It seems like this behavior should also be reported to the credit card companies. In the case of Steam, it seems like what you should do is have the credit card company charge back ALL the purchases you made if they ban your account.
I find GoGs policy a nice middle ground to Steam, on one side, and ruining their business as you suggest, on the other.
Hit them where it hurts: state regulators. If you're in New York, for example, complain to the Department of Financial Services (DFS) [1]. They're hard hitting and know what they're doing. (I think California's analog is the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO), though it isn't, to my recollection, as intimidating as DFS.)
Someone should make a list of all local regulatory agencies by location. List all places hat deal with average joes as well as how likely they are to respond to you and how often they win against companies.
I really dislike digital distribution of games and software on this point. While some Steam games I can run offline I am not sure if all of them can be. Plus how do I reinstall?
It is a sad state of affairs when being a buyer on ebay is safer than buying from Steam
I was also under the impression that the card networks frowned upon trying to prevent cardholders from exercising any chargeback right they have with their card. Then again, I have business interests that accept payments via these card networks and I've never even seen the full terms that we supposedly agreed to on the merchant side, so I don't know how I'd check even though we're presumably subject to the same rules, whatever they are.
Cough, ahem, No Man's Sky...
According to Steam I'd played around 40 hours, but in reality most likely <10 hours active and stupidly left the game idling a couple of nights which racked up the hours.
I tried to get a refund from Steam and was refused, I then tried a charge back from PayPal and Steam stepped in and more or less told me that if I continue down this road I'll be locked out of all my games.
A few lessons learned:
1. Don't pre-purchase games
2. Wait a couple of weeks for real gamer reviews
3. Avoid Steam/digital distributions for higher value games.
This has certainly soured me from buying anything costing more than a few quid on Steam.
>> 2. Wait a couple of weeks for real gamer reviews
I know it's hard to do if everyone you know's playing the latest hotness, but if you can wait a few months, you can usually get the game heavily discounted in one of Steam's (or Humble, Green Man or other Steam key sellers) quarterly sales.
I used to buy my games on release date at or near full price, but these days I try very hard to wait as long as I can for them to get heavily discounted. When you pay much less than full price, the sting is lessened if you chalk up too many hours to get a refund.
To be honest NMS is the only game I've paid for prior to the release date, and even then I only paid for it a week beforehand.
I'm not a huge gamer (with the exception of dipping into Eve Online no and then). But NMS was hugely attractive to me, less so from the gamer/press hype, but from all the things Sean had talked about and demo'd.
That'll learn me.
Last month I bought Dishonored 2 for £10 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for £8, roughly six months after release (when they were £60).
THIS. I posted my own comment, but I also suffered from the same crash/hang refund issue. The game was so unplayable I gave up, and shut down my Steam link. Unbeknownst to me, it was still running and therefore Steam refused my refund, and didn't reply to my follow up.
And reinstalling the games is easy. You can install a copy on any computer you log into. You just can't play more than one at a time.
If you played a game for more than a couple hours, are you really entitled to a refund? And when you mention "Even games dropped by developers don't matter to Steam" do you mean early access games?
Caveat emptor. Digital distribution won't magically prevent you from buying bad games. Look at reviews, try the game for an hour or two, and ask for a refund if you don't like it.
Tried it twice, works wonders.
in my experience the time limits are related to delivery of the service. for instance, you pay with credit card for a service happening 9 months in the future. if the appointed day arrives, and the service is not performed, there won't be a problem getting a charge back even though the actual charge was 9 months old.
i don't think it's crazy for a software company to want to claim that i'm leasing software from them after a one-time payment, but if that's the case, i also feel like i forever have grounds for the return of my money if they ever break the lease.