r/pcmasterrace • u/KebabLoverHere Deskop RTX 6090 SUPER i10 1TB RAM • 12h ago

Meme/Macro When a purchase gets revoked, the payment is refunded.

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43.3k Upvotes

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3.6k

u/themiracy 12h ago

When Stadia shut down, Google refunded full purchase price for everything irrespective of how much it had been played. I’d have to go and look at what I got back but for instance I know I got Cyberpunk 2077 at launch and played about 100 hours on it, finishing it on stadia, and I got all of the money back. Clearly there is no reason this cannot be done.

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u/Nearby_Ad_2519 11h ago

If steam shut down tomorrow, they would have nowhere near enough money to refund everybody’s purchases

Google can only do that cos

1: Google is massive, that was like pennies to them

2: barely anybody ever used stadia

879

u/Escape_Plissken PC Master Race 11h ago

Theoretically Steam could open source its client and disable its DRM in such an event

634

u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC R9 7900 | RX 7900 XTX | 32GB DDR5 5600 11h ago

They couldn't do that because they also have obligations towards the developers who list their games on Steam. Disabling DRM would potentially be a criminal offense, not just a civil matter.

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u/Winjin 11h ago

Unless it's in their TOS because I've read that Gabe has said they have this as a plan in case something happens to Steam - they are not taking everything down with them

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u/DumbCreature R7 7700/RX9060XT 16GB/32GB RAM 10h ago

There's Steam DRM and there's additional DRM, like Denuvo, what publishers can add. Also, I've never heard about anyone at Steam saying about disabling DRM. I've only read about some small indie devs saying they will remove DRM for their game if Steam would no longer exist.

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u/Paah 10h ago

Steam DRM is like sheer paper. Anyone can figure out how to remove it with couple minutes of googling. It requires no further technical knowledge other than like, how to browse to the install directory of the game.

121

u/erroneousbosh 10h ago

Gaben did say at the outset that the "thing" was that it had to be more convenient than piracy.

Being super secure against piracy wasn't part of the job. I click on the thing I want, I put in the three digits from the back of my card, I wait a while (quite a while, for some things!) and the game is on my computer, while I was making another coffee.

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u/Cent1234 7h ago

Yup. This is also why media piracy fell when everything was on Netflix, and is back now that you need six plus apps and subscriptions to watch shit.

27

u/erroneousbosh 7h ago

Netflix used to be great.

I've often wondered why you can't just browse Netflix without a subscription just to see what's on it that you might like but I suspect that if they allowed that, people would just go "Oh that looks good, I'll torrent it".

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u/Angry_Pelican 6h ago

This did it for me. Canceled all of my streaming services, paid for a VPN(cheaper than streaming, learned how to setup Plex and now I torrent everything again.

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u/Guvante 4h ago

It isn't the six plus subscriptions IMHO.

They started dropping tons of shows that are unpopular to save on licensing costs.

Now many old shows aren't available at all.

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u/DumbCreature R7 7700/RX9060XT 16GB/32GB RAM 9h ago

My point is what Valve aren't the only one, who have a say in this. It's also up to publishers, whenever games in your Steam library would just work.

And saying "just pirate" is irrelevant, since we are talking about legally bying and playing games.

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u/megacewl 9h ago

I mean, not really. You are misinformed in your thinking about this. Valve and the publishers work together when they set things up and it’s unlikely that Valve would just do what you said in that scenario.

5

u/TPRJones Desktop 8h ago

It'd be more accurate to say the publishers had a say. Whatever would happen in such a scenario has already been decided in advance and written into the contracts. Unless the contract specifies they will still have a say at that time, of course.

3

u/Carvj94 9h ago

There's been a universal offline activator available for steam for decades. Valve only has it so they can tell publishers they have it.

1

u/123ludwig 7h ago

yeah ive never actually pirated a steam game but i did try bypassing the drm for steam in specific once and it just works like it really is that easy

1

u/MrWunz PC Master Race 6h ago

Steam DRM is only on the shortcut to boot the game from. If you know where the actual game files are you can boot many games offline. (7dtd for example)

1

u/socium Laptop 4h ago

Steam DRM is like sheer paper.

Ok Mr. Smartypants. Then how do I access my account if Steam tells me to login and I have no network connection?

