We purchased a game before we went on Christmas vacation. We then played it after we got back and it was terrible.
We have kids and normally end up starting games and leaving them on the title screen before we actually start playing as we are getting the kids situated. Our games also spend a fair amount of time on the pause screen as we are attending to our obligations as parents.
After playing through the intro and starting the first level, it became clear that this was not the game it was advertised to be. So, we asked for a refund. The game was immediately taken from our inventory; but we were never contacted and no refund ever showed up. We reached back out after about a week or more and were told that our refund was rejected because the play time was 6 hours and 33 minutes.
We definitely didn't play anywhere near that amount of time and we asked steam to look at our game progression stats, achievements, etc. to prove we had not played the game much at all. All of our attempts to reason with the support staff were almost immediately responded to with a rejection due to the amount of time steam calculated. They never bothered to look at anything. In fact, it doesn't seem like they even bothered to read our support request messages.
We explained that steam counts even time on a title screen as "play time". I have a video to prove this and anyone can confirm this now by opening a game, then immediately closing it and you'll see your "play time" increase by 1 minute. Even if the game was only at the title screen for a couple seconds. So, the mechanism for judging how long a player has played is fundamentally flawed.
The amount for the game was not a high amount and we have purchased dozens of games from steam. Our issue is this, our only recourse is to file a dispute with the credit card company because we asked for a refund for a game that we literally played less than 2 hours and that steam took away from us when we asked for the refund. So, our property was literally taken away and steam is rejecting our request because of a metric that is demonstrably broken.
This was not an expensive game. I am seeing accounts online where steam bullies people by locking down their accounts and putting the rest of their purchased property at risk if they file credit card disputes. So, we are between a rock and a hard place. We either let them steal property from us and just "take it" or we file a dispute which will probably cause them to take yet more property from us by force as they lock down our account. How is this allowed to happen? How is the platform allowed to bully customers in this manner?
They can see all of your game progression. It should be possible for them to see how little of the game was actually played/experienced. Yet, their rejections to our numerous requests for a refund were in our inbox within minutes of sending each one. They claim refunds are done on a case by case basis; but this does not seem to be our experience. What can we do? I am no longer comfortable buying any games from steam unless I know for a fact that I want the game.
Even then, I am much more likely to try to get it from another outlet since they are not willing to stand behind their products nor take care of their customers. Again, we have a TON of games on steam and have never asked for a refund before. How are they able to take something away from me and then refuse to provide a refund? That is theft by any definition.
I've had a variety of issues with Valve Corporation. To try to keep a secret that I resent them on a personal level would be difficult at this point. But considering what I have been through, I believe that losing all sense of self-awareness and chewing them out is reasonable under these circumstances.
To the point...
An issue that actually needs resolution to this day began on the 9th of June, 2017 with the purchase of "Final Fantasy XIV Starter Edition." At the time, the online listing stated that it would add game time to pre-existing Square Enix accounts. This is what drew me to make the purchase in the first place. Reactivating my account to continue playing and getting the Heavensward DLC for $33.01 seemed fair enough at the time, and I really wanted access to the Steam community while playing so my friends knew when to drop in and play with me without my telling them.
Well, things got complicated. Between installing from the Final Fantasy XIV game client and troubleshooting why the codes did not apply to my existing account, I learned that the listing had lied to me. After several complaints demanding a refund for my purchase being denied, the store listing conveniently changed to mention that only new account would have game time added to them as well. The codes Valve game me were not redeemable on my existing Square Enix account at all and they first refused the refund on the grounds that I "spent five hours playing the game" and later despite the initial dispute being within two weeks of buying the game, "because the game was purchased more than two weeks ago."
Valve's excuses are, of course, invalid. The game keys are not even redeemed and the "play time" was not spent in a working game at all. And the initial complaints were filed within just a few days of purchasing the game and were permanently closed with no way to be re-opened as tickets. Simply put, this is a case of sales fraud that could easily have been resolved with humility and a quickly processed refund. But instead, I was ignored throughout a lengthy complaint process and only got intentionally copied and pasted responses telling me to give up.
