PSA: WARNING If you are trying out new games this holiday season on steam, buy them one at a time.

Steam doesn't allow you to refund games as part of a package/bundle.

Source:

I bought the Sword of the Stars complete package which had SoTS1 and some DLC and SoTS2 and some dlc.

I played SoTS1 for like 30 hours and had a blast, but then tried SoTS2 and it literally didn't even work, like, the game crashed every 5 minutes. So, seeing as I didn't play it for more than half an hour and also seeing that it was a pile of crap, I sent a steam refund request.

The problem is that steam only cared that the package playtime was a combined 30 hours and 30 minutes, not that there were two games one of which was great and the other a pile of worthless waste of $20 flushed into the toilet.

I went through the normal refund request process (three times, requesting additional information each time only for the steam support gremlin to say the exact same thing verbatim on every response email) So I went through a different channel, I don't remember what it was but it wasn't "Steam support" it was like some completely different steam support (I don't know why there were two systems but whatever). And the second guy actually explained that the total playtime for the package was over the 2 hour limit or whatever. So I told him basically piss off and have a merry christmas (sarcastically and like an asshole cause I was mad and they were useless). But from this I discovered that valve has a shitty policy and for this particular event it put a huge taste of turd in my mouth, so I'll happily say...

"Be careful when buying products on steam, be more careful with your money and spend slower and only after much deliberation. Do not succumb to instinct to give money because foul Origin-inspired policies will hurt you and make you feel bad, because Valve is in the business of taking your money, not giving a good gaming experience. They don't care if a game doesn't work at all, only that you paid them and their existing policy gives them a freebie in denying you a refund for non-functional product, blowing away most concepts of consumer protection, fair dealing and customer satisfaction.

I would tell you not to buy from steam, but since they are still the least shittiest platform out there I can't advise that. I can advise you however that Steam is doing more evil today than yesterday, because they can."

/r/pcmasterrace Thread Link - i.imgur.com