When do you deserve your money back?

Social media went into a frenzy over the weekend as it seemed that Steam was willing to refund copies of No Man’s Sky, even if the game had been played for an extended period of time or purchased at launch.

This post from Reddit has detailed information on how to improve your chances of a refund from Steam:

• Open an actual ticket to try and get into contact with a REAL user, not an automated system.
• Mention about how the game was advertised and draw comparisons to the final product, make comparisons on the trailer & screenshots compared to in-game.
• Cite sources, cite interviews with Sean, youtube and article links.
• Make sure you give the game a negative review on STEAM, be constructive in this review as it will be compared against your case.
• Give specifics on your rig, specifics on crashing, frequency and performance issues.
• Be sure to emphasize how long you’ve been with STEAM and how you use their service and how you will seriously consider purchases with them in future if the refund isn’t resolved (do this with PSN too)
• Be patient and sincere with your request, any profanity or outrage will automatically get your request ditched
• I imagine 10-15 hours of playtime is probably their threshold, if you’ve played 20+ I wouldn’t bother.

"Tacking onto this BE FIRM AS A CONSUMER," the post stated. "Put your foot down but don’t be aggressive, remind them that you spent money on a product and you were misled. Remind them that you use/used their service for X amount of years, metaphorically remind them that their service depends on you spending money and feeling satisfied."

It may be a moot point, however, as Steam has edited the No Man’s Sky page to include the following warning:

The entire return policy can be read on the official site, but normally a game isn’t eligible for a refund if it had been bought over 48 hours ago or had been played for over two hours. "There are more details…" Steam states. "But even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look."

Many players are defending the push for refunds from Sony or Steam outside of the normal return policy due to the game’s often buggy performance and a lack of features that were discussed before launch.

"50 hours for what No Man’s Sky promised to be is nothing," one player on NeoGAF stated. "A drop in the hat. A lot of people were expecting to play this game for hundreds and hundreds of hours. The game wasn’t as advertised. Many products give you a month or more for a full refund and this in my opinion is no different."

Source: Polygon – Full