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calypso 24 Oct @ 5:51am
Steam Refund Abuse
I just got this warning after requesting a refund for Football Manager 26. The reasoning is understandable since my refund activity has increased significantly over the past couple of months. In August, I bought the wrong DLC for Hero's Adventure and requested a refund. In October, I finally had more free time and noticed an ongoing Steam sale, so I bought several games I had wanted to play when they were released but didn’t have time for back then. Some of them had mixed reviews or were known for having issues, and after trying them, I found they definitely had problems, so I requested refunds.

However, after I filed a refund for FM26 today, I received this warning. My question is: does Steam have a specific period during which an account is monitored or “watched” for refund activity? And will this permanently flag my account?

For clarification, I haven’t been using the refund system as a way to demo games. I believe my refund reasons are legitimate. There was just a temporary spike because I bought a lot of games, and I’ve kept most of them.
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Originally posted by nullable:
Originally posted by calypso:

For clarification, I haven’t been using the refund system as a way to demo games. I believe my refund reasons are legitimate. There was just a temporary spike because I bought a lot of games, and I’ve kept most of them.

Essentially there's a fuzzy limit, like some kinda of ratio of refunds : purchases over some rolling period.

Each individual refund might have been legitimate, the warning just mentions some of the things that might lead a person to misuse the refund system, it's not an accusation. If this is really an anomaly in your shopping/purchasing habits then I wouldn't worry about it. Otherwise you might need to adjust your shopping/purchasing style a bit now that you know refunds aren't a free-for-all.

Nothing against you, lots of people bump into this and don't realize there's rules and limits. some people get bent out of shape about it, some people acknowledge a little bit of ignorance and are a bit more careful and never hear about it again.
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rawWwRrr 24 Oct @ 6:38am 
Originally posted by calypso:
My question is: does Steam have a specific period during which an account is monitored or “watched” for refund activity? And will this permanently flag my account?

For clarification, I haven’t been using the refund system as a way to demo games. I believe my refund reasons are legitimate. There was just a temporary spike because I bought a lot of games, and I’ve kept most of them.
There is no formal guideline from Valve.

What we've seen from others in the community is that the warning is a friendly reminder. If you were to continue refunding in the next month or so, you'd get a few more reminders. But at some point if you kept at it, the system would remove your ability to refund.

If you're saying it's just been a recent trend with the expectation that you won't be refunding again for a while, the system should stop reminding you.
#1
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nullable 24 Oct @ 6:55am 
Originally posted by calypso:

For clarification, I haven’t been using the refund system as a way to demo games. I believe my refund reasons are legitimate. There was just a temporary spike because I bought a lot of games, and I’ve kept most of them.

Essentially there's a fuzzy limit, like some kinda of ratio of refunds : purchases over some rolling period.

Each individual refund might have been legitimate, the warning just mentions some of the things that might lead a person to misuse the refund system, it's not an accusation. If this is really an anomaly in your shopping/purchasing habits then I wouldn't worry about it. Otherwise you might need to adjust your shopping/purchasing style a bit now that you know refunds aren't a free-for-all.

Nothing against you, lots of people bump into this and don't realize there's rules and limits. some people get bent out of shape about it, some people acknowledge a little bit of ignorance and are a bit more careful and never hear about it again.
#2
Hermanos 24 Oct @ 8:03am 
How many games did you refund?
#3
nullable 24 Oct @ 8:07am 
He could tell you a number, but that number won't mean much unless you buy and refund the exact same games.

You might buy 10 games and return 6 and get dinged with a warning. But if you buy 50 games and return 6, probably not.
#4
rawWwRrr 24 Oct @ 8:54am 
Hence the reason there's been no official "count" or "ratio" from Valve. No reason to provide abusers with what official calculation it may or may not be. There's some that theorize that we each have a different threshold irrespective of our purchase history. For me it maybe 10 in a month while someone else may get warned after just 2. Only Valve knows the real answer and they aren't letting on.

Whatever the case may be, if you get one of those reminders in the email, it's a sign to start backing away from refunds. If you're going through a temporary increase of refunds, I wouldn't worry about it. The ones who ignore the warning and just keep submitting refunds unabated because they bought 100 games on sale and are demoing them all, those are the ones that get the ability revoked.
#5
calypso 24 Oct @ 9:38am 
This year, I refunded two DLCs and RDR2 in July, and Khazan, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and FM26 in the past two weeks. I think that two-week window is what made them suspect me. I also bought roughly 10-20 games and DLCs, with the most expensive ones being BF6, Horizon FW, and FM26.
#6
rawWwRrr 24 Oct @ 9:49am 
Originally posted by calypso:
This year, I refunded two DLCs and RDR2 in July, and Khazan, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and FM26 in the past two weeks. I think that two-week window is what made them suspect me. I also bought roughly 10-20 games and DLCs, with the most expensive ones being BF6, Horizon FW, and FM26.
It's an algorithm that "suspects" you. No one made a decision about it. You just fulfilled whatever set of metrics it is following to trigger the warning.
#7
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Date Posted: 24 Oct @ 5:51am
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