Steam Refund

I'm_With_Stupid · 26 December 2018 at 12:33PM

Hi everyone. About 10 days ago, I bought GTA V from Steam. After playing it for about 9 hours, it suddenly stopped loading, mainly because of this ridiculous Social Club DRM app that you have to go through to start the game. It would no longer connect to the Rockstar network, and also said that I couldn't play the game in 'Offline Mode' because I'd never loaded the game on this computer before. I tried to contact Rockstar's technical support, but that involves login onto the Social Club website, which also won't load (presumably for the same reason that the app won't connect). Anyway, I contacted them on Twitter, and they were completely useless and just kept pointing me to the website that I'd already told them didn't load.

Anyway, after all this, I decided to request a refund from Steam instead. Their policy is that if you bought it 14 days ago and have played less than 2 hours of the game, they will refund it no questions. I'd played the game for 9 hours. They refused my request on the grounds that I'd played the game for 10 hours 48 minutes. That extra time was me having the launcher open so that I could quickly access the error message when talking to Rockstar on Twitter. So basically, you can be refused a refund on the grounds that you trying to fix the game counts as playing the game. I only realised this this morning when I noticed that I have now 'played' the game for 17 hours because I left the launcher open on my computer when I closed my laptop. Obviously that policy is designed to let you try a game and get a refund if you don't like it, but they're using it to refuse to give me a refund (or even an offer to repair) a faulty product. The most frustrating thing is that it's basically impossible to speak to someone at Steam. I've submitted another request using their online submission forms, using a template from Which this time about the Consumer Rights Act, but they can basically just click a button and send out an automated message with absolutely no come back, which I suspect they will do again (especially now I've "played" the game for 17 hours). Any tips?

DCFC79 · 26 December 2018 at 1:06PM

Have you tried the steam forums to see if anyone else has had the same issue and fixed it ?

The socialclub website is working now.

Do you want to play the game or go for a refund ?
I cant see a refund being likely.

heatherw_01 · 26 December 2018 at 1:15PM

Maybe the social club was down? Works fine for me and I have never had these problems using GTA on steam.

Try disable your firewall and try again, might be blocking social club

I'm_With_Stupid · 26 December 2018 at 2:41PM

I've tried all of those things. I'd be more than happy for the game to work like it did for a week without any problems, but I've already put in the effort to get it fixed, and I just keep getting fobbed off by support staff who seemingly have no intention of actually trying to fix the issue. Steam themselves refuse to offer any technical support at all, and just point me to Rockstar. And Rockstar can't give me any support because the support website won't load at the exact point where you can submit your ticket and the 'support' account on Twitter is obviously just a drone designed to point you to their website. That's why I requested a refund, because I don't want to spend more time trying to fix a game than I've spent playing it. But every single time you contact them, it's basically a brand new correspondence. It's literally impossible to actually have a conversation with anyone about it, and I'm pretty sure their refund request system is basically an automated response that doesn't even read anything you wrote.

I'm_With_Stupid · 26 December 2018 at 3:20PM

Steam are useless and have had the last penny they'll ever get from me. But I finally got through to Rockstar support using a vpn, which suggests there's something blocking access to the Social Club network. They recommended I call my ISP, but looking online, it seems like people periodically have the same problem and there's no obvious solution. Ultimately, it's only £12.50, but the principle of the thing really annoys me.

I don't really play computer games very often, but it amazes me that people are willing to go through all of this. It seems like the games industry's response to piracy is to make paying customers jump through loads of ridiculous hoops, some of which actively prevent people from playing a game they've paid for. There's absolutely no reason you should have to connect to their network to play a non-online game that you've paid for. Anyway, rant over.

Johnmcl7 · 26 December 2018 at 3:41PM

I'm_With_Stupid wrote: »

I don't really play computer games very often, but it amazes me that people are willing to go through all of this. It seems like the games industry's response to piracy is to make paying customers jump through loads of ridiculous hoops, some of which actively prevent people from playing a game they've paid for. There's absolutely no reason you should have to connect to their network to play a non-online game that you've paid for. Anyway, rant over.

I play a lot of games and have not had to go through that for any of them, in general I find PC games are the easiest they've ever been and not only run without issue but usually do a great job detecting the hardware and correctly setting up the game for it.

I will mention one exception which is GTA V which I also had similar troubles with Rockstar online as the system was unreliable when in high demand. I was thinking the same as heatherw_01 particularly when you've said it was working fine for nine hours then stopped.

Steam Refund

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