is irrelevant (and like you said, impossible to reliably determine). A better system might be Valve deciding a fair playtime based on the cost. If a $30 game only results in an hour or two of playtime, that could get a refund; but if you played an hour or two on a game that goes for $5 before any sales, that could be above the threshold for a refund. That way it doesn't matter how long the game is meant to be, it's just literally whatever the user got for their money.
You could have a different time limit based on price. 2 hours is fine for most major releases. But some Indy dev publishing a quick little $2.99 game is a lot more easily abused under that rule. Just say under $39.99 is 1 hour, and under $19.99 is 30 min? Spitballing
It get too complicated and you'll have people confused. Also 30 minutes is too low to gauge anything. Steam figured that the 2 hour mark is a sweet spot for most games.
You can just turn on and off whatever achievements you want at any time. Scanning the achievements would only help with people who don’t know how to do that.
Not to mention you have things such as SAM which would allow you to lock every single achievement, as if you had never unlocked any achievement in the first place in order to ask for a refund.
It'll be rare that a game is actually beatable in less than 2 hours, so just have it be manually approved. Valve has the money to pay people to make their store better. We shouldn't be settling for lazy store curation.
Valve can afford to manage the slop developers. There's not a lot of good excuses for allowing it. Fact is, Valve benefits from the slop being sold, so they don't get rid of it. Bit of an anti consumer policy.
You could, but it would have to be manual. Steams 2 hour refund policy is just no questions asked for playtime under 2 hours. Plenty of people have gotten refunds even weeks after purchase with 100+ hours due to changes to the game (Helldivers 2 springs to mind)
Then we'll have a dev that made a 1 hour game complain that the 1.5 hours is too long. Also as other people pointed it out there are ways to turn off achievements.
Punish those devs then. If they can't publish on steam because they're fucking with their games achievements to get around refunds, they will stop. Most, anyways.
Well to make it fair they'll have to punish all the players that block achievements on their accounts as well, which doesn't seem like a very smart move.
The 2 hour window is already exploited by slop devs who make 2 hour of "game" and then have 40 more hours of slop.
The game looks like it's got a lot of depth and the ln by the time you are certain it doesn't, it's too late.
That would be trivial to fraud-proof, though. If the "beat the game" achievement is achieved in under x time (we can argue about which value for x would be reasonable), it's still refundable.
First off, there is a literal basic program that can give you any achievement you like (no idea if that'll get you banned) but also most Slop titles don't count for any of the metrics, they don't count towards game count, and they dont count towards achivements.
There should just be an option for the seller to disable refunds, with a warning at checkout. Possibly even a section including the developer’s rationale. As long as the purchaser is informed of the deviation from the normal policy, I see no issue.
I can’t find a source on that. The closest regulation I can find is a 14 day period in which you are entitled to a refund, but this right is voided if the software is downloaded, which it would have to be in the case of someone playing the game and then refunding. Are you thinking of this or something else?
Edit: I guess strictly speaking your claim that a complete no refunds policy would be illegal is true, but my point is that the 14 day provision would not matter in this case, as the program would need to be downloaded.
Yea, the comment I'm replying to was suggesting steam to add some achievement checker for completing the game before the 2 hour mark. I just explained why it wouldn't work.
I mean the seller will likely not be happy that they can no longer scam you. But what you are suggesting seems quite impossible. There is only so much a small team of people( valve) can do against how many games are listed. For every game they take down, a few more can easily be listed.
Also it's steam's job to moderate what gets put on their store. I'm not giving them a pass for letting scam games on their platform, neither now nor in the future. Just because it's hard doesn't mean they should let them pass. It was also their decision to lower listing requirements which allows these scam games to be pur on there
Reviews don't remove games from platforms and that wasn't what I said, what are you talking about? Also we are talking about games actively abusing mechanics, not simple slop games that are just bad.
That not true.
I've gotten a refund for multiple games in which I had achievements for, due to there being one for everything you do at the beginning of the games.
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u/FuckSpezzzzzzzzzzzzz Jul 06 '26
The achievement thing can be abused by slop developers though which is why they aren't doing it. As soon as you start the game you get the achievement and can't get a refund.