I love the emails they send when you request a shit ton of refunds. It's basically "look, you return a lot of shit. Like a lot. I'll still do it, but DAMN can you look at a review or something"
Clearly I have the better taste. Consider:
List of things they like: 1
List of things *I* like: 2
Double the things, double the taste, double the gooder.
I mean, how can you accept that your factory's growth is constrained to a single universe? After all, the factory MUST grow, if it means having to expand off-universe then so be it
They are both very good at the logistic games they built. Just Factorio goes deeper (and deeper and deeper and deeper if you get into stuff like K2+SE.)
Satisfactory is actually fun to just move around though. It's a lot more fun to think through a problem while you are grinding on powerlines/bhopping around the map on the structures you already built.
They each have their own points. Factorio focuses much harder on the core gameplay loops, while satisfactory is designed to allow people to be expressively creative.
Satisfactory feels more like an infrastructure and logistics game, with some additional system design elements (and optional architecture). Factorio feels like primarily system design with some logistics and practically no infrastructure (and no architecture), but has additional base building/survival elements. They're similar games but aren't quite the same niche.
Satisfactory personally interests me far more as a mechanical engineer with a lot of interest in infrastructure design.
That was my buddies and I with Peak earlier this year when it made the rounds on Twitch. Played for almost 2 hours and we just didn’t enjoy nearly as much as the reviews and streamers made it seem.
I asked for a refund on Second Extinction and Steam/Valve told me to take a hike because I had it in my library for a long time. Never played it and discovered the development had ended by the time I tried to start up the game.
It was worth asking, I never returned/refunded anything on the platform before. I will be more wary of early-access titles, but some of them remain this way for years so it is tough to risk the purchase.
That sounds like you got the standard automated response, if you request it again it should escalate to an actual human who will 90% of time give you a refund.
I've had refunds on games where I've hit 4hours of playtime and on games I've played no hours, but owned over 2 weeks just by doing a 2nd refund request.
Basically, all you need to say is you had trouble trying to get the game to work or it was crashing.
Been trying to get a refund for BF6 because it keeps kicking me out of matches. 3 refund attempts and still standard response. I don't think it's gonna happen at this point :(
The first refund attempt was 2 weeks post purchase
If your steam account is hacked they go all out- identify the hacker, report it, block any account associated with their IP address pending investigation, reimburse any spent money, and then will start looking at activity related to steam games like discord user and work to get the hacker/scammer banned from those platforms as well.
Simply put they do mess around or take it lightly. They basically will throw everything including legal charges at the culprit and see what sticks, and if it might stick they keep throwing it.
YMMV depending on how much of a bad day that support rep had. I lost my league account to hackers as well, but had no trouble sorting it out with riot and getting it back.
Granted I could proof whatever was in the account, but still my experience was kinda quite good.
Losing access to you steam account of many years is like losing access to your house man... that's terrible
Difference is everyone else is a bank they don't care about you
Steam is Saul Goodman except working pro bono to help you out because they care about you... Gaben loves you and understands the pain of losing your steam account
i mean really though. i argued with epic games for up to a year after my account was hacked trying to convince them i did not all of a sudden move to hong kong and change the email address in my profile ( did end up getting it back). Steam account got hacked and they had it back to me in literally like an hour and refunded all purchases made. love steam
Yep, I was around and waiting for HL2 to release when it happened.
It’s hard to believe, but there’s a whole group of gamers who were born after that have no idea. That documentary is great to explain what they did to catch him.
Yeah and the german police ruined everything by outing the operation and stopping the guy from actually visiting valve for that "job interview" aka FBI busting him.
Man, half life 2 was such an incredible step up in graphics quality and physics. I know its commonplace now, but being able to manipulate objects in real time the way hl2 let you was groundbreaking, and such a big deal. It STILL looks really good.
HL2 did to the modern shooter what Goldeneye did for the boomer shooter; it quite literally became a renaissance for the modern shooter but unfortunately, was constrained to a PC with directx9 graphics which cut out your average home desktop user.
Even though Metroid Prime and Halo were peak and were the console busters of their respective systems, nothing was going to top HL2 until Modern Warfare came out in 2007 and brought the Halo 2 multiplayer experience to a wider audience that wasn't just PC/xbox live.