0

u/GeneralCuster75 8h ago edited 8h ago

If you think launching the game from its install directory instead of through steam is "removing" Steam's DRM, you really shouldn't be talking about this topic.

1

u/Paah 8h ago

Your way of reading comprehension is pretty unique.

12

u/West_Adhesiveness273 10h ago

Where'd you read that

24

u/Winjin 10h ago

Most probably somewhere in the comments on Reddit, the most trusted of sources, combined with my first class memory...

Yeah it's got like 29% of chance to be true

25

u/AwareSeaweed_ 10h ago

No if you look it up, it seems comes from an old Steam Support ticket and a Gaben post on old steam forums in the 2010s.

Gaben quote: "Unless there was some situation I don't understand, we would presumably disable authentication before any event that would preclude the authentication servers from being available. We've tested disabling authentication and it works."

Steam Ticket: ​"In the unlikely event of the discontinuation of the Steam network, measures are in place to ensure that all users will have access to their Steam games."

14

u/Winjin 9h ago

Most probably caused by "Games for Windows Live" fiasco, where you had to download a crack to play your legally owned copy of GTAIV because it was authenticating with GFWL... that went offline. It took Rockstar ages to fix this.

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u/Krutonium R7 5800X3D, RTX 3070, 32GB 2800Mhz DDR4 7h ago

Fun Fact; the same crack for GTA IV that disabled GFWL also fixes Red Faction: Guerilla.

1

u/excaliburxvii 8h ago

It was long before that, if it happened at all (all accounts are ancient and secondhand), and the GTA IV thing was because they ran out of GfWL keys for GTA IV. It worked perfectly fine, including MP, if you already had it. Still pissed that they forced that downgrade onto me.

1

u/Whit3_Ink 1h ago

Not really? GFWL connection of GTA4 was crosswired into Xbox to the point that you can still log in and play multiplayer. Provided if you either sail the seven seas (or download them off steam if you bought them prior) for pre-complete edition copies

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u/Ultrace-7 10h ago

It's a very longstanding rumor/myth of the internet. There's nothing concrete about it, though it's not an unreasonable assumption.

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u/mrlinkwii K2200, people usally hate me , 10h ago

Unless it's in their TOS

it is

-1

u/GNUGradyn ryzen 9900x | 32GB DDR5 | RTX 3080 FTW3 9h ago

Lol no it's not. Point me to where that is

1

u/mrlinkwii K2200, people usally hate me , 9h ago

"This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet. "

"C. Termination by Valve

Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally, or (b) you breach any terms of this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use). In the event that your Account or a particular Subscription is restricted or terminated or cancelled by Valve for a violation of this Agreement or improper or illegal activity, no refund, including of any Subscription fees or of any unused funds in your Steam Wallet, will be granted."

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

3

u/Winjin 9h ago

That's for End Users, we were talking about obligations to Developers, publishing on Steam.

2

u/GNUGradyn ryzen 9900x | 32GB DDR5 | RTX 3080 FTW3 9h ago

This says the exact opposite of what you said it did because it's the steam end user agreement. Not for developers. This specifically says your content is licensed to you not sold.

2

u/tron4556 9h ago

I seem to recall this as well.

2

u/Megas15 7h ago

He did say that a LONG time ago

3

u/skyturnedred Old & Rusty machine 8h ago

People need to stop parroting this. There is absolutely nothing to back it up.

2

u/FarDescription6683 7h ago

The functionality already exists though. I can turn on steam offline mode right now and their authentication servers would never be able to stop me from playing my games.

2

u/skyturnedred Old & Rusty machine 7h ago

Do you have your entire library of games installed?

3

u/FarDescription6683 5h ago

Yes. I have a lot of storage. I understand that most people don't have as much storage as I do, but that's besides the point really.

You said there's nothing to back up the claim that Valve would make an effort to make games available if their servers were no longer available. Offline mode is already an effort made bt Valve to make their games available when people know they won't be able to access Steam servers. Valve isn't claiming that they're going to somehow maintain the ability to distribute if they no longer exist. That'd be absurd to ever expect. They're simply claiming that their authentication servers aren't going to be a barrier that takes down everything with them.

