I played 10hrs on Steam then refunded.
I was expecting a 2023 game with 12 years of development and 6 months delay for polish.
I got Fallout 4 (2015) with scifi-skin.
The thing that pissed me off the most:
It’s not as open and “huge scale” as people seem to think it is. It’s kind of “fake open” if that makes sense. You cannot get into your ship and fly 800m east to your mission. If you do that, a new instance is loaded and your mission is not there. You have to run that 800m.
Steam can refuse a refund after that time, but they are usually incredibly flexible because a) they want to keep customers on Steam and b) many jurisdictions have much firmer and consumer favoured laws around product refunds, Australia for example is a large reason for Steams current refund policy in the first place.
imo refunding after 10 hours is not the right thing to do, and could undermine the whole refund system if it becomes a common thing people do.
The original idea for allowing refunds for digital games (or anything, really) is if you get a broken or defective product. If the game won’t launch, or it’s a buggy unplayable mess, or not what was advertised (and I’m talking blatant false advertising, not some vague speculative comments) you get a refund. If you simply don’t like the game, then you need to own it that you made a bad purchase and move on. It happens.
This is why it’s important to wait for reviews and actual gameplay on YouTube/Twitch first, so you have a much better understanding of what you’re getting. Hell, this why YTers/streamers get free codes on release, so their audience will see the game and want to go buy it.
It’s been said a million times over but I guess it needs saying again: STOP 👏 PRE-ORDERING 👏 VIDEO 👏 GAMES