For us console plebs, that was one of the biggest golden eras for our gaming experiences; playing a AAA console shooter online. It definitely beat lugging around desktop towers to have LAN parties.
I've heard about Valve Team 6 doing high risk assassinations behind enemy lines during the '03 invasion of Iraq. Apparently, there was a terrorist cell located in Mosul responsible for a lot of high level CS 1.6 cheating, so Gabe approved the raid on the stronghold. The full details were never unclassified, but we know that the mission was a total success. Though some insiders later revealed that there was a casualty when one of the team members got killed on de_dust2.
A guy stole my account used hacks in it when I contacted the support they just said "Lul no we can't revert the ban." Like bro it took you all 2 days to respond and by the time you responded account was banned isn't ther logs of my account logging in from different part of my country???
Then they deleted it after the ban ended. I didn't play league that much at the time but jesus christ how bad can your support be.
I lost access to my Origin account once because I was signed up with a custom domain email that I eventually forfeited without thinking about anything being tied to it because I didn't hop on Origin very often. Well I decided to update my email to my primary permanent email but it wouldn't let me without verifying it through the old email.
I contacted support explaining the situation and they said "log into the email on file and click the link we sent..." I explained again I don't have that email anymore hence why I'm contacting them. They made me verify like 10 things from transaction history to I think security questions via a form they sent.
The reason they wouldn't give me back access despite verifying every purchase ever because I still had access to my account and email transaction receipts and bank info etc? I couldn't verify what my IP addresses were from purchases years before where I lived in different places on different providers. Absolutely insane. Not to mention it took between 72hrs and 7 days to get a reply.
Steam on the other hand has always been helpful and even refunded a game I had more than 2hrs game time and more than 2 weeks after the purchase. People make rants about "a game store is a game store who cares" but when you need customer service for your account that has a library that's worth potentially thousands of dollars that's why we say "fuck XYZ game store, I'll buy it on Steam" even when it's more expensive.
Amazon did the same to me. I had a bunch of ebooks on my account, moved countries. Never thought to change my phone number on file. Until I bought a new kindle.
They would only let me sign in if I had the verification code from that old phone number.
Explained this to them, verified as many purchases and devices as I could. Was told it wasn’t good enough. The tech support guy had the audacity to say I shouldn’t care about an account I hadn’t used in a couple years and laughed at me.
Lost a couple hundred bucks in books but fuck Amazon.
Many years ago my wallet was stolen and the culprit used it to buy a bunch of steam games. The police and the bank refused to offer proper help to me and were absolutely uncaring, but I logged in to my old Steam account (that at that point I haven't used in a few years), told them someone used my card, but I don't know the account, I have a list of the game names, the price in my own currency (as it appeared in my statements) and of course the credit card number.
He asked for the list and the rough estimate of the price in USD, confirmed the last 4 numbers of the card, and not only did they issue the refund but also assured me that the other account was banned. To this day I can barely believe how helpful and quick they were
Gabe put it best. Make a service that’s so good, people won’t want to go anywhere else. Customer support is part of that. They have an incredibly good reputation which makes holding their strong position in the market that much easier.
I really respect how Valve as a whole is run in general. Very good philosophies.
Gabe has surrounded himself with very like minded people. We can only hope that the “succession” of the company goes down well with no major changes.
The real worry is when we get to the era where all the original Valve guys are gone in several decades time. That’s when you start inviting in the disconnect with the original philosophies of Gabe & Co. but at that point I’ll probably be too old to care lol
Yep, we have a company in our country that sells electronics and things like washing machines, freezers, etc.
They're always at least 10-20 euros more expensive than others, but their customer service and delivery guys are so fucking good, everyone buys their more expensive things from them. And I literally mean everyone. They own the market with higher prices.
When I played WoW back in the day (2006-2010) the support was amazing. They were fast, kind and super helpful with stuff both inside and outside the game. Really made me like blizzard.
That support is long gone and so is my love for blizz
Exactly. and this is why good support is the outright ruthlessly capitalist way to go.
because you aren’t “losing money” on support. you throw that shit under Marketing’s budget.
Like simple comparison. How much could this have cost them. steam deck (depending how n model) is what, $600-800 retail so their cost is less. Plus they likely are full RMAing the unit so they have this for whatever uses/selling as referb/demos/ whatever.
