Considering the frequency of Steam sales, there's hardly an ethical basis for complaining about a no-return policy. Does a game seem suspicious? Don't buy it, that applies to any situation. Still interested? Wait for a sale.



I didn't try LoP, but now I'm kind of glad I couldn't afford to pre-order it. It looked really promising. Kind of a shame it fell flat on its face.

I really wish devs would be more open with their community in general. Even if they have nothing good to say, it's better than ignoring them. Endless Space devs were very active from the start, which is why people are willing to wait for content; it's one thing if a developer is absolutely silent, because you never know if they've given up or if they're still trucking. But if they're still active on their forums and such, you can suspend your doubt. Considering the way LoP handled things, I'm probably not even going to keep an eye on it to see if it gets fixed.

They DO offer refunds... if the country you live in has laws covering that. French people, in particular, have no problem at all getting refunds for Legends of Pegasus. Hell, on a video game website they have a form available on their forum that you can simply copy, paste, add in your personal information and send to Steam...



Two ways of changing things: vote with your wallet and hope the company listens to you. Or vote for the candidate who promises you harder laws regarding these things. Either ways, depending on where you live: fat chance!

nats wrote:
Not if the game requires steam registration to play it. Steam could easily offer refunds and control deleting that game from a users library. They just choose not to. I actually like a few things about Steam, it's just the lack of refunds that I don't like. If enough people stop buying Steam products they would get the message. Its only the new purchases that keep them in business remember.



I think everyone should ask themselves what would happen to your games if Steam went out of business tomorrow? Nothing wrong with placing your eggs in a few different baskets.



From now on, I will be certainly be trying to buy all my newly released software only from places that offer refunds and starting to restrict my Steam use for new games where I can.

I understand your sentiment. I would support refunds, but at the same time understand their non-return policy and see many potential issues with offering refunds.



1) Want to demo a new game for free? Buy on steam, play all you want, return. (I believe this is justification enough for the policy)



a) How about a limit on return time? Say 1 day, 1 week, after 5 hours of play, etc. Well people can setup multiple steam accounts with different credit cards (prepaid?) to play as much as they want without paying a thing. Track IP's? Proxies



2) Bandwidth isn't free. It may be cents, but with thousands of people returning software these pennies add up



3) Piracy. You bought the game and the files are on your computer. With enough expertise and know-how you could copy and keep the game files, get a refund, and manipulate the copied files to play the game.







As for your issues with Steam maybe eventually going out of business and you losing your games...yeah that was a big reason why I didn't like Steam to begin with. But Valve has really shown itself to be a reputable, strong company. Their advances into the hardware market exhibits this strength, and shows their desire to become and stay a big player in the games market. There isn't one comparable service that can match what Steam offers, and as such Steam will likely keep and increase their monopoly on the market. Out of all of the game distributors, the only 2 that will survive the decade IMO will be Steam and Amazon (they'll likely buy up other distribution services as well). Thus, my eggs will go there. But if refunds are the sole determining factor in where you purchase your games, by all means support other providers. As said, I support refunds and understand where you're coming from (it's just a file you can delete, not an opened box). But there are just too many reasons for them to not offer refunds, its good business for them

Personally I have no problem with Steam's refund policy. Returning a digital game is the same as returning opened software. I don't know of any retailer here that will actually refund you for opened software. Then again I only buy games after I'm sure I'll like them and almost never pre-order. As for Steam virtually having a monopoly; yes it's not the best situation, but the only reason they have a monopoly is because the other digital distributors seem to go out of their way to either drive away customers or not draw customers in.

Any of you guys had a go of Legends of Pegasus?



Is it worth a look in?



Thanks for your time.

Lucky i didnt hear about the game before Endless Space For a x4 Lover i probably would have bought that game

I'm glad this game didn't show up on my radar, it looks like a real dud. Rule of thumb, don't buy or preorder anything without reading reviews, previews, etc. Reminds me of buying absolute D- games in the 90's and being disappointed when the game didn't live up to what was on the back of the box.

nats wrote:
I didn't think things could get any worse for PC gaming, but now with Game Ltd going down and this digital download becoming the only way to get games almost, and Steam with their near monopoly - things are starting to look pretty worrying. I dont know where this is going to end.

I'd get used to it, digital and cloud-based games and programs are becoming the norm. And a refund policy on a digital product? You can essentially copy it and hand it back for a refund; it makes sense for Steam to have a non-return policy. Think about it

I'd also recommend review before you buy! That's the way to do it. Make sure you read or watch a variety of reviews though, to get a collective analysis rather than a biased one.



LoP is quite obviously an incompletely product which is easy to discern even in a positive review. So the following isn't really applicable to that---While I usually recommend user reviews too, modern gamers are an entilted whiney bunch, especially pretaining to mmos and pvp focused games---avoid user reviews in those two genres unless you are familiar with the reviewer and trust their judgement.



Finally, forming our own opinions without making preconceptions based on the expereinces and opinions of others is prefurable. But when money is tight, considerations and self-compramises have to be made. Just make sure you approach your research with an open mind.

Igncom1 wrote:
British law allows customers to get refunds for faulty/broken products.



If you know any law people, speak to them, steam cannot deny a refund for any customer in the UK, it is in the law.

Yeah but that is mainly covered by the Sales and Goods Act and I have been told that it doesn't cover digital downloads - only things of substance. But you are covered by the distance selling regulations as well in the UK/EU which covers things like honest advertising and a mandatory cooling off period of 7 days.



Either way I would recommend anyone who buys dodgy game gets it as a hardcopy (boxed disk from Amazon etc) so that they can send it back if it doesn't work.

nats wrote:
I tell you what all this stuff with LoP has really started making me rethink my Steam fixation.



Ive just realised that I have quite a lot of games on Steam and if they ever did anything to my account for whatever reason I would be stuffed. I am going to start looking at Steam alternatives from now on for any future games.



I really don't like the way you cannot get a refund from Steam - that is really terrible.



I didnt actually think about it much before but now I am, and it has me a bit worried. I can see me making even less purchases of PC games in the future.



I didn't think things could get any worse for PC gaming, but now with Game Ltd going down and this digital download becoming the only way to get games almost, and Steam with their near monopoly - things are starting to look pretty worrying. I dont know where this is going to end.



If Steam offerred immediate refunds to customers, like they should, it wouldnt be bad at all. But the way things are, I am really starting to go off them.

British law allows customers to get refunds for faulty/broken products.



If you know any law people, speak to them, steam cannot deny a refund for any customer in the UK, it is in the law.

I tell you what all this stuff with LoP has really started making me rethink my Steam fixation.



Ive just realised that I have quite a lot of games on Steam and if they ever did anything to my account for whatever reason I would be stuffed. I am going to start looking at Steam alternatives from now on for any future games.



I really don't like the way you cannot get a refund from Steam - that is really terrible.



I didnt actually think about it much before but now I am, and it has me a bit worried. I can see me making even less purchases of PC games in the future.



I didn't think things could get any worse for PC gaming, but now with Game Ltd going down and this digital download becoming the only way to get games almost, and Steam with their near monopoly - things are starting to look pretty worrying. I dont know where this is going to end.



If Steam offerred immediate refunds to customers, like they should, it wouldnt be bad at all. But the way things are, I am really starting to go off them.

Aye, LOP is perhaps the most broken piece of gaming software to release since SOTS, and might; after a year of developing become equivalent to an early beta of SINS.



On the upside, the mess that is LOP does help make games like Endless Space shine all the more, really glad I finally grabbed this up.