Ask HN: What is your opinion about the sale of digital games? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your opinion about the sale of digital games?

3 pointsziikutv10 comments

A company that has won, multiple times, the title of "Worst company in America" (EA Games) allows their customers to refund games within a 7 day period. Companies such as Steam, Microsoft, and Sony do not have allow refunds under no (Even if you meant to purchase the game as a gift) circumstances.

I am sure there are many points of discussion here; piracy being one. I would love to hear more from you guys.

P.S: Some "recent" events - http://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-sued-by-australian-consumer-watchdog-over-st/1100-6421983/

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Steam lets you buy games from multiple publishers, and a lot of times they have very good sales. I wouldn't call Steam a company, isn't the company Valve?

I'm not sure about other companies, but don't they only sell their own games? And they get a bad rap for being a publisher, not as a game-store. They might not be a good game-store, because they don't have games from other companies, only from themselves.

You are right that Steam's policy is to not offer refunds, and that is a horrible policy IMO, because you may buy a game, but your computer may not run it (if you're on the border of required hardware for example). But ease of use and deep discounts probably are more important than the refund issue for most honest customers (those who aren't interested in finishing game in under 7 days and returning it). Android offers two hour refund policy, which I think would be good.

In my opinion it's hard to compare a store such as Steam to a publisher such as EA. Even comparing Steam to EA's store, I don't think EA's store offers games from other publishers, so it's still hard to compare. This means Steam has far more games offered, some with deep discounts.

Also, to add, Steam doesn't check system requirements to even suggest that the game may not run on the PC. I had received a beta invitation and downloaded the game, before finding out it's 64 bit, sadly my PC still has 32 bit OS.

I think the problem is with the Australian case (I am Australian FWIW) is that typically these consumer laws apply to physical goods, and it works quite well in that domain.

If your fridge breaks in a short amount of time, say 6 months after you bought it, you are entitled to receive a refund or replacement, as long as you can prove your purchase (this doesn't necessarily require a receipt). There is an acceptable amount of time that a product should last that is covered.

This is much harder to assess with non-physical items, because they may be released broken, later broken by the devs, or in perfectly working condition, and depending on the situation it is essentially impossible for the vendor to assess whether it's the fault of the dev, the customer's hardware, or the customer just wants their money back because they finished the title.

FWIW I love the Australian consumer laws, I think they are extremely beneficial to the general public and they put the onus on companies to produce and stock well-produced goods and services. I'm just not sure how to appropriately apply this to the non-physical goods market.

Did they "refund" on your card or just refund your EA wallet when you can only puchase EA stuff?

Also some people said that a videogame can be finished under 7 days with ease, however EA games aren't that kind imo.

Some games can be finished in 5. I am thinking of even a 10-15 minute grace period.

I buy a lot of stuff on Steam for Dota 2 (cosmetics to support Valve). I usually just spam "next" and get it over with. Yesterday, I had to purchase a game for a friend and I forgot to tick the "Gift" checkbox.

Valve don't give a shit, no replies.

Yeah, since DRM makes it simple to disable refunded games there's really no good reason to disallow refunds. 7 days might be too long since many games can be finished in that time.

Steam is well known to allow one refund per customer with close to "no questions asked" before cracking down.

I wasnt able to do this..

love steam, but really want to be able to transfer games to friends. back in the day of cd/dvd games, u could actually pass games u dont play to others..

Trading functionality would be nice.. Or even, convert your game to gift and send to a friend functionality.

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