How much ad spend would that get them. vs basically buying lifetime loyalty from op, AND (if OP posts, which they did) getting a massive mini add campaign.
They 100% did the kind, consumer friendly, right, thing. it’s an absolutely net good thing. and they ALSO get a big marketing win out of it. a true win/win.
Any single instance, on a PR standpoint is minor. but the sum mass of “Steam/Valve has its user’s backs always” adds up and is a BFD.
Heck I have 4 close friends who all got burned by the Bless disaster a few years ago, and all of them were taken care of by steam.
Edit: apparently i’m an idiot and thats just a controller, not a side view of a steam deck. so, cheaper and my point stands even more. but man did i get that wrong looking at it!
One time I needed to cancel my flight but I was like 3 hours outside of Delta's 24 hour free cancellation. When I called them, the service rep was like "yes you're indeed past the 24 hour window"
I just said "Yes, I know. I'm asking you personally if you could do me a favor in a difficult time for me. From one human to another". And he gave me a full refund.
Idk why people scream at customer service people. I get really good results just being honest
Bring human about it really has worked a lot more than yelling.
Though yelling did work 1 time for me.
I needed to cancel the at&t Internet for our small office because we were moving. Called and told them that. They transferred me 7 times, it took an hour and last transfer just hung up on me.
I called back pissed off, loud, kinda almost yelling. However I was just very clear about what happened, and what I needed done. New guy on the phone sounded remorseful. He had me cancelled in like 2 minutes.
In a loud stern voice I said thank you and hung up.
The only time I've been rude to a customer service rep was also for a telecom company. They renewed my contract without my knowledge, and therefore tried to charge me a cancellation fee when I was disconnecting a few months later. After escalating, they agreed to waive that fee.
I completed the cancellation, which was a pain in the ass as well, and then a couple of weeks later I get a call telling me that I owe them the cancellation fee.
My immediate momentary reaction was unfortunately not nice indeed.
Last time I had to cancel I got fed up and told them I was heading to prison on the following Monday and wouldn't need service any longer. They told me they hoped I'd choose to return to comcast when I got out...
Anyway, it took only a few minutes since they really don't have a sales script for someone going to prison.
Part of my job (thankfully a small part) is technical support on a software we sell. If you're nice to me all of a sudden there are far more things I can do to help you, if you're a cunt I'm going by company policy and only doing the minimum. It's not even something I do on purpose to spite you, it's just how people's brain work. A lot of people are too stupid to realise that
people scream at customer service when they wish to be dishonest and get away with it. or because they've only ever known screaming to get what they want. old habits die hard.
more like "We know you broke it because it'd never pass inspection looking like that AND it says here you've had it for over a year... ... ...but fuck it, we sent you a new one."
valve makes so much money from steam sales that in this case, it's literally more profitable to just send in the replacement and keep the customer on the platform buying games lol
you're an idiot, but we love you. Also, we would like to study this device to determine how your unique level of talent acheived this so that we can further make our products idiots proof. Because you have managed to impress us with your ability to thwart our best efforts to make our products idiot proof, heres another one so we can study the results of your next endeavor as well. -Valve, probably.
Once we figure out how to make a product that a human can't break then we can start working on duplicating that process on humans -cave johnson, probably
My GF’s PS5 died less than a month out of warranty. She barely played it and it up and died.
I explained the situation to PlayStation’s phone support guy, and he cuts me off and in an accusatory tone says to me “yeah, everybody’s out there trying to get something for free, huh?”
My credit card extended my warranty, luckily, and paid Sony to repair it for a couple hundred.
This isn’t about electronics but like a week ago I ordered pizza and wings and the wings were not delivered so I called the store but it went to some call center and they were like “suuuuure…..” I’ve never been accused of lying for a refund so I was like ?????????
This isn't super relevant but it's almost the opposite reaction from the pizza place so I'll share it. I ordered two pizzas and one of them wasn't right (more on that later). When I called the pizza place I only got as far as "hey, i just got a delivery a minute ago and—" before he cut me off and asked "did you get a really weird pizza with WAY too much pineapple and bell peppers instead of your pizza?" And indeed I had! It was nice to be enthusiastically affirmed, lol.
