The other day, we reported that Steam were starting to offer refunds on regretted purchases of No Man’s Sky, following a Reddit thread that got out of control. It seems Valve have been forced to respond, and they’ve done so in the best way that they could – warning before you purchase. Check out what the No Man’s Sky store page on Steam now says…
The message displayed on the No Man’s Sky store page (which incidentally doesn’t appear on any of the other games I checked) states:
“The standard Steam refund policy applies to No Man’s Sky. There are no special exemptions available.”
The page then offers a link to the Steam refund policy, which as most people are probably aware of, gives 2 time limits which must be adhered to – within 14 days of purchase and with a maximum of 2 hours played.
This does however raise an interesting point. No Man’s Sky is undoubtedly enormous in scope, with the ability to discover a seemingly infinite amount of stars and planets, albeit with not much else, but then you can get very little games on Steam that you could most likely complete in an hour or less. The point I’m driving at here, is should the refund policy be more flexible? With longer play-time before a refund granted to the bigger games on Steam and a shorter time frame for smaller games? A lot of people only found out about the monotonous gameplay of No Man’s Sky after sinking considerably more than 2 hours into it, whereas you could buy a little game, compete it, even in some cases earn cards from it, then get a refund – no quibbles, no messing about. I guess it is something that needs to be addressed, and I’m sure it has to be something that Valve are looking into following the No Man’s Sky incident.
What do you think about No Man’s Sky? Gaming’s biggest flop? Or a game of untold potential? Whatever you think, let us know in the comments below or the RGM Forums.