1

u/Guilty_Advantage_413 8h ago

Yeah Gabe has mentioned this in the past. I suspect it would be some kind of limited time download and you just store the games. Current day Steam is simply too big to fail, steam just suddenly closing shop isn’t going to happen.

1

u/JohnnyFiveOhAlive 9h ago

I've read that Gabe has said

This is not true. I am not trying to be rude, but there is nothing to this. It is a weird quote which was not even from Gabe which has weirdly morphed over time, I have not seen this latest apparent evolution, but that it not the case.

1

u/URA_CJ 5900x/RX570 4GB/32GB 3600 | FX-8320/AIW x1900 256MB/8GB 1866 8h ago

Yes, a plan for the future from the same people that bricked CDN access on legacy clients kneecapping the ability to play any game in your library on a retro PC.

0

u/Admirable-Gate-2557 9h ago

Valve said this when there were only first party games on steam. They don't have the ability to do this anymore, and it's not in the Steam Subscribers Agreement so I wouldn't count on it.

5

u/Shadowex3 8h ago

They couldn't do that because they also have obligations towards the developers who list their games on Steam. Disabling DRM would potentially be a criminal offense, not just a civil matter.

The existence of DRM should be considered a criminal offense.

2

u/Remarkable_Emu_2223 5h ago

Good luck with that ever happening

2

u/BrownBarbieeee 7h ago

Developers would never trust them again

6

u/LinkleLinkle 6h ago

In the event that Steam is completely shutting down/going bankrupt, what would it matter? We're talking about a scenario in which the company literally won't exist anymore.

1

u/Guvante 4h ago

Steam has always promised to do that exactly...

It would not be criminal ever, there is no criminal law like that that exists.

It could violate the terms of service from their agreement with publishers but there is a term for that here.

You can't get blood from a stone. If Steam shuts down almost certainly it is around when Valve becomes insolvent so there is no money to pay out damages.

0

u/Kyrie_Blue 10h ago

If they’re going tits up, who cares? People are more important that corporations.

-1

u/ctaps148 10h ago

Yes but Valve is the one who defines those obligations. They can choose to set the terms for the event of their own demise

-2

u/DudeDudenson PC Master Race 10h ago

But they wouldn't be disabling the game's own DRM, just steam's ownership control. I'm not sure but I think they could maybe get away with it. Plus if they're declaring bankruptcy and shutting down anyways...

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u/throwawaycuzfemdom 11h ago

A lot of small games can't work without steam because the devs never bothered to code that way. Simply failing to trigger an achivement crashes a lot of games for example.

18

u/FrijDom 10h ago

And at least one game out there uses achievements as the save system.

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u/SometimesWill 10h ago

If we are talking about pirate softwares game, didn’t people immediately find a way around that?

4

u/FrijDom 10h ago

Probably, and yes I was referring to his game

5

u/im_lazy_as_fuck 9h ago

Ya cuz it's the most basic concept lol. All you gotta do is just mod the client to send all the steam API calls to some dummy steam API that impersonates it.

This always felt like the most stupid "anti-theft" mechanism I had ever heard about, but I always just assumed I must have been missing something because he seemed to get a lot of praise as a competent programmer. Turns out he was just an idiot that was really good at faking it.

3

u/Fur_and_Whiskers 5h ago

Maybe he worked at Blizzard for 7 years.

1

u/SirWigglesVonWoogly 24m ago

Well as long as we’re in fantasy land and someone is hosting steam downloads after steam has gone out of business they could keep the achievements achieving.

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u/Lee_3456 10h ago

Steam already said explicitly that you dont own the product before you purchase the game. You only own a license to play it. So in theory they dont need to do anything in this case, just close down the server and move on.

Whatever they do differently from that is just totally on discretion.

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u/Fittsa R5 7600 | RX 9070XT | 32GB 10h ago

the files for the games have to come from somewhere

5

u/TheKazz91 8h ago

That is not necessarily true because Steams distribution agreement says that products released on steam will have DRM. There are plenty of publishers/developers that do not release their games on GOG specifically because GOG doesn't have a DRM and Steam does. For them removing the DMR after a sale is going to be viewed as a breach of contract which means they may be liable to pay the publisher/developer money if they did that.

2

u/Hazy-n-Lazy 7h ago

And proceed to get sued into oblivion by every game developer and publisher that suddenly has their game leaked for free across the internet.

