No Man's Sky refunds: Steam says no special exemptions; other sites reportedly offering money back

[midian182]

You’ve probably noticed that not everyone is a fan of No Man’s Sky. Sean Muray, head of NMS developer Hello Games, couldn’t have been more accurate when he predicted it would be “super divisive” and “not for everyone.” Unsurprisingly, there has been a slew of refund requests from unhappy players, but the chances of getting one seems to vary depending on where you bought it.

This weekend brought numerous reports of people getting their money back for No Man's Sky, even in cases where the game had been played for many hours. A NeoGAF post claims users have been able to get refunds from Amazon, GOG, Humble Bundle, the PlayStation Network, and Steam.

Receiving refunds from Sony’s PlayStation Store is notoriously difficult; users can request a cancellation within 14 days of purchasing a title, but only if they haven't initiated the download or streamed the game.

However, according to a Reddit page, Sony has been issuing some refunds, irrespective of the number of hours played. Those who purchased a No Man’s Sky digital code from Amazon have also reported success in getting their money returned. In both cases, customers found using the companies’ live chat system was the best method; in one case, Sony's agent called it a “one-time gesture of goodwill.”

One former Sony director isn’t happy about the situation. Shahid Ahmad has called players who ask for their money back after so many hours of game time “thieves.” The one-time Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Strategic Content Director wrote a series of tweets on the subject:

Here’s the good news: Most players are not thieves. Most players are decent, honest people without whose support there could be no industry.

— Shahid Kamal Ahmad (@shahidkamal) August 28, 2016

We’re not talking about a consumer product in the factory sense. We’re talking about a work of art. You can’t just treat it like a widget.

— Shahid Kamal Ahmad (@shahidkamal) August 28, 2016

In forty years of buying tens of thousands of pounds worth of games, to my knowledge, I have not *once* asked for my money back.

— Shahid Kamal Ahmad (@shahidkamal) August 28, 2016

As a customer and a player before I was ever a developer, I’d only have asked for my money back if the game was broken at boot time.

— Shahid Kamal Ahmad (@shahidkamal) August 28, 2016

I have no dog in this race. Just my 2p. I’ve been a dev, a pub and a funder for decades, and a player for longer than all of that.

— Shahid Kamal Ahmad (@shahidkamal) August 28, 2016

Other players reported they were able to get their money back from Steam, even when failing to meet its strict refund rules that state games must have been played for fewer than 2 hours and owned for no more than 14 days.

But it appears that Valve is no longer making exceptions for No Man’s Sky. On the game’s Steam page, there is now a note that reads: “The standard Steam refund policy applies to No Man’s Sky. There are no special exemptions available. Click here for more detail on the Steam refund policy.”

Many players argue that due to the nature of the game, two hours isn’t long enough to discover the number of technical issues, missing features, and various other problems within No Man’s Sky.

Patches are currently being rolled that should bring some welcome changes and fixes to NMS. Murray had said that free future updates would introduce new content, such as base building and freighters, but he recently told the Daily Star that it was “perhaps naïve” of him to suggest players wouldn’t have to pay for this DLC.

Anyone who feels they deserve a refund for No Man’s Sky should still get in touch with whichever company they bought it from and plead their case.

If you haven't already seen it, check out the NMS Honest Game Trailer video below.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/66124-no-man-sky-refunds-steam-no-special-exemptions.html

 

[alabama man]

If the seller lies to a customers promising multiplayer and other missing features you're always eligible for refund. Not that Sean did it on purpose, he just has the "molyneux" syndrome. Shame sony marketing made 60$aaa out of a 20$ indie but I guess they made enough money and name for a second game that they wont have to find other jobs yet.

 

[m4a4]

Good on Steam. Ignorance isn't a good enough excuse to get a refund (and I hope others follow suit)...

 

[alabama man]

For shanid:

1.If it takes 50 hours to find out about missing features or to get the game working because bad optimization it's not the customers fault.

2.Yup most people aren't thieves, nice calling all non fanboys thieves, best way to make new fans/customers.

3.Lying when selling product and faulty product are both reasons good enough for refund even in art world.

4.Me too, once asked money back from early access game when it didn't work (at all). If I would have been gullible enough to pre-order this it would have been the second one. Must have spent over 50k in total to date.

5.Yup this is broken compared to promises and for a friend that has minimum spec computer it is completely broken. He buys like 2 games a year and it really broke my heart when I heard he bought no mansky as it was all hype. After playing 20hours he said it was bad and was wondering when the multiplayer starts, he said he will go back to pirating as it's the only way to be sure the games are good.

6."I have no dog in this race. Just my 2p. I’ve been a dev, a pub and a funder for decades, and a player for longer than all of that."