I was ready to forgive Valve because a friend gave me a gift to cheer me up. I was ready to move on. But they were not done toying with me quite yet.
Later, on the 20th of December, 2017, an odd red notification appeared on my Steam client, the property of Valve Corp., claiming that my account is temporarily banned until January 17th for a chargeback I never made. The chargeback was for Cuphead, and the product was removed from my online account. I found it suspicious if not a confession of discrimination that they would do this sort of thing when $50.08 was sitting in my Steam Wallet at the time.
Naturally, I refuted their claims before even looking into the matter. Looking into the matter, Chase Bank confirmed not only that I had not charged Valve Corp. back, but that no charges were revoked with Valve Corp. for any reason for the past 365 days. VISA confirmed the same after much begging and pleading for some sort of information on the matter.
Two possibilities remained. Either Valve Corp. failed to charge me for the purchase in the first place or had removed Cuphead from my account as a false punishment for a product that had actually been paid for. I will investigate the matter more thoroughly and match debits to my account against purchases made on Steam.
Either way, Valve's uncalled for aggression over something I am not responsible for is physically painful for me and triggers unpleasant PTSD side effects. They already scammed me out of $33.01 this summer, and now they're threatening me with permanent account ban if I ever charge back a purchase again when I have not charged back a purchase at all in this case.
In my experiences with other vendors, they are willing to investigate a little more thoroughly before becoming aggressive, acknowledge their own mistakes, and I daresay in the case of a few truly remarkable vendors even leave accidentally shipped products with the customer as a gesture of goodwill when the customer is not at fault and willing to work with them.
Valve Corp. is different. They are hostile to what can only be an illegal fault, and I doubt any cleverly hidden TOS jargon can excuse them from this pattern of behavior. I gladly, candidly, and with pleasure write on this matter to relieve myself of these abused emotions. I believe that once enough Valve Corp. customers come out with how horribly they are treated despite the fact that they hold previously purchased digital goods hostage, something can be done to humble this ridiculous Internet tyrant at last into treating their customers like something better than dirt.
Valve Corporation Reviews
We purchased a game before we went on Christmas vacation. We then played it after we got back and it was terrible.
We have kids and normally end up starting games and leaving them on the title screen before we actually start playing as we are getting the kids situated. Our games also spend a fair amount of time on the pause screen as we are attending to our obligations as parents.
After playing through the intro and starting the first level, it became clear that this was not the game it was advertised to be. So, we asked for a refund. The game was immediately taken from our inventory; but we were never contacted and no refund ever showed up. We reached back out after about a week or more and were told that our refund was rejected because the play time was 6 hours and 33 minutes.
We definitely didn't play anywhere near that amount of time and we asked steam to look at our game progression stats, achievements, etc. to prove we had not played the game much at all. All of our attempts to reason with the support staff were almost immediately responded to with a rejection due to the amount of time steam calculated. They never bothered to look at anything. In fact, it doesn't seem like they even bothered to read our support request messages.
We explained that steam counts even time on a title screen as "play time". I have a video to prove this and anyone can confirm this now by opening a game, then immediately closing it and you'll see your "play time" increase by 1 minute. Even if the game was only at the title screen for a couple seconds. So, the mechanism for judging how long a player has played is fundamentally flawed.
The amount for the game was not a high amount and we have purchased dozens of games from steam. Our issue is this, our only recourse is to file a dispute with the credit card company because we asked for a refund for a game that we literally played less than 2 hours and that steam took away from us when we asked for the refund. So, our property was literally taken away and steam is rejecting our request because of a metric that is demonstrably broken.
This was not an expensive game. I am seeing accounts online where steam bullies people by locking down their accounts and putting the rest of their purchased property at risk if they file credit card disputes. So, we are between a rock and a hard place. We either let them steal property from us and just "take it" or we file a dispute which will probably cause them to take yet more property from us by force as they lock down our account. How is this allowed to happen? How is the platform allowed to bully customers in this manner?
