Steam won’t refund games you play for two hours before launch

The standard two-hour playtime refund window for games bought at the Steam Store will now also apply to titles marked “Early Access” or “Advanced Access,” according to the service’s creator, Valve. Such games haven’t technically been released yet, so under previous rules, it was possible to play them for dozens or hundreds of hours and still request a refund. It’s unknown how many people may have taken advantage of the loophole, which would’ve been available for high-profile titles as recent as Palworld and Lethal Company.

Early Access games are unfinished but still playable, typically released by developers that need income and feedback to keep a project going. Advanced Access titles are finished, but only playable by a select group of people ahead of their official launch date — usually people who’ve paid extra for a special edition. Advanced Access windows may be as little as a few days, but Early Access periods can last for months or even years, with no guarantee that the completed game will ship given the potential for financial hardship and other obstacles. That could be one reason why Valve wanted to close the loophole. It’s more likely that developers will get to keep the money they need to fund development, and of course Valve needs attractive terms to keep game makers from choosing alternative stores like GOG or Epic Games.

One thing unchanged by the new policy is Steam’s secondary 14-day return window. This applies regardless of how long you’ve actually played a game, but Valve notes that the countdown won’t start until a game is officially released. The policy is mostly meant to keep people from buying games on a whim and then asking for refunds months or years later, possibly after a developer has already been acquired or shut down.

The massive influence of Steam

Any policy changes on Steam tend to have significant reverberations. It remains the dominant online storefront for PC games, despite challenges from Epic, GOG, and first-party storefronts operated by publishers like EA and Ubisoft. Indeed, the Epic Games Store still hadn’t turned a profit five years after its December 2018 debut, according to The Verge, despite being anchored by Fortnite — one of the most popular games worldwide. Much of this can be attributed to spending millions of dollars distributing free games each week, as well as securing exclusivity deals for games like Alan Wake 2.

The Steam Store’s resilience is probably due to its decades-long headstart. It originally launched in September 2003 to support Half-Life 2, but saw no serious challengers in download sales for many years. During that time many gamers built up large Steam libraries, and the company has further anchored itself with technologies like Steam Link streaming and the Steam Deck handheld system. It’s inconvenient to switch stores to launch different games, particularly on the Deck, which requires workarounds to access non-Steam titles.