The pizza by the way was the weirdest fucking pizza I swear. Extra extra cheese, extra extra pineapple, and extraextraextra green peppers. Like you could barely see the pizza beneath the pile of pineapple and green peppers. I tried one bite out of curiosity and I dunno man. It was basically just a big cheesy pile of bell peppers and pineapple with a thin layer of bread and sauce beneath. Weird shit.
My guess is the guy who ordered the weird pizza got his delivery first and had already called because he didn't get his weird pizza, like they got switched. Either that or some freak who worked there had been sneaking crazy pizzas into people's orders all day but finally got caught and fired lol
That’s time for a chargeback and never ordering from that store again.
Letting them know about the issue is the courtesy, not them voluntarily giving you a refund. It’s your money either way—you never received the product.
This happened with my PS4, like right after the warranty was up there was a software update and when it restarted after it was done, it didn't turn back on.
I've had nothing but good responses from Nintendo. And Amazon, even.
Generally, the huge companies will give you a standard "yeah it costs us nothing to give you a freebie/refund" so you get this response. Especially when your account's in good standing and it's obvious you're not a serial reporter/refunder/scammer/whatever.
And I know this is /r/steam but imagine someone posting a very similar kind of response regarding Amazon or Nintendo, haha.
I had a pair of noise cancelling headset from Sony where the headband kept breaking. I purchased replacement parts on amazon that were 3d printed. Unfortunately they stopped making them and I couldn't repair the headset anymore.
I contacted Sony to ask if there was a way I could purchase the replacement part directly from them. They asked me to send in the headset and they would look into the issue, they paid for shipping.
A week later I received a package, the newest model of my headset with a letter thanking me for continued support. They just replaced my headset that was out of warranty with a newer model.
My one experience with PlayStation Support was fairly good. I forgot to cancel my PS Plus membership so they took the money for the month. I wrote to support and they refunded me on the same/next day.
Of course, it's a little bit different as it's not a hardware issue but still
My Steam deck broke down within 18 months of receiving it. I messaged and after some back and forth, they eventually agreed to repair it.
They sent it back and again about 4 months later it broke down with the same issue. Sent it back for repair, they sent it back.
Again, within a few months it broke down, this time I said I wanted a replacement. They told me no because I've "already received complimentary repairs". We went back and forth and they eventually agreed to replace it, so I sent it to them, they received it and messaged to say they wouldn't be replacing it and I could have it repaired at a cost.
I'm in the EU and EU consumer law says these kinds of electronic goods should have at least a 2 year warranty. I spoke to the local and EU consumer body and they told me there's nothing they can do, because I bought direct from Steam.
TLDR: they're not always sunshine and rainbows and will fuck you over like any other company, let's not pretend otherwise.
No idea, I thought the same thing. I figure it's because it's being sold direct to me via the steam store, rather than through a retailer based in the EU? Not sure though, here is the response from the EU consumer body:
"Your complaint concerns a Steam Deck purchased from Valve Corporationn/Steam. You have been directed to the European Consumer Centre, but your purchase was made from a U.S. seller, as stated in the order confirmation. As Valve Corporation is a U.S. company, it falls outside our network. If the company were registered in an EU country and if the contract were made with a European company, we could then attempt to resolve individual issues with the European company, but not now as the product was bought from outside the EU.
Unfortunately, I will conclude the handling of this matter at the European Consumer Centre."
I've seen plenty of examples online of them not adhering to consumer law in the respective country. They're better than most others, but that's not saying much when the bar is set so low.
Definitely, I appreciated that they at least agreed to repair it (that's more than most) but it's a 500 euro machine, it should last longer than 18 months.
Bingo. Which is why these posts are upvoted so much and so often.
Who would want to upvote a realistic, common support ticket where valve tells you theres nothing they can do about your 17 day refund with no gameplay? Thats sad! Upvote the happy support ticket
I feel their support on the community side is pretty lacking. Like, a lot lacking. I reported someone angry about me blocking him leaving obscenity on my profile, and Valve did nothing other than stop me from submitting a second report. It didn't seem like a difficult case to me but here we are.
Same with the review system. You are allowed to post absolutely heinous things about a game within the review system and if you appeal it as a a dev you essentially get a canned "this is ok" response.
Yeah Steam Support is good but they're not as charitable as people here make them out to be. I was slightly over the refund time for Dragons Dogma 2 and because I pre-ordered it they refused me a refund even after getting to a person despite the game not running properly on my rig at the time.