Just my 2p? you bought it for 2 pence or what are you saying? you've been a pub as in a bar that has people drinking inside? that would explain you're thought process.

 

[m4a4]

If the seller lies to a customers promising multiplayer and other missing features you're always eligible for refund. Not that Sean did it on purpose, he just has the "molyneux" syndrome. Shame sony marketing made 60$aaa out of a 20$ indie but I guess they made enough money and name for a second game that they wont have to find other jobs yet.

I don't think they've promised anything that hasn't been delivered (Multiplayer was never advertised, quite the opposite actually). Maybe there was some hype that players misinterpreted, but I've always understood that it's a "shallow" SP exploration game (which I could care less about without, at the least, a modding community).

Edit: Now that I've watched a few reviews where the guy was quoted, I see that the promises fell flat lol

 

[oldikes]

"If it takes 50 hours to find out about missing features or to get the game working because bad optimization it's not the customers fault."

If it takes 50 hours to find missing features, that is 100% the customers fault...50 hours is FAR more value than you get out of alot of games these days.

Playing this game for 20+ hours then requesting a refund is wrong. You people have all bandwagoned so much onto this hate train that youve abandoned all reason.

 

[Hassan Al Rawi]

"If it takes 50 hours to find out about missing features or to get the game working because bad optimization it's not the customers fault."

If it takes 50 hours to find missing features, that is 100% the customers fault...50 hours is FAR more value than you get out of alot of games these days.

Playing this game for 20+ hours then requesting a refund is wrong. You people have all bandwagoned so much onto this hate train that youve abandoned all reason.

If the seller lies to a customers promising multiplayer and other missing features you're always eligible for refund. Not that Sean did it on purpose, he just has the "molyneux" syndrome. Shame sony marketing made 60$aaa out of a 20$ indie but I guess they made enough money and name for a second game that they wont have to find other jobs yet.

I don't think they've promised anything that hasn't been delivered (Multiplayer was never advertised, quite the opposite actually). Maybe there was some hype that players misinterpreted, but I've always understood that it's a "shallow" SP exploration game (which I could care less about without, at the least, a modding community).

Are you kidding me? I purchased NMS (Preordered it) Played it for 5 Hours then I was like when am I going to battle aliens? (because the showed that in videos in E3 and other places as well), also showed how variety of creatures are there, Sean did say that you will be able to interact with other players, which they don't, and so many more issues.

They sold a half assed game promising to do way more than what they released, people deserve refunds for that.

The only other game that I requested a refund was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and the reason why I requested that because I had low FPS (around 10), after reading disabling MSAA will fix the problem, I repurchased the game.

 

[Hassan Al Rawi]

"If it takes 50 hours to find out about missing features or to get the game working because bad optimization it's not the customers fault."

If it takes 50 hours to find missing features, that is 100% the customers fault...50 hours is FAR more value than you get out of alot of games these days.

Playing this game for 20+ hours then requesting a refund is wrong. You people have all bandwagoned so much onto this hate train that youve abandoned all reason.

No, playing a game with false promises that you will achieve something if you explore more (encountering more creatures, starships battles, way more verity in planets and spaceships, etc..).

People do deserve a refund on such game, and if they don't, they are supporting sly marketing and shitty development.

Look at CD Projekt, The Witcher 3 was a master piece that delivered everything they promised and more, that's how game developers should do, not the opposite.

 

[oldikes]

No, playing a game with false promises that you will achieve something if you explore more (encountering more creatures, starships battles, way more verity in planets and spaceships, etc..).

People do deserve a refund on such game, and if they don't, they are supporting sly marketing and shitty development.

Look at CD Projekt, The Witcher 3 was a master piece that delivered everything they promised and more, that's how game developers should do, not the opposite.

The game never promised anything after extended exploration....The only thing they were wrongly vague about was included multiplayer. They never promised variety in spaceships at all, and as far as I know there is plenty of (generic) variety.

Is it a good game? no. That doesnt make it okay to steal from people.

If you people had your way, people will still start asking for refunds after every single player game, because "I thought there would be more stuff to do after I already beat it"

People buy bad products all the time. Just dont buy it again. This decades sense of entitlement is dangerous for the game dev industry.

 

[SirGCal]

I've also bought tens of thousands of dollars in games before. I only ever asked for refunds on two, not expecting either one. Both 'accidental' purchases made by the kids. But both were happily given and I was shown (at the time far more cryptic) parental controls. One in Steam, one in Android.

But I also don't pre-order stuff. Too much junk out there with wounderful PR. No thanks. I wait then purchase if everything pans out.

 

[TomSEA]

For shanid:

1.If it takes 50 hours to find out about missing features or to get the game working because bad optimization it's not the customers fault.

