New refund policy from Steam.

[Galenmereth]

Ah, I missed that. But there's still the part where it states that

 and if the underlying title has been played for less than two hours since the DLC was purchased, so long as the DLC has not been consumed, modified or transferred.

and

Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam—not as a way to get free games. If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.

This gets me thinking, though: If you buy new physical games in retail stores, there's a plastic seal; break it and you can't trade it / get it refunded. This seems to contrast starkly with digital now, where there's no such seal. I suppose the two hour mark is that "seal", which as pointed out earlier doesn't work too well with short games. It comes down to Makio-Kuta's posts about trustworthy and honest customers then, and also Steam determining whether people are abusing the system or not.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out, but I'm not too worried about it hurting devs or publishers, to be honest.

 

[Esrever]

It's not really common, but there are games even on Steam that do not require nor use the Steam connectivity. How would they know about the 2 hours?

The recently released Homesick, for example, can be played just by launching the exe. Steam is only needed for installing the game.

Would that mean that it'll no longer be possible to have that kind of game? Or would they be in a separate category where "no refund is available", which is doubtful, if legal.

Steam will have to do the same as GoG does at the moment, with the same potential risk of abuse.

This is something I already touched on slightly already.

So you see, this isn't exactly something that can be completely skirted around. These changes are going to be here to stay, in at least some form, going forward. I do think that there should be a more strict set of rules that are to be followed for purchases via Steam on returns, as the two hour grace period for instance is not something required. Fixes to offline mode manipulation also need to be reconciled where possible, as well as any other means of exploitation. There are fixes to be made, and hopefully the development community will have their voices heard and we'll see those fixes, but you have to also realize where this is coming from too.

As it stand currently, this two hour timer can be manipulated by means of utilizing Steam's offline mode. However, it would be incorrect to say the Steam is not necessary at all. Any game that is bought/activated on Steam is going to have the SteamStub wrapper on the launch executable it at the very least. Some software/games do include an executable in the installation directory that is without it or that the launcher with the wrapper simply then runs, but for the most part, everything requires Steam in some fashion assuming you aren't running one of those executable files I just spoke of or are using some method of circumventing Steam.

The way the SteamStub wrapper works is like this. Launch SomeSteamGame.exe -> Loads the program into memory and runs the program at it's OEP (Original Entry Point). With SteamStub games, the OEP is changed to a new location which points to code in the .bind section which communicates with Steam to see if the user logged into Steam presently has the rights to use the program being launched. If it gets an okay, then it unencrypts the program in memory and allows you to run the software/game. If Steam is not able to be opened or if the user logged into Steam (online or offline) doesn't have the rights to run it, then it gives an error and does not unencrypt anything.

tl;dr - It is something that needs to be addressed as it is currently exploitable, but you'd need to open the game at least once while online and then start Steam up in offline mode to then run the game and not have it count toward a timer that is reported back to Steam's servers.

 

[bgillisp]

Couldn't Steam just check to see if you have all the achievements? Maybe a "If you have the achievement for beating the game, no refund is allowed"? Since many players are obsessed with their steam achievements, that might catch a high percentage of those who attempt to exploit the system.

 

[Esrever]

Couldn't Steam just check to see if you have all the achievements? Maybe a "If you have the achievement for beating the game, no refund is allowed"? Since many players are obsessed with their steam achievements, that might catch a high percentage of those who attempt to exploit the system.

This would be a horrible method. For one, not all games have achievements. For two, the achievement system is easily manipulated.

 

[Sharm]

I wish I could be as hopeful as you about it, Makio-Kuta. Unfortunately I have personally talked to far to many people who see digital or creative goods in a completely different way than they do physical ones.  These people would never dream of using returns as rentals but the see absolutely nothing morally wrong with doing the exact same thing with games as long as they're not taking anything "real".

 

[Uzuki]

Well it all comes down to the Honor System of the market. We have to give people that option to do the right thing. Mind you, I'm not saying it will be perfect, there will be people who are going abuse this and there's not much we can do to stop them. Remember when the paid mod thing popped up? Remember how people were pissed at the prices some people put out? Remember how mostly everyone who was for it wanted a donation option rather then some guy charging $1000 for horse bollocks? These are the people who won't abuse the refund system and they outnumber the ones who only cared about free product. We have to trust people, otherwise people get resentful for being treated like a child or an idiot. That will cause people to rebel and then they will abuse the system, ie. Pirating, Ripping, Abusing the refunds.

Also doesn't the steam application still count hours in offline mode? I could have sworn I've played a few hours when my internet wasn't working and then when I was back online it added the hours in.

 

[Scythuz]

Part of the reason that I'm so bothered about all of this is that my own packs (and thus a part of my income) are sold on steam.  So this does affect me directly if anything goes wrong with the system.  It also affects the games I end up working on the music for and even just the games that I like that don't have good copyright protection. As Sharm has mentioned, people do see digital goods in a different way and in my personal opinion, I'd argue that they perceive them as less valuable than physical goods. This is due to how much less effort is often involved in getting them, it's a lot easier to buy a steam game than it is to buy one from the store. There's a lot less consequences to stealing something digitally than there are for physical items and it's an extremely difficult problem to prevent.  

