you can as long as you do not pass the 2 hour limit with all playtime

not sure how the 2 week part works on a rebuy, though

Yeah, just trying to understand the policy and what we're allowed to do under our Steam User Agreement.

The FAQ says that in the event of a refund, amongst other things, that playtime will not reset. That is a major concern because I spent a lot of time troubleshooting already, which Valve considers "in-game" time.

Re-purchasing with only 30 minutes remaining to troubleshoot doesn't sound like it's worth the headache of dealing with an appeal process if things don't work out.

All play time counts even if you already previously refunded it.
So if the first time you refunded it you had 1hr 30mins playtime and you re-buy it, you will only have 30mins playtime left before you hit the 2hr refund limit.

Originally posted by miamew3:

All play time counts even if you already previously refunded it.
So if the first time you refunded it you had 1hr 30mins playtime and you re-buy it, you will only have 30mins playtime left before you hit the 2hr refund limit.

just for my own education

what about the 2 week part?

do you know if it restarts with the second purchase

or does it start at the same point with the same play time attached to it?

hope that made sense

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

just for my own education, what about the 2 week part?

Only that it must be refunded within 2 weeks


Where Refunds Apply
The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store. Here is an overview of how refunds work with other types of purchases.

https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds

Originally posted by wwwizzarrdry:

Yeah, just trying to understand the policy and what we're allowed to do under our Steam User Agreement.

The FAQ says that in the event of a refund, amongst other things, that playtime will not reset. That is a major concern because I spent a lot of time troubleshooting already, which Valve considers "in-game" time.

Re-purchasing with only 30 minutes remaining to troubleshoot doesn't sound like it's worth the headache of dealing with an appeal process if things don't work out.

if you only have 30 min left

i would agree that it is not worth it

i would wait and see if the patch or fix actually does what it is supposed to

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

Originally posted by miamew3:

All play time counts even if you already previously refunded it.
So if the first time you refunded it you had 1hr 30mins playtime and you re-buy it, you will only have 30mins playtime left before you hit the 2hr refund limit.

just for my own education

what about the 2 week part?

do you know if it restarts with the second purchase

or does it start at the same point with the same play time attached to it?

hope that made sense :EvilGrin:

That of course will count from the time you bought something, regardless if you bought it sometime prior to that date.
Everything else would brake a few consumer laws in different regions (note, the 2 hour playtime valve gives is not written in any law, so they can count it up from previous values).

The 2- week starts from the purchase date. So if you buy it again today, you will have 2 weeks from today. However, your playtime stat doesn't start over with each new purchase. If you played 90 minutes already, you only have 30 minutes left during this new 2 week period to evaluate it before it's no longer refundable.

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

if you only have 30 min left. i would agree that it is not worth it

True, but this is something Valve could enforce/fix for games on their platform by requiring some simple rules for developers:

In some games, Devs can update player profiles while they are in-game (like path of exile) to indicate to their friends list that they have entered certain regions or chapters of a game, so the Steam API is more than capable of determining if my playtime has been 2 hours of menu navigation and tutorial crashing versus 2hrs of playing a campaign or some multiplayer mode.

Originally posted by wwwizzarrdry:

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

if you only have 30 min left. i would agree that it is not worth it

True, but this is something Valve could enforce/fix for games on their platform by requiring some simple rules for developers:

In some games, Devs can update player profiles to show they have entered certain regions or chapters of a game, so the Steam API is more than capable of determining if my playtime has been 2 hours of menu navigation and tutorial crashing versus 2hrs of playing a campaign or some multiplayer mode.

That is not true.

The game isn't sending User X is now in the menu and left after 19 minutes, then the user got up and made some lunch and came back 12 minutes later. Even games like path of exile which use this functionality only show what area you are in, not if you are actively playing or not.

Like at the time of this post steam knows i'm in the southern forest of Path of Exile, it doesn't know the game is minimized and i'm responding to this post and not actively playing.

Originally posted by wwwizzarrdry:

I refunded a game (2 days ago) because I could not resolve a crash+reboot cycle that occurred in game, however, I discovered a new, potential, fix for the issue. If I re-purchase the game, will I be able to refund it a second time if the fix doesn't work, or will that flag my account for "abusing". the refund policy?

I did this with Arkham Knight, I asked support first in a ticket, once I had the ok to try the fix I repurchased again, unfortunately fix didn´t work so refunded again until 4 years later.

Great game but I had nightmares running it.

Originally posted by wwwizzarrdry:

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

if you only have 30 min left. i would agree that it is not worth it

True, but this is something Valve could enforce/fix for games on their platform by requiring some simple rules for developers:

In some games, Devs can update player profiles while they are in-game (like path of exile) to indicate to their friends list that they have entered certain regions or chapters of a game, so the Steam API is more than capable of determining if my playtime has been 2 hours of menu navigation and tutorial crashing versus 2hrs of playing a campaign or some multiplayer mode.

Well those are apples and oranges. The game dev can monitor what you're doing in THEIR game because they developed that feature specifically for themselves, not Steam. Valve can't just arbitrarily monitor what happens in every game on the platform the same way. I mean games are all different for starters, and one magic API that can do what you imagine for all games is pure fantasy.

Also keep in mind just because something is easy to say, doesn't mean it's easy to do. Or rather how many API's have you written that magically scrape data from thousands of disparate applications running on millions of machines? Because I'm going to guess the answer is closer to zero than one. I think you're making some extremely optimistic claims about Steam's API capabilities.

And finally while you may want to split hairs over what time in game should actually count is quaint and all. But that's now how it works, all play time counts, it's simple, that's a deliberate decision. And users wanting to change thing for their own convenience may not be sufficient to overrule the decisions.

I mean users have floated this idea since about day two of the refund policy in summer of 2015. So I wouldn't hold your breath for hair splitting time counting.

it wouldn't take much to devise a way to block or spoof the API calls back to Steam that detail where a player is in the game. It would be like how SAM can affect a profile's achievements. Just load up the game into a menu or lobby, run your API tool, play game forever, refund game "I was just sitting in the menu/lobby the whole time. You can see that!"

Originally posted by Wolfpig:

Originally posted by 13119205187913161:

just for my own education

what about the 2 week part?

do you know if it restarts with the second purchase

or does it start at the same point with the same play time attached to it?

hope that made sense

That of course will count from the time you bought something, regardless if you bought it sometime prior to that date.
Everything else would brake a few consumer laws in different regions (note, the 2 hour playtime valve gives is not written in any law, so they can count it up from previous values).

that is what i figured but wanted to ask before giving out info

thanks