Valve issued an update to its game refund policy on April 23, classifying that time spent in “Advanced Access”—or pre-purchase gameplay—will now count toward total time playing the title, closing a loophole players have been abusing for years.
The short policy update came into effect today and was announced via a Steam blog post. “Playtime acquired during the Advanced Access period will now count towards the Steam refund period,” the statement read. This addition is likely in response to players preordering titles for early access, and then refunding before the game is actually released.
Before today’s amendment, Valve allowed players to refund the title regardless of how much time was spent playing the game before launch. The popularity of Advanced Access in games has risen over the past few years as developers and publishers look for ways to incentivize pre-ordering or purchasing advanced editions of games like deluxe or collector editions. While Steam allowed full refunds to players if they had played less than two hours of a game, this policy did not include these pre-launch time periods.
This created quite the refunding loophole: Players could spend big on a title’s collector’s edition, earn the early access play sessions, spend tens of hours finishing the game’s story in one big burst, and then refund it all—before launch day.
Fortunately, Valve won’t start the clock on refunds until the game is fully released. Normally, after purchasing a game and starting to play, you have 14 days to issue a refund so long as you don’t hit that two-hour game time limit.
We’ve already seen devs shift into a “gated” version of their game for Advanced Access, with players given a taste of the action before locking off endgame quests or activities to prevent cases such as this. Limiting access this way, combined with Steam’s policy adjustment, should close off the loophole entirely meaning players will need to commit to a purchase should they be enjoying their Advanced Access.