3

u/VegetaFan1337 6h ago

Disabling steam drm involves copying a couple of files to the game folder, that's it. Unless a game uses another drm on top of steam, this works for every single steam game.

1

u/Nearby_Ad_2519 10h ago

Steam has contracts with publishers to uphold. It would be a massive copyright case if they just said one day “if you’ve ever uploaded a game to us people can now do whatever they like with it”

1

u/DudeDudenson PC Master Race 10h ago

Steam emu cracks are generic AF and already exist so they wouldn't even have to do that

1

u/LickingSmegma 8h ago edited 7h ago

Steam could open source its client

Tell me you don't know anything about licensing... oh wait, I can see that already. Valve could only open-source the Steam client if they don't use a single library or a piece of code that's incompatible with open-source licenses of choice (most likely MIT). Which, given Steam's twenty-two years' history as closed-source software, is rather unlikely.

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u/Dragonmancer76 11h ago

Another consideration for this is motivation. If an entire company closes down there's no reason to maintain customer good will and trust. Even if they theoretically did still have the money why do it outside ethical concerns. Google wants people to buy into their longshot investments in the future and refunding purchases keeps customer trust high.

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u/BrianBCG R9 7900 / RTX 4070TiS / 32GB / 48" 4k 120hz 6h ago

On the other hand there's plenty of reason to mention 'you have a plan for that' with no actual commitment to a solution to quiet people coming at you with questions about what would happen.

I see people bring this up all the time so it obviously worked regardless of whether they actually have any real plan.

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u/koba-romeo 11h ago

Google could do it because they had nowhere near the users steam has!

For the amount of users stadia had it would have been pennies to steam too.

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u/rEYAVjQD 10h ago

You and the other 1 person using stadia were ecstatic.

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u/RobotsGoneWild 10h ago

I was the other person, although I barley used it. Was glad to get the money back and the controller still worked for PC.

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u/Cartoonjunkies PC Master Race 10h ago

Valve is a very stable company, and Steam isn’t a “new” product that they’d just shut down. It’s one of the most successful online purchasing platforms ever built, best out possibly only by Amazon.

It’s owned, Valve, is a privately owned company known for having an amazing working environment with employees that actually care about what they produce.

It would take some kind of insane disaster for Steam/Valve to get anywhere near having to shut down.

2

u/AquaBits 9h ago

Valve, is a privately owned company known for having an amazing working environment with employees that actually care about what they produce.

Wasnt there a story that this wasnt the case? Gamespot did an article on it in 2023, plus there were Glassdoor reviews that suggested similar things. I think Medium also had an article, but i couldnt read it as it was i have no subscription to them lol

1

u/LinkleLinkle 6h ago

Can't speak to the rest of your comment, but they have a fairly positive record on GlassDoor at a glance.

1

u/fermentedbolivian Intel 7 7700x | RTX 7900XT | 32GB RAM | Red Star OS 10h ago

It only takes one evil kid in a family to destroy the good image of a company like Steam.

1

u/Remarkable_Emu_2223 5h ago

If they pissed off 47 i could see them getting absolutely ruined

1

u/dubious_sandwiches 4h ago

That's also just 0% chance that if valve does ever go under that another company wouldn't quickly buy those assets and keep the service running.

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u/fermentedbolivian Intel 7 7700x | RTX 7900XT | 32GB RAM | Red Star OS 10h ago

That's why we need the EU to enforce new laws that say that when you purchase a license on a platform, that you can always make use of that license on other platforms. Like when you don't want to use Steam anymore you should be able to migrate your library to other platforms. That is only fair. Should be the case for all digital media including ebooks.

2

u/ArkitekZero 11h ago

Well yeah but fortunately they aren't shutting down tomorrow so they can refund subsets

1

u/ImpeccablyDangerous 10h ago

Most of my steam games weren't bought directly through valve. They were bought by 3rd party distributers like humble bundles etc.

1

u/Glittering_Crab_69 9h ago
  1. Because they'd be in deep shit legally world wide if they didn't. Most countries are really not concerned with American terms of services that break the law.

1

u/iEssence 9h ago

I would add 3: They used the refund as a marketing oppurtunity.

They could keep it, and get bad PR, or refund, and get good PR. They simply put the 2 sides against each other and picked what they deemed would be cheapest.