I would like to be able to put my trust in people, to have confidence that they'll stay honest, I really really would but there's a lot of problems with me doing this. When I and the other resource creators regularly receive messages/emails from various places on the internet that: demand free resources in a threatening way, constantly try to devalue the price of resources by attempting to haggle to unacceptably low prices and in some cases even have the nerve to flat out tell me that I'm not worth spending any money on whatsoever... how am I supposed to feel secure about that?  I can trust people like those in this community, I can't however, trust people like those that I've just mentioned.  This system has the potential to make it far too easy for people like that to steal things, clarification is most definitely needed.

I hate situations like this because I always feel like the bad guy, like I'm wronging people somehow in an effort to protect my livelihood and hopefully those of the other people I work/associate with.

 

[Galenmereth]

People who don't see the inherent value in digital products are always going to be problematic customers when it comes to digital sales, though. You can't get rid of piracy, and piracy is easy. Oftentimes easier than using a legitimate product. This return policy might seem like an even easier way of getting things for free, but consider this:

1. You have to manually and personally contact Steam support and ask for a refund
2. Steam can determine that you are abusing the system and deny you a refund
3. You have to actually pay for it upfront first, and with #2 in place, there's financial expense involved before you can "scam", unlike piracy

With these points, it really isn't as easy for people to do this as you might think. There's a lot of barriers to entry, not to mention you lose the game from your library when you do it, versus piracy where you keep it. I really don't see this replacing piracy for those that want things for free, in absolutely no way does that make sense. I also don't see it as likely as a lot of people will go through all this trouble -- and it is troublesome -- just to refund games when done with them. If someone pays for a game at all, there's an inherent interest in the game, versus piracy where it might just be to "collect games".

 

[Esrever]

I wish I could be as hopeful as you about it, Makio-Kuta. Unfortunately I have personally talked to far to many people who see digital or creative goods in a completely different way than they do physical ones.  These people would never dream of using returns as rentals but the see absolutely nothing morally wrong with doing the exact same thing with games as long as they're not taking anything "real".

While it is entirely understandable for people to feel that piracy is inherently "wrong", it should certainly not be lumped in the same group as theft which is why people may see it differently. Theft implies that they've taken something from you and that you now no longer have it. Piracy implies that they have it, but so do you. Does this mean that it is a loss of potential profit? It surely can mean this, yes. But it should be noted that it is still nonetheless a different entity than theft. The digital vs the tangible.

We're sort of going off track from the original discussion of Steam's new refund policy, but I would like to share some data and various studies that may be of interest which actual provide evidence that piracy / file sharing actually promotes more sales. This is not to say that it applies under all scenarios, nor that these studies were specifically on software (in fact most are on music), but they might be thought provoking in any case.

Aguiar, Martens. "Digital Music Consumption on the Internet:Evidence from Clickstream Data"

European Commission Joint Research Center. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, 2013.

Karaganis, Renkema. "Copy Culture in the US & Germany"

The American Assembly. Columbia University, January 2013

Andersen, Frenz. "The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada"

Department of Management. Birkbeck, University of London, May 4th, 2007

Oberholzer-Gee, Strumpf. "File-Sharing and Copyright"

Harvard Business School, January 12, 2010

Cammaerts, Mansell, Meng. "Copyright & Creation: A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing"

Department of Media and Communications. The London School of Economics and Political Science, September 2013

Additional studies may be found here.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out, but I'm not too worried about it hurting devs or publishers, to be honest.

Same. Especially smaller publishers. People who pull this sort of stuff have a very "Stick it to the big-man" personality and usually target bigger companies when they start trying to take advantage of things using policies.

I wish I could be as hopeful as you about it, Makio-Kuta. Unfortunately I have personally talked to far to many people who see digital or creative goods in a completely different way than they do physical ones.  These people would never dream of using returns as rentals but the see absolutely nothing morally wrong with doing the exact same thing with games as long as they're not taking anything "real".

I'm not a trusting person, I'll put that out there. Working a return desk does NOT making you a trusting person. haha It makes you look at every person who walks up to you with a return and think "How are you scamming me today?" But I also know from endlessly dealing with these situations that it's a part of selling things that exists, that it's put in place for reasons that are largely in favour of the customer, and that 9/10 people are not scammers. True, some people look at digital things differently - which is annoying - but then... They just fall under a new category of 'dishonest person' in my eyes. I've also talked to lots of people who put GREAT value into digital and creative goods, and that number of people are increasing.

The security of a refund DOES sell more stuff too. It's much easier to make a sale when you tell someone that they CAN return it, even after using it. Someone said it earlier in this conversation, but it might mean people taking more risk on games they otherwise wouldn't and find something they love! That other conversation on this website, people were talking about gems getting lost in a sea of bad games - this would give those gems a better chance to be seen.

It probably boils down to how annoying the return system will be. If it's a hassle, less people will want to waste the time abusing it. 

