GOG's new refund policy is way more generous than Steam's. PC gaming is exploding.

Key takeaways:

• 30 days to return any game.

• It doesn't matter whether you played it for a while or for a long time.

• Same rules apply to DLCs and promotional packages.

Good guy Larian.

Please come to console.

I'm a simple man. I see Polish game developer, I press like.

That’s crazy! Is there any word on how they are planning to prevent people from abusing it? I mean most games are easily completed in 30 days...

Hmm. As consumer friendly as this is, this could actually hurt GOG. Apparently, they haven't consulted developers before announcing this policy change, and several have already expressed concerns about potential abuse. GOG have said they still reserve the right to refuse a refund if they think you're abusing the policy, but that might not be enough to keep developers and publishers on side.

@madrocketeer: yeah it's a bit too generous. They will be abused and they will have developers balking.

Still, I appreciate a company siding with the gamers over devs (*cough Epic cough*)

Yea, not one to side with greedy as companies as many of them are massive shits, but that does seem easily open for assholes on mass just to play games are refund them, don't really think it's very wise, unless their is some caveat.

Still, great company. From what I understand Valve was basically forced to add refunds than something out of choice.

Yeah, I'm against this. It's too easily abused and will drive devs away from the platform.

We're monitoring the effects of the current update to make sure no one is using this policy to hurt the developers that put their time and heart into making great games. We may refuse refunds in such individual cases. We'd also let you know about any future adjustments in the voluntary Refund Policy in advance.

It will be abused but it is a smart move in differentiating itself from competitors ala Costco's return policy so I see it working for them in the end.

In before all publishers pull their games from GOG. Why would any company agree to such a policy, where anyone can buy a game, complete it in the 30 days and then get all the money back?

That's great! GOG stays most consumer-friendly.

How often does that happen, right? I will support them entirely in this pursuit, with my wallet and on the net. I think this is worth celebrating for gamers. I would love to see more companies putting consumers first.

(BTW their Galaxy 2.0 is pretty awesome. It bugs out on me sometimes (1 or 2 services suddenly isn't connected anymore) but if they can work that out, it's becoming my go-to games launcher.)

I mean I bet that they can see you played through the entire game and they'll be like: "bruh..."

And if I were them I would also check any account refunding two games in a row or in a short period of time, or any new account refunding their first game. There are ways to mitigate the damage this could cause with mass abuse.

And I bet most gamers wouldn't even think to abuse something like this. Especially with GoG since they have been so awesome for us.

@KungfuKitten: yeah I'm loving 2.0 - I only actually use Steam's interface now for games where I want to use the Steam controller.

These are both good points - that will allow them to deny refunds pretty easily for sketchy cases. Of course... that opens up a floor for argument "but you didn't say I... but 77% complete is not 100% so I... I only played the MP..." Their customer service is going to have a huge headache

GOG Galaxy is still not supported on Linux.

Also, this refund policy is going to get abused like hell. I mean, how is this even going to work with customers being able to download complete DRM-free games? What's to stop someone from buying a game, downloading it, and then immediately refunding it while keeping the game?

So someone buys a game, downloads it, and then seeks a refund within 24-hours. Then what? GOG is going to send the police knocking on their door to make sure they deleted the download from their hard drive?

...I'm confused. It seems like you agree with me but are arguing with me?

Ah you actually bring up a good point. I suppose GOG games are DRM free and you don't need their service to launch them. I hadn't thought about that. That means it is pretty open for abuse, I suppose. Well, I hope that people aren't going to be too nasty about it.

I ❤️ Goodoldgames. So good for them.

I know they mean well but I can see this getting abused. I would have to think that they must be monitoring refund activity with potential to ban people who do it too often.

I'm thinking this is to test the waters. That's an incredibly generous refund policy, but GoG is well-known for being for gamers, so I hope this doesn't end in a complete inundation of idiots wanting refunds.

Yea, wouldn't be surprised if they quickly backtrack on this, and wouldn't blame them.

For the refund policy, does this mean I can still refund even if I played to end credit?

Well oh well I am taking full advantage of this thanks. Been compiling a list of those under 20 hour games.

Aye, just need to find the middle ground.

I think a "days played" policy is better than an "hours played" policy; I had Modern Warfare for only a single day, but because I played it for four hours, they deemed I had "experienced a significant percentage of the game to not warrant a refund".

Maybe let the developer set the refund metric; if a game has seven chapters and you only finished the first, maybe they could still get a refund.

I would like to see the statistics for this policy after a year, specifically how many % their refunds increased, whether they made money, and so on.

We might not be giving humanity enough credit; I think most people would not return a game if they played it and liked it.

Given the fact their games are all DRM free anyway I don't see how it's any more open to abuse than it already was?

Why would someone looking to play the game for free bother going through a transaction on GoG to refund it later when they can easily get a DRM free GoG copy from elsewhere?

This is a terrible policy and will severely hurt developers/publishers, also none of them were consulted about it prior to the change.

A policy like this depends on the decency of people to be honest and not abuse the system, it will be abused heavily.

I’m pretty sure that the “return no matter the play time” is only for good PR and advertising. You can bet they’ll be keeping an eye on how a person is using it, and if they see a trend of abuse, they’ll refuse the refund and/or ban the user.

I just made the active decision to spend more time browsing GOG.com for my gaming purchases ahead of other options. So, they probably just nabbed some sales through generous practices. There's that.

Remember that this is GOG and they are DRM free. You can buy it, install it, refund it within minutes/hours and you still have access to the game without they knowing it. That is why most publishers wont put their games on GOG, it's automatic piracy already. You are wasting your time compiling a list.

@MirkoS77 said:I’m pretty sure that the “return no matter the play time” is only for good PR and advertising. You can bet they’ll be keeping an eye on how a person is using it, and if they see a trend of abuse, they’ll refuse the refund and/or ban the user.

They will probably just have a secret amount of refunds you can do over a certain time period.