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On August 29 2014 18:42 Silvanel wrote: The game industry is notorius for breaching the customer rights.
Ahaha what sort of nonsensical bullshit is this. Have you no sense of perspective at all? The games industry now is so much better for the customer than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and Steam is a massive part of that. The ease, convenience, cost, and availability of games within the industry have all dramatically improved in large part because of Steam.
I think consumer protection for purchase of arts/entertainment should not be the same as consumer protection for functional products. If you purchase music, movies, or games, it should come with a different set of conditional refund when compared to tools, clothes, physical goods. Yes, you should be refunded if the game is not functional (Im looking at you Sim City), or there is gross misrepresentation in advertising, but other than that, refund requests are bullshit for arts/entertainment.
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What You think isnt really relevant. The fact is game companies often breach our rights, there were several cases in Poland when the matter was brought to courts, and they lost hard (most of the core of the problem was DRM and no refund policy). Fortunately most legislators do not see reasons to offer less protection for gamers than any other customer.
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On August 29 2014 16:35 Deleuze wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2014 14:29 Nagvalk wrote: Somebody tried the same thing in South Africa with Titanfall - non compliance with our Consumer Protection act. The answer: fine, we just don't release the game in your country. Aus probably has enough of a footprint to have valve at least consider compliance with their legislation, but it is all economics - as soon as the price of compliance is higher than potential profit they will just cancel the service for Australia. And the pirates win again!
Not in Australia they won't. Not with Tony Abbott and the LBNO (Liberals by name only) wanting to revive their own version of SOPA
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The only thing I can see coming out of this is Aussies screwing themselves out of a way to buy games from steam. I can't honestly ever think of a time where you could return pc games that have been opened. The only thing they could really do is that you can return the game if you've never downloaded it but then that defeats the whole point of an honest customer. Not being able to return a pc game is just how it has to be.
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imho you shouldn't be able to return products that works as they were designed to. Video games on steam will always work, and if they don't, it's surely the consumer fault for being computer illiterate. Anyway, Steam can just say "screw you" and all Aussie get fucked, I doubt it's an important country for Steam anyway.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On August 29 2014 17:29 ahswtini wrote: Well, back in the days when I used to actually buy physical copies of PC games, the UK retailer GAME had a policy that if you opened a PC game box, you couldn't return it, presumably so that you can't just take the serial key and refund the game. So they made it very clear that you make sure your PC was capable of handling the game before you buy. i havent bought something from GAME in so long xd
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The same laws should apply no matter if I buy a game physically or digitally.
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On August 29 2014 10:47 ShadowDrgn wrote: I don't think it'd kill Valve to offer refunds if you've played a game for less than an hour or so and purchased it within the last few days. That'd give people time to make sure the game works, isn't a buggy mess, bait-and-switch, etc. Huh ? Isn't that wrong ? That's like you're borrowing a game from a friend pretty much :p And we all know this is obviously forbidden. I know what you mean, but your solution really isn't the best one. Even though it could help a ton of customers... But meh, you can't have it both way.
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On August 29 2014 22:56 Redox wrote: The same laws should apply no matter if I buy a game physically or digitally. I don't think so, Valve has the possibility to simply remove a game from your account which means many of the reasons which speak against returning boxed games don't apply anymore.
Which is also why Steam is already offering refunds to people who contact customer support, you only get money in your steam wallet tho. I don't know how lenient they are in that case(or if they are doing it outside of Germany ) tho.
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I'm pretty sure there's a precedent for this in Europe, that even though they sell licenses or something like that, they still have to refund returns. But that might be because they have physical office in EU.
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