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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

I suppose it depends on what the purpose of the refunds are. For example, many online clothing retailers will encourage you to buy more clothing than you need so you can try it on at home, and return whatever you don't like.

A lot of people definitely treat Steam's refund system this way, and Steam's automated refund process seems built to encourage it. You could also make a strong case that this is better for everyone, since consumers are more likely to take a chance on a game they're not sure about. On the other hand, it's a problem for games that are designed to be less than two hours—and it does basically require a DRM implementation.

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When Rocket League, a game I never played, ditched support for macOS I asked for a refund. I described how I disliked that they removed support for macOS. I wouldn't play Rocket League on my MBP, mind you, but I do have Steam installed on it. I got a refund, no questions asked (though I did buy it on sale, judging by the amount I got refunded). Steam doesn't need DRM to figure out how long a game is being played, btw. Steam tracks that without DRM, too.

> Steam tracks that without DRM, too.

Yes and no. They can track play time when you launch a game through the Steam client, and they can use DRM to enforce launching games through the Steam client. If you launch one of the few DRM-Free Steam games without using Steam, your play time won’t increase.

GOG also tracks play time if you launch a game via GOG Galaxy. The difference is, every single-player game in their catalog can also be played without GOG Galaxy (and indeed, this is explicitly why I buy games from GOG—I don’t like clients, I just want an executable).

> the difference is, every single-player game in their catalog can also be played without GOG Galaxy

From my (admittedly limited) experience with GOG games and Galaxy, only games downloaded via the GOG website (with 'offline backup game installers') can be launched without Galaxy; games installed with Galaxy will force Galaxy to be running alongside it

I recently installed Galaxy and used it to install 4 games from my library, testing now they all load up without Galaxy running.

You're right (and the parent too); I was using the game shortcuts in my start menu, but I checked and those shortcuts point toward the Galaxy launcher (with additional information on which game to launch), so I was launching Galaxy at the same time as the game. When I used directly, the game executables don't start Galaxy.

I believe Rocket League was a special case, in that they offered refunds for everybody who bought it to play on Linux/Mac, no matter how many hours of it they have played.

"Steam tracks that without DRM"

Steam is DRM

Some games sold via Steam don't integrate with the Steam APIs, so once it's installed, if launched directly with the executable, it won't force Steam to be running alongside it. So in _some_ cases, Steam isn't the DRM.

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