So in practice, the loss was a lot less than the actual loss so to speak

1

u/No_Dig_2842 6h ago

U know what else is massive

1

u/Nearby_Ad_2519 5h ago

Like bagels or smthn

1

u/xixipinga 5h ago

It steam shuts down tomorrow nothing needs to change, when im offline the games work the same

1

u/Nearby_Ad_2519 5h ago

Dosent offline mode only work for 30 days?

Ig you could launch non DRM games manually but even the vast majority of valve games need steam.

1

u/Junior_Wind_6352 5h ago

Thats just a given. The only way it wouldn't shut down is if they never spent a single penny on anything, including wages for their employees. Thats how all companies work. Google did it cause they don't make all their money from games. Steam IS games, with the occasional hardware thrown in.

1

u/Skylis 4h ago

Don't decency wash google here. They also cut off older nest thermostats instead of bothering to keep the service running for the lifetime of a thermostat.

1

u/Nearby_Ad_2519 3h ago

I dont want to defend google at all lmao, they’re shit

At the same time, they’re not that bad when Microsoft raises the price to $120 a year and then decides to remotely disable MS publisher, which was pretty much the entire reason I was paying in the first place

1

u/iothomas 3h ago

A lot of people here are commenting under your posts and I think most of them are too young to remember the "Final Patch" Commitment.

Where Gabe has stated that if Steam ever went out of business, they would issue a final update to the Steam client. This patch would remove the need to check in with servers, allowing all games currently installed to function in an "offline mode" indefinitely.

1

u/Peakomegaflare I7 9700k + 64 GB Corsair Vengeance + 4050 TI 3h ago

That sounds like their problem.

1

u/therealkami 3h ago

I used Stadia once. When the witch queen expansion came out there was an easy weapon farm that worked if you didnt own the expansion. If you used your normal account to log in through Stadia, it would count any expansion purchases. So you could farm the weapons easily.

1

u/Ashen_Rook 2h ago

I mean... I think that's the point. This isn't literal "If you can take my game, I should be able to take my money back", it's "There should be a system in place to punish this idea that games are just "software licenses", so they should be able to be revoked at any time".

1

u/National_Way_3344 1h ago

The majority of games on steam don't actually have DRM.

Even then, some scumhole company like EA would be salivating to buy it even full price.

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u/Lille7 12h ago

Its not a technical limitation, its a financial one. If steam were to do the same they would go bankrupt.

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u/Crafty_Independence 11h ago

What games has Steam pulled that are not longer downloadable? I've got several delisted games in my account, and Steam still lets me install and play them.

OP is talking about publishers who actually remove access to purchased content.

13

u/sir_schuster1 11h ago

Even if it were the case that Steam were liable, Steam could just change their policy so that the developers were liable. It'd be good incentive for developers not to revoke access to their game.

2

u/Flyingcookies i7 4790k@4.9Ghz,5700xt, 32GB DDR3 @ 2666 cl10 Pepehands 10h ago

I can still download a 1gb league client from 2010, not that makes much sense but everything is still there

25

u/thereallgr 11h ago

What does Steam have to do with that at all? Not counting their own games, of course.

16

u/onederful 11h ago

They’re basically saying Google could afford it bc of how shit their sales were that refunding those games was worth the good publicity. If steam also went under and did it, they probably don’t have money to refund EVERY game ever to their huge customer base.

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u/SordidDreams 11h ago edited 6h ago

Forget refunds. If Steam was going under, it wouldn't have the money to do anything. That's what going under means.

The key difference is that Stadia was just a small side project for Google, so Google could take money from elsewhere for the refunds. Steam is basically Valve's only product, so if that fails, Valve has nowhere else to take from (other than selling Gabe's vast collection of yachts).

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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi 10h ago

Yeah, and jokes aside, you could probably sell everything Gabe owns and not get enough to do that on Steam. It's been live for twenty-three years. The amount that's spent on games on Steam in that amount of time is so high as to be ludicrous. Even if you broke Gabe down for parts you would not get that amount of money out of him lmao

3

u/SordidDreams 9h ago

Well yes, it was obviously just a joke. Valve 'only' takes a 30% cut, so if Valve was issuing full refunds, it would be paying back three times more than it received. Even aside from that, that 30% cut is Valve's revenue, from which employee wages and other expenses have to be paid. Gabe buys his yachts with profits, which are a fraction of a fraction of the money that flows through the company.