2.Yup most people aren't thieves, nice calling all non fanboys thieves, best way to make new fans/customers.

3.Lying when selling product and faulty product are both reasons good enough for refund even in art world.

4.Me too, once asked money back from early access game when it didn't work (at all). If I would have been gullible enough to pre-order this it would have been the second one. Must have spent over 50k in total to date.

5.Yup this is broken compared to promises and for a friend that has minimum spec computer it is completely broken. He buys like 2 games a year and it really broke my heart when I heard he bought no mansky as it was all hype. After playing 20hours he said it was bad and was wondering when the multiplayer starts, he said he will go back to pirating as it's the only way to be sure the games are good.

6."I have no dog in this race. Just my 2p. I’ve been a dev, a pub and a funder for decades, and a player for longer than all of that."

Just my 2p? you bought it for 2 pence or what are you saying? you've been a pub as in a bar that has people drinking inside? that would explain you're thought process.

If it takes you 50 hours to figure out a game isn't as promised or to your liking, then you're not much of a gamer. I think for most gamers, 3-5 hours is plenty to figure it out.

 

[RevD14]

This is why I wait to get these games at 50-75% off on steam. I don't think I've paid more then $15 for a game since I got Skyrim when that first came out.

 

[OcelotRex]

No, playing a game with false promises that you will achieve something if you explore more (encountering more creatures, starships battles, way more verity in planets and spaceships, etc..).

People do deserve a refund on such game, and if they don't, they are supporting sly marketing and shitty development.

Look at CD Projekt, The Witcher 3 was a master piece that delivered everything they promised and more, that's how game developers should do, not the opposite.

The game never promised anything after extended exploration....The only thing they were wrongly vague about was included multiplayer. They never promised variety in spaceships at all, and as far as I know there is plenty of (generic) variety.

Is it a good game? no. That doesnt make it okay to steal from people.

If you people had your way, people will still start asking for refunds after every single player game, because "I thought there would be more stuff to do after I already beat it"

People buy bad products all the time. Just dont buy it again. This decades sense of entitlement is dangerous for the game dev industry.

Ummm... You watched the Honest Trailer linked in the article, right? Because the creator did promise things and didn't deliver.

 

[Nobina]

No, playing a game with false promises that you will achieve something if you explore more (encountering more creatures, starships battles, way more verity in planets and spaceships, etc..).

People do deserve a refund on such game, and if they don't, they are supporting sly marketing and shitty development.

Look at CD Projekt, The Witcher 3 was a master piece that delivered everything they promised and more, that's how game developers should do, not the opposite.

The game never promised anything after extended exploration....The only thing they were wrongly vague about was included multiplayer. They never promised variety in spaceships at all, and as far as I know there is plenty of (generic) variety.

Is it a good game? no. That doesnt make it okay to steal from people.

If you people had your way, people will still start asking for refunds after every single player game, because "I thought there would be more stuff to do after I already beat it"

People buy bad products all the time. Just dont buy it again. This decades sense of entitlement is dangerous for the game dev industry.

Why do you even bother commenting on this topic when you clrearly have no clue what you're talking about? Go inform yourself first.

Think about this logic: I lie to you about my product and scam you into giving me your money and then I call you a theif for wanting your money back. Definetly the consumers fault.

 

[McMurdeR]

Developers and publishers should understand that they are not 'owed' a living. There is no excuse for poor quality or deception, and unfortunately the gaming industry is riddled with both.

Even in honest cases, hard work and investment doesn't always result in decent games. People won't buy a rotten lemon at the end of the day.

 

[oldikes]

Why do you even bother commenting on this topic when you clrearly have no clue what you're talking about? Go inform yourself first.

Think about this logic: I lie to you about my product and scam you into giving me your money and then I call you a theif for wanting your money back. Definetly the consumers fault.

you guys can keep repeating "ahhh they lied they are liars and scammers" but if you want to accomplish anything besides feeling better about yourself you have to stop looking at what journalism sites said and look at what the devs said. They were unclear about some things, especially multiplayer, but the journalism sites are what got everyone hyped about promises that werent actually made.

using the "lol ignorant" insult is not an argument and never has been. Resorting to name calling and insults when argued with is immature and the reason no one can agree on anything.

 

[Lurker101]

This game has been so badly Molyneuxed that anyone who wants a refund should get it.

 

[UltraModernGuy]

I refunded this game after 10 minutes of playing. It was pretty clear right from the start it was not for me. Not sure why others couldn't tell from over two hours of playing, or at least stop playing before two hours is up and watch some twitch streams.

 

[Burty117]

The only other game that I requested a refund was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and the reason why I requested that because I had low FPS (around 10), after reading disabling MSAA will fix the problem, I repurchased the game.

