

Then you'll need to ignore the fact that Steam will list every game from the transaction in your refund request and instead just check the total value of the refund. Bear in mind this only applies when you purchase multiple individual games in a single transaction, not when you buy multiple games as part of a bundle.įirst, you'll need to be refunding the purchase to your Steam Wallet-if you want to refund to your credit card or another external payment method, you'll need to refund the whole transaction or nothing at all. Yes, but it's a decidedly confusing process. If you buy multiple games in a single transaction, can you refund just one of them? Once the recipient has initiated the refund request on their end, you'll be able to submit your own request as normal.

The request will also need to be made within 14 days of you purchasing the gift, and the recipient can't have played the game for more than two hours. Yes, but the refund request will need to be initiated by the gift recipient. Can you refund a gift that's already been redeemed? Yes, provided the gift has not yet been redeemed by the person you bought it for. Can you refund a gift you purchased for someone else? Other than that, refunding gifts works much the same as before. If a friend declines your gift, the purchase will be refunded instead of the game appearing in your inventory. Where gifts used to exist as items in your inventory, they must now be sent or scheduled to one of your Steam friends at the time of purchase. Since the start of May 2017, gifting games on Steam works a little differently. How has Steam's new gifting system changed the way refunds work? It's also worth noting that while you can claim a refund outside the two-hour/14-day refund window, Valve may notice if you abuse this to farm cards and prevent you from requesting refunds in the future.Īchievements, meanwhile, have no such farming restrictions, and can be earned freely during the two-hour refund window without issue. For less-popular games, this can mean cards won't start dropping until the 14-day refund window has passed.

This threshold, what Valve calls its 'confidence metric', varies from game to game, and is intended to stem the tide of 'fake' games released purely to make money from farming trading cards. Instead, a game must accrue a certain number of owners and players before its cards will start dropping. The second change Valve made to the trading card system stops games from dropping cards the moment they're released on Steam. This restriction initially applied to all Steam users, but Valve has since limited it to new accounts and accounts that have made a refund request within the last few months. The first change prevents cards from dropping until after you've put at least two hours into a game, by which time you're no longer eligible for an automatic refund. This was a problem when Steam refunds were first rolled out, but Valve subsequently updated the Steam Trading Card system in two key ways to minimize abuse. Can people farm games for achievements/cards and then refund them? If we think the refund system is being misused we’ll decline to grant future refunds." Please keep in mind that refunds are not a method for trying out games. "You’ve requested a bunch of refunds recently. The standard warning message is as follows: While there is no official number on how many games you can refund before receiving the warning, it seems to trigger after issuing around five refunds within six months. If you issue multiple refund requests within a short period of time, Valve will send you a warning along with your refund ticket stating that the refund system is not to be used as a way of demoing games. Can you get a warning for refunding too many games? Because the Steam refund window is typically only 14 days, developers technically don't lose money from refunds-they simply never see the sale in the first place. Valve doesn't distribute sales revenue to developers until the end of the calendar month after the sales have been made, meaning devs don't see money from January's sales until the end of February. When you buy a game on Steam, the money doesn't go straight to the developer. How does the financial side of refunds work for Valve and the developer? If you've requested a number of refunds recently, or your refunds falls outside of the 14-day/two-hour window, it won't be automatically approved and will instead be manually reviewed by a Valve employee.

How much of the refund process is automated?Īccording to Valve, any refund made within 14 days of purchase for a game with less than two hours of playtime will be automatically approved.