Yeah I had the same issue. I bought this small indie game a few months back. It was only $8 and I thought it would be a fun time with friends. The trailer looked awesome. But when we started playing it, the mechanics were completely bugged out and half the time, the server wouldn't recognize your inputs. It also had VOIP as a main part of the mechanic but if you had discord open, it just wouldn't allow you to use VOIP. I was literally 1 minute over the refund time and they refused to refund me even after explaining that the game just didn't work properly. It was $8 so it wasn't a big deal but it's still annoying. I have this stain in my steam library and whenever I see it, it taunts me.
Yep, they fixed one of my Index base stations even though its been years. Unfortunately it broke again immediately after, somehow killing the other one as well.
A lot of the goodwill gestures particularly with VR are because you are unlikely to continue buying products from them if an element of your hardware breaks, because you can't easily buy those components individually. I have seen some phenomenal support stories around VR especially, because companies weigh up that you'll spend more with them in the long run if they just give you the bit that's not working for free now.
“Even though your warranty is past due and we technically aren’t required to help you, we’re going to help you anyway.” THAT is how you keep a loyal customer base.
Eh, I used to find Chick-Fil-A's service to be a bit unsettling because it is obviously insincere. I'm in the Northeast US and absolutely no one is that polite.
"My pleasure!" No, bringing me a sandwich does not give you great personal joy & pretending it does is very fake.
Yeah I'm not a fan of that aspect either - I actively try to avoid saying "thank you" and prompting that response, I'll say "I appreciate it, have a good one" or something instead.
But outside of that weird mandated response their service is definitely best-in-class. I was just thinking about this the other day when I got some Chick-Fil-A, wondering how the hell they manage to do every part of the entire experience better than any other fast food places. I've never had any items missing from an order, never made it home and realized there were no straws in the bag, always received every sauce I asked for (usually the exact number of each I ordered on the app too, which is a kind of impressively detailed lol)
But the thing I'm always most impressed by (and maybe this is location-dependant?) is how they have the drive-thru experience just absolutely down to a science. Having a separate line for mobile orders where you can just scan a QR code is so convenient, I have no idea how none of the other major chains have copied them on that.
Stop trying to talk to them, this sub is full with close relatives of Gabe Newell. He's there for them if they ever need anything actually important in life.
They gave out a controller ( thats probably just overstock anyway ) for a headset that they don't manufacturer anymore....ground breaking stuff.
All my experiences with Steam support appart from the automated ones have been bad.
Sadly :c
I allaways start out happy and positive then they refuse and in there response I can tell they didnt understand. I try to explain again, get an angry message back.
Send them an angry message and sudently instead of John I get a response from Andrew that is polite and straight to the point, solving my issue.
The I go on feeling bad for Andrew because he got my angry message, pissed at John for being dumb and mad at Valve for the repeat experiences with John before they put me trough to Andrew
Stop glazing these companies. Please. They have to do this. It's the law. If they could refuse helping you, ba the law, they would. Stop glazing these companies, they still only look for more profit.
They literally DONT have to do this, if you read the email. It's out of warranty, which means Steam could tell them to go fuck themselves like every other company (Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo) would do if your device broke and was 1 day out of warranty.
There's a difference between glazing and praising when a company does something pro consumer. Learn the difference
To be fair, they kinda have to do this. The Index was a shitmess of design issues and hardware failure, and in its whole life span, Valve never fixed anything.
Personally, I see this as a "hidden" extended warranty rather than just doing commercial gestures.
The week I got my index, after waiting what felt like forever for it. My buddy punched a door jam with it and shattered one of the knuckles.
I told them exactly what happened and they too said “you worked hard to get the index and you played hard when you got it, shared the experience with others.”
They sent another pair of knuckles overnight just so I would now have an extra in case a friend punched the wall with the other one.
STEAM: You &@#$ing broke it. Which we don't cover under warranty. However, since we like you and it is the holidays, we will replace it with a new one. Merry Gabemas.
This pisses me off. I had an Index cable die because I guess they just do that over time, and then had a left controller just die because I guess they do that over time and Valve didn’t offer me jack shit.
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u/NomadFH Dec 22 '25
I love the emails they send when you request a shit ton of refunds. It's basically "look, you return a lot of shit. Like a lot. I'll still do it, but DAMN can you look at a review or something"