They can see all of your game progression. It should be possible for them to see how little of the game was actually played/experienced. Yet, their rejections to our numerous requests for a refund were in our inbox within minutes of sending each one. They claim refunds are done on a case by case basis; but this does not seem to be our experience. What can we do? I am no longer comfortable buying any games from steam unless I know for a fact that I want the game.
Even then, I am much more likely to try to get it from another outlet since they are not willing to stand behind their products nor take care of their customers. Again, we have a TON of games on steam and have never asked for a refund before. How are they able to take something away from me and then refuse to provide a refund? That is theft by any definition.
I've had a variety of issues with Valve Corporation. To try to keep a secret that I resent them on a personal level would be difficult at this point. But considering what I have been through, I believe that losing all sense of self-awareness and chewing them out is reasonable under these circumstances.
To the point...
An issue that actually needs resolution to this day began on the 9th of June, 2017 with the purchase of "Final Fantasy XIV Starter Edition." At the time, the online listing stated that it would add game time to pre-existing Square Enix accounts. This is what drew me to make the purchase in the first place. Reactivating my account to continue playing and getting the Heavensward DLC for $33.01 seemed fair enough at the time, and I really wanted access to the Steam community while playing so my friends knew when to drop in and play with me without my telling them.
Well, things got complicated. Between installing from the Final Fantasy XIV game client and troubleshooting why the codes did not apply to my existing account, I learned that the listing had lied to me. After several complaints demanding a refund for my purchase being denied, the store listing conveniently changed to mention that only new account would have game time added to them as well. The codes Valve game me were not redeemable on my existing Square Enix account at all and they first refused the refund on the grounds that I "spent five hours playing the game" and later despite the initial dispute being within two weeks of buying the game, "because the game was purchased more than two weeks ago."
Valve's excuses are, of course, invalid. The game keys are not even redeemed and the "play time" was not spent in a working game at all. And the initial complaints were filed within just a few days of purchasing the game and were permanently closed with no way to be re-opened as tickets. Simply put, this is a case of sales fraud that could easily have been resolved with humility and a quickly processed refund. But instead, I was ignored throughout a lengthy complaint process and only got intentionally copied and pasted responses telling me to give up.
I was ready to forgive Valve because a friend gave me a gift to cheer me up. I was ready to move on. But they were not done toying with me quite yet.
Later, on the 20th of December, 2017, an odd red notification appeared on my Steam client, the property of Valve Corp., claiming that my account is temporarily banned until January 17th for a chargeback I never made. The chargeback was for Cuphead, and the product was removed from my online account. I found it suspicious if not a confession of discrimination that they would do this sort of thing when $50.08 was sitting in my Steam Wallet at the time.
Naturally, I refuted their claims before even looking into the matter. Looking into the matter, Chase Bank confirmed not only that I had not charged Valve Corp. back, but that no charges were revoked with Valve Corp. for any reason for the past 365 days. VISA confirmed the same after much begging and pleading for some sort of information on the matter.
Two possibilities remained. Either Valve Corp. failed to charge me for the purchase in the first place or had removed Cuphead from my account as a false punishment for a product that had actually been paid for. I will investigate the matter more thoroughly and match debits to my account against purchases made on Steam.
Either way, Valve's uncalled for aggression over something I am not responsible for is physically painful for me and triggers unpleasant PTSD side effects. They already scammed me out of $33.01 this summer, and now they're threatening me with permanent account ban if I ever charge back a purchase again when I have not charged back a purchase at all in this case.
In my experiences with other vendors, they are willing to investigate a little more thoroughly before becoming aggressive, acknowledge their own mistakes, and I daresay in the case of a few truly remarkable vendors even leave accidentally shipped products with the customer as a gesture of goodwill when the customer is not at fault and willing to work with them.
Valve Corp. is different. They are hostile to what can only be an illegal fault, and I doubt any cleverly hidden TOS jargon can excuse them from this pattern of behavior. I gladly, candidly, and with pleasure write on this matter to relieve myself of these abused emotions. I believe that once enough Valve Corp. customers come out with how horribly they are treated despite the fact that they hold previously purchased digital goods hostage, something can be done to humble this ridiculous Internet tyrant at last into treating their customers like something better than dirt.