We are well into the 2017 Steam Summer sale and sales have been thriving. Interestingly enough, this also correlates to the immense amount of refund requests. The Steam support section has skyrocketed to more than 315,000 requests in the past day or two. The vast majority of these requests have been refund requests. In summary, over 90% of all support requests in the past week have been refund requests.
A few of these requests come from the game Rust, with reasons revolving around a boring game experience and bad optimization and performance. Rust makes up 6% of total game refund requests on Steam since the summer sales. The good news behind this is the amount of time it takes for a refund request to be processed. An average refund request takes 48.72 minutes to 1.47 hours to process, which is assumed to be done manually.
It is good that a refund system is in place for a platform like Steam. A lot of games that enter the market with low prices and promising content just don’t seem up to par with the expectations of consumers who expected something more or different from the game. Of course there are factors on what makes a game purchase eligible for a refund, mainly factoring in the amount of hours an individual spends on a game. The sales end this week so be sure to snag any good sales while it lasts.