Starting today, Steam will now begin taking refunds for games that you’ve purchased on the service, something they hadn’t done prior.
If you’ve owned the game for less than two weeks, and played for less than two hours (more than enough time to know if you do or don’t want it), then you can send a request into Steam and ask for a refund. According to their blog post (above), you can request a refund for really any number of reasons:
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it.
If you click the link above, you can view the entire set of details regarding what is and isn’t acceptable when asking for a refund, but the company was fairly adamant that no even if you don’t fall into the rules, you can still try and ask for one. No game is exempt from being refunded, and that includes DLC. Unless the DLC does something irreversible to your game, such as leveling up a character, then you can still be refunded your money for it.
DLC purchased from the Steam store is refundable within fourteen days of purchase, and if the underlying title has been played for less than two hours since the DLC was purchased, so long as the DLC has not been consumed, modified or transferred. Please note that in some cases, Steam will be unable to give refunds for some third party DLC (for example, if the DLC irreversibly levels up a game character).
Oftentimes, Steam will unleash insane amounts of sale prices for games, and it might just coincide with a gamer purchasing a game that goes on sale the next day. For those in trouble, Steam has thought ahead, and yes, you will be able to refund games in order to buy them for less.
We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.
For Steam, this is a long time coming. The option to get your money back for a game you didn’t like, or even couldn’t play, has been asked for by gamers for some time. The review pages of certain games can oftentimes be flooded by people who did not enjoy the game and couldn’t get their money back for it. With this system now being added, Steam hopes to see some of that drop. For those who plan on using the service as a free trial of games, I would think again. Steam has already implemented a system to judge abuse, and if they deem you guilty of abusing your refund powers, they will not be offering you any more.
