Fresh off the controversy surrounding the naming system (unknown whether it’s a bug or not), No Man’s Sky is having a rocky weekend with another ordeal. This time, it’s the fact that it seems like many major retailers (Sony, Amazon, Steam) are all allowing refunds for the game. This comes after the fact that a portion of the community feels like the game didn’t live up to it’s hype and expectations. Reviews from YouTubers sum up these sentiments pretty sufficiently.
An up and coming Reddit thread on the No Man’s Sky subreddit is the center of community discussions over this. Unfortunately it’s not too entirely descriptive of how the refund process works. According to the comments, it’s a hit and miss procedure that depends on the customer service representative handling that particular request. But if you want some hard proof of refunds, according to Steamspy the amount of owners for the game decreased from 784,990 on the 24th to 768,164 on the 25th.
When it comes to Steam’s Refund Policy:
It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within fourteen days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours. There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look.
When it comes to Amazon there’s a help system in place, but a direct live chat looks more promising for people interested in refunds. Sony seems to be also responding to refund requests. By contacting Sony chat support, there are reports that they’re making exceptions to their refund rule here.
The other side of this argument seems to bring concern to indie developers. Some are worried that this process will become more commonplace among the player base of their own titles, with fears that the refund system might be exploited in some way. It looks like these matters are a case by case basis, and they should be safe if they don’t over-promise and under deliver in their final product. Now the interpretation of that is the grey area, and the focal point of the discussion surrounding this in the coming weeks.
No Man’s Sky is available now for PS4 and PC. To keep up to date with the game, check out their website, Twitter, and Facebook.