 

[Scythuz]

Galenmereth, Maki, Esrever, believe me when I say that I hope you guys end up being right about this.  I really do want to be proven wrong here.

 

[Esrever]

I've been trying to keep my wording pretty neutral and ambiguous simply because there is no way to know how the future will churn things out, but also because I'm not trying to sway anyone one way or another. So far I've thought everyone's points valid. People have cause to be concerned with such things. Most especially when their livelihoods depend on it. Having a personal stake in things can always complicate an issue. On the opposite side of things however, I do believe that there is evidence out there that may justifiably quell some of these worries.

It's never bad to be concerned about something, but I don't think it is necessarily going to be a good idea to stress over things too much either until they start to present themselves as real actionable problems once metrics start to roll in from these changes that are being implemented. Hopefully things turn out to be for the better, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

And if they become too big a problem, I'm sure Steam will look into a way to edit their policy. Otherwise, they will loose favour towards publishers hosting their stuff there, and overall that would be bad for their business.

We won't know how it pans out, but yeah, fretting over it before things go one way or another is just going to give you needless stress. No one needs more stress in their lives. *hugs for you all*

 

[Sharm]

@Esrever:  I very specifically avoided saying anything that might be construed as talking about these people like they were thieves or pirates.  I don't think of them as either of those things at all, but I do see this sort of behavior as morally wrong and possibly very economically damaging to my source of income.  I am very aware of those studies of how piracy can be helpful, but those studies never go into the costs that are unquantifiable.  Things like brand dilution or the people who quit their creative jobs entirely over such behavior.  Those unquantifiables are the ones I worry about.  Ah, but we're getting off subject, I'd really rather not talk about piracy either.

The point I was trying to make is that for many people there isn't such a thing as personal morality, they base their behavior on things like the rule of law and society.  In this case the society doesn't care about the creators so much, it's a very "gimme I want it" culture, and this new rule takes out the only other block to these people's normally positive behavior.  I don't think that refunding people is bad, not at all.  I just think that this new set up is practically made for abuse.  To put it another way it feels less like "Yes you could, but please don't" and more like "You know, you don't have to pay for this now."

I would really like for my worries to be unfounded.  Like Scythuz I have a lot invested into this not going badly.  But it is just a worry, part of what bothers me so much about this is that although it affects me greatly I have absolutely no say in how this is handled.  I'll try not to stress over it, I think voicing my concern helps.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

Can you pull things you've put on Steam after you've used them to host it? (I honestly don't know the answer to this)

If so, then you do, in a way, have a say. You can choose not to use Steam to host whatever products you are selling. That would lower your chance in the market, but it would remove you from that policy that you didn't want to be a part of. Also remove you from the people who were going to abuse said policy. (The downside, it removes you from the entire Steam audience, the dishonest AND the honest)

I mean, again, Steam is a business. If they notice how the refund policy is now is hurting their business (people exploit it and as a result - publishers pull out of using their service) they'll have no choice but to modify it in some way to better balance service between customer and publisher.

 

[Sharm]

I don't know, I don't work with Steam directly.  Taking my things off isn't really an option though.

 

[Esrever]

@Sharm - I quoted you because you had mentioned how you've noticed people treating digital goods differently from physical goods which seemed like a good place to start off with speaking about those piracy studies. In hindsight I probably should have worded my opening paragraph a bit differently to make it more clear that I didn't mean anything more than that or anything specifically aimed at you but for the general conversation at hand. Apologies!

Personally, it seems like anyone that bases their behavior/morals on things external to themselves still has a very childish view of the world. If you need laws to tell you not to do something for fear of repercussions, then you aren't really abstaining for the right reasons. Unfortunately, childish people tend to be the most disruptive and have the loudest voices. These are the people you often deal with, hear about, or remember most vividly when speaking about customer service/satisfaction and return policies.

I've seen many situations where people have legitimate claims for being issued a refund. Then there are also those times where the customer was loud, obnoxious, manipulative, scheming, and an all around disgusting individual who merely was looking to game the system to their advantage because they saw an opening and they see the behavior as tolerable. These people, in my experience, are much smaller in number than the former. They do however tend to leave a larger impact because of how boisterous they are.

 

[Scythuz]

Can you pull things you've put on Steam after you've used them to host it? (I honestly don't know the answer to this)

As far as I know you can but, the process varies from publisher to publisher, I imagine that you would have more control over it if you were a self-published game developer however.  The problem is that even if I wanted to do that for whatever reason, it would do me more harm than good, if any good at all.

 

[Geoff Moore]

Maybe I'm being an optimist here, but I can't see how the con of the occasional abusive moron (as others have pointed out, they aren't gaining any money or building a game library from doing this) is going to outweigh the pro of all the people (like myself) who can't afford to buy a game without being extremely confident it's not going to be a heap of crap. Surely there's more budget-cautious consumers than dishonest ones? And even if they cancel each other out, it won't make any difference, right?

 

[Sharm]

The reason why Scythuz and I are worried is because we're DLC people. Letting people try our stuff out is the same as giving it away for free.