Usually yeah. I still pirate them but use it as an extended demo. Still more than 80% of those I drop in less than a couple hours and never play again. Then I’m just happy I didn’t pay for them. Others though like Factorio and Stardew valley I had to buy after pirating. They were just to good not to own.
While there are legitimate reasons to pirate certain media, Steam and GoG have great refund policies that perfectly serve this use case.
I use Steam, and recently refunded Stray for my stated reason to them that it’s way too scripted and linear for my tastes, and refunded Street Fighter 6 because I’m still not a fan of the movement in the franchise - they refunded me within the same day for both times.
They still only refund back to your steam wallet though, right? So it’s less a refund and more store credit. Which is better than most digital products, for sure, but still not the same as a non-video game refund.
and to add to this for anyone else reading this far, Steam wallet refund is much faster to refund than credit/debit; the latter is subject to whatever archaic processes the financial institute has to go through for it, and takes about 2-3 days iirc
Usually yeah. I still pirate them but use it as an extended demo. Still more than 80% of those I drop in less than a couple hours and never play again. Then I’m just happy I didn’t pay for them. Others though like Factorio and Stardew valley I had to buy after pirating. They were just to good not to own.
While there are legitimate reasons to pirate certain media, Steam and GoG have great refund policies that perfectly serve this use case.
I use Steam, and recently refunded Stray for my stated reason to them that it’s way too scripted and linear for my tastes, and refunded Street Fighter 6 because I’m still not a fan of the movement in the franchise - they refunded me within the same day for both times.
They still only refund back to your steam wallet though, right? So it’s less a refund and more store credit. Which is better than most digital products, for sure, but still not the same as a non-video game refund.
You have the option to return the money to your Steam wallter or the payment method you used.
and to add to this for anyone else reading this far, Steam wallet refund is much faster to refund than credit/debit; the latter is subject to whatever archaic processes the financial institute has to go through for it, and takes about 2-3 days iirc