Steam Adds Timeline Requirements, Refunds Around Its Pre-Order And Season Pass Policies

Valve’s Steam PC gaming storefront appears to be on a bit of a pro-consumer kick as of late and I like it. We recently discussed the platform’s update to its purchase process, which now specifically includes explicit language around how the purchase is that of a revokable license to play the game, rather than any misleading or buried language that would lead a consumer to think they were actually buying the game outright. This doesn’t solve the problem of non-ownership of digital goods itself, of course, but it at least is a step in the direction of better informing the customer as to what they are getting in exchange for their dollars.

And now Steam appears to be tackling consumer protections surrounding the pre-ordering of DLC or “season pass” purchase tiers. The topline summary is the requirement of a release timeline and the potential for unilateral refunds if promises and timelines aren’t kept are being added to anyone looking to offer DLC for pre-order and/or putting a game up on a season pass offering.

Steam will now require more transparency around season pass and DLC content, including details about what’s included and expected release dates. Anything that ends up delayed could then potentially be eligible for a partial refund. “By offering a Season Pass, you are promising future content,” the new guidelines to development partners read. “In the process of launching a Season Pass you will be asked to commit to a launch timing for each content release in the Season Pass. That launch timing is a commitment to both customers and Steam.”

Steam adds that while game development is complex and challenging, with delays sometimes necessary and understandable, companies will only get to reschedule DLC and season pass release timing once. “If you aren’t ready to clearly communicate about the content included in each DLC AND when each DLC will be ready for launch, you shouldn’t offer a Season Pass on Steam,” the company writes.

There are some other requirements in there as well, but the above is where the real meat of this resides.

So, a couple of thoughts on this. First, it’s very difficult to argue against these changes if you look at it even for a moment from a consumer perspective. If I’m going to hand my money over to a game publisher for content to be published in the future (something I would never do, by the by), then I should at least be informed as to when to expect that content and be reimbursed if those promises aren’t kept. The fact that an additional provision in the policy change requires real money to be refunded in those instances, instead of in-game currency or other in-game givebacks, certainly helps as well. Digital product or not, this is fairly basic commerce standards we’re talking about here.

But I also rather like one specific manner in which Steam and Valve are framing this: “a commitment to both customers and Steam.” For far too long, the public has rightly felt that Valve’s storefront was far more friendly to game publishers than its own customers. Statements like this seem to indicate that Steam is looking to shift the pendulum on that, aligning more with the customer compared with the publisher.

Hopefully this trend will continue and Steam, and other storefronts too, will demonstrate that they value the patronage of their customers, rather than behaving as though that patronage is simply owed to them.