Wait, you went through the process of refunding the game before you even attempted changing graphical settings? The reason those settings exist is precisely for that reason, yet you got a refund instead of spending either 30 seconds changing a few settings or if you have an Nvidia card, just going into GeForce Experience and letting it do all the leg work? The refund would have taken considerably more time to go through than changing a few settings. This non-logic hurts me...

 

[Hassan Al Rawi]

The only other game that I requested a refund was Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and the reason why I requested that because I had low FPS (around 10), after reading disabling MSAA will fix the problem, I repurchased the game.

Wait, you went through the process of refunding the game before you even attempted changing graphical settings? The reason those settings exist is precisely for that reason, yet you got a refund instead of spending either 30 seconds changing a few settings or if you have an Nvidia card, just going into GeForce Experience and letting it do all the leg work? The refund would have taken considerably more time to go through than changing a few settings. This non-logic hurts me...

I did mess with the settings, I lowered graphics settings to low and still was getting really low FPS, since I had GTX 1080 and running on really low FPS on low settings (didn't disable MSAA though because I wouldn't thought its going to consume that much power) it occurred to me the game was bugged and decided to refund the game, note that was before they released fixes on how to improve the FPS.

and I don't usually use GeForce experience because it doesn't do the best quality for you all the time, one of the games (Dota 2 I think) had its settings on medium for no reason..

 

[Hassan Al Rawi]

Why do you even bother commenting on this topic when you clrearly have no clue what you're talking about? Go inform yourself first.

Think about this logic: I lie to you about my product and scam you into giving me your money and then I call you a theif for wanting your money back. Definetly the consumers fault.

you guys can keep repeating "ahhh they lied they are liars and scammers" but if you want to accomplish anything besides feeling better about yourself you have to stop looking at what journalism sites said and look at what the devs said. They were unclear about some things, especially multiplayer, but the journalism sites are what got everyone hyped about promises that werent actually made.

using the "lol ignorant" insult is not an argument and never has been. Resorting to name calling and insults when argued with is immature and the reason no one can agree on anything.

Just watch the video and read the article
http://heatst.com/tech/no-mans-sky-developer-made-an-absurd-number-of-empty-promises-about-the-game/

 

[Mithan]

Game is an unfinished mess. Modders will make it good, maybe, but we will see.
Sean Murray did lie about numerous features, I am not sure why people are defending him.

This game should of been no more than $10-20 US. It is not a good game and I am sad I purchased it.

 

[AnthonyE1778]

For shanid:

1.If it takes 50 hours to find out about missing features or to get the game working because bad optimization it's not the customers fault.

Except that it doesn't take nearly that long in this case. If it's bad optimization, you know that within seconds of playing! Maximum 1, maybe 2 hours. Ditto for the "missing features". True multiplayer was never promised, simply the shared universe.

2.Yup most people aren't thieves, nice calling all non fanboys thieves, best way to make new fans/customers.

This literally makes no sense. His original point is still true.

3.Lying when selling product and faulty product are both reasons good enough for refund even in art world.

Lying? No. Faulty? Yeah, I'll definitely give you that. However, there have been numerous fixes and patches pushed out that have improved that particular situation considerably, and there are still 2 more major updates to come so far.

4.Me too, once asked money back from early access game when it didn't work (at all). If I would have been gullible enough to pre-order this it would have been the second one. Must have spent over 50k in total to date.

Okay.

5.Yup this is broken compared to promises and for a friend that has minimum spec computer it is completely broken. He buys like 2 games a year and it really broke my heart when I heard he bought no mansky as it was all hype. After playing 20hours he said it was bad and was wondering when the multiplayer starts, he said he will go back to pirating as it's the only way to be sure the games are good.

Again, true multiplayer was never advertised. It was almost always ever in the context of the online services of the game (discovery, naming, etc...) and the fact that this is a shared universe technically. The creators always said that this was a single-player game, and in fact on multiple occasions they emphasized rather heavily that it was single-player only. There may have been some mentions 3-5 years ago about the kind of multiplayer everybody seems to have been expecting, but lately the advertising contained nothing of the sort. It's not the developer's or Sony's fault that your friend didn't do his/her research before buying the game.

6."I have no dog in this race. Just my 2p. I’ve been a dev, a pub and a funder for decades, and a player for longer than all of that."

Just my 2p? you bought it for 2 pence or what are you saying? you've been a pub as in a bar that has people drinking inside? that would explain you're thought process.

I seriously hope you're joking, but in case you're not. 'dev' = Developer. 'pub' = Publisher.

 

[trgz]

Any VW owners get their money back?

 

[BSim500]

Moral of the story : Steam refunds are no substitute for stopping pre-ordering...