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Steam will stop issuing refunds if you play two hours of a game before launch day
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2024
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Yeah idk how I feel about that. Its kind-of on the developer for offering early access. Its not like they aren't getting data from people playing early access.
Maybe early access just shouldn't be a thing or needs to be free. Or they could just pay people to test their games?
2 hours isn't shit. Especially not if something is in early access and isn't even close to a finished product.
Ehhh, I'm actually (surprisingly) gonna disagree here. Obviously there are special cases, where the game worked in EA and had some game-breaking crash on release, but those are the exception and not the norm.
If you paid for EA, that's 100% on you and I don't think a refund should be available at all (after the initial time limit, of course). You paid for an unfinished game and that's exactly what you got. It literally doesn't matter what the game releases as.
If you played a game with free EA, you know more-or-less what you were getting on release. You know the developer's communication style and their release cadence, and you've literally played the game. I would like to see this time limit extended back to maybe 30m/1hr (it may be different in ways you don't like), but I don't see a problem with reducing it if you've already experienced parts of the game.
The problem is some games don't even start at 30m point. Interactive introes and tutorials are here to misrepresent the future gameplay. Especially with a trick like making you have all power ups before having them all taken from you to grind them back. Take Skyrim where real game starts somewhen at Helgen after a starting dungeon.
Add there games that have it's own launchers them being a problem to log into while the timer is already ticking.
And those are fundamental problems with the 2 hour refund system but the loophole they closed just makes sense. You shouldn't be able to play a game for 48 hours while its in AAA "early access" Ie you preorder the game's special edition (Starfield and that new ubisoft star wars game are doing this) and you can play the game a few days before launch but since the game isn't released you can get a no questions refund. To be honest, I assume those kind of games already followed the 2 hour restriction but I guess it was very uncommon until very recently but now this is a new way for Publishers to screw consumers because it means consumers can start playing before embargoes for game reviews come out.