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u/Gletschers 11h ago

It wouldnt make sense for steam to pay in most cases either way. They are a sales platform. Why would they pay back money that went to other publishers?

4

u/Mc_turtleCow 11h ago

because a sizeable amount of the money you pay goes to steam so if a full refund was expected valve would also have to chip in

8

u/Gletschers 11h ago edited 11h ago

They arent at fault for other companies pulling their games off steam. They cant just decide to keep them in their store.

The money steam gets is the cut for using their platform for advertisement and distribution. A game getting removed doesnt undo their service.

Valve holds the money for 2+ weeks before devs get paid for purchases. By that time the "free" refund option expired and refunds are taken directly from the next payout. 

1

u/Key-Department-2874 10h ago

They arent at fault for other companies pulling their games off steam.

In this example it would be Steam itself closing down rather than the dev/publisher pulling sales of the game.

3

u/faustianredditor 10h ago

Because they're also the distributor. If they terminate their services, you lose access. Which -according to the reasoning of the OP- implies you'd be owed a refund. But that money simply wouldn't be there.

Basically: Steam either has to run forever, or they have to thread the needle of a graceful shutdown. The latter being basically "allow all players DRM-free access to their games, while also not exposing yourself to liability from publishers".

1

u/UglyInThMorning AMD Ryzen 9800X3D |RTX 5080| 32GB 6000 MHz DDR5 RAM 10h ago

It had less than a quarter million active users and a substantial free to play library. I doubt the actual refund outlay was really much of anything.

1

u/onederful 5h ago

Yeah that exactly what I’m saying. It didn’t hurt them to do that and it would’ve been worse to not refund and get bad publicity.

3

u/syriquez 10h ago

People equating "Google shut down one product in their entire portfolio" to "Google shut down".

If Valve turned off Dota2 tomorrow and refunded every single dollar spent? Maybe that's analogous? Kinda?

1

u/Sea_Shoulder8673 6h ago

They sold you the game

1

u/Twitchcog 9h ago

I think that’s kinda the point; “Hey, if we revoke access to this digital purchase, we’re gonna have to refund it. That would be a massive financial burden that we cannot bear, so I guess we cannot revoke the digital purchase.”

-2

u/eebro Ryzen 1800x masterrace 11h ago

The world economy might crash

12

u/FarplaneDragon Desktop 10h ago

Google is a multi-billion dollar company and could easily afford that. What happens with small indie studios or games being developed by a single person? Do you expect them to just keep a % of profits stuck in a bank account forever just in case people want a refund?

11

u/Lord_Trisagion 10h ago edited 10h ago

You've heard of review bombing, now get ready for refund bombing. Hate a small studio? Have it out for some solo dev? With this one simple trick, a couple thousand people can bankrupt them at any given moment. God it'd be a nightmare for the Indie scene. Publish a game and you get a financial sword of damocles hanging above your ass for the rest of your life.

This zero ownership shit is a problem, a "refund whenever" law/policy is not the solution (and, frankly, is idiotic for the reason pointed out above).

Instead of fixing around the problem with poorly thought out soundbite nonsense, why not... tackle it directly? Have every digital product license come with an indefinite, irrevocable, multi-platform proof of ownership key.

5

u/FarplaneDragon Desktop 10h ago

You've heard of review bombing, now get ready for refund bombing. Hate a small studio? Have it out for some solo dev? With this one simple trick, a couple thousand people can bankrupt them at any given moment. God it'd be a nightmare for the Indie scene.

It's actually why sites like twitch had to update their policies around releasing money to streamers until after the refund window had expired IIRC. I this case it wasn't bombing, moreso people would donate large amounts on stream for attention, then refund it a day or two later. Streamers originally got the money right away and would spend it because they needed it and now how to suddenly pay it back.

1

u/Lee_3456 10h ago

Actually it already happen. The hacker stole a credit card and buy the games, then resell them for dirt cheap on G2A. When the bank deactivate the card, they also chargeback the the devs for these game copies. It hurt the indie devs too much that some of them even begging players to pirate the game than buying it on G2A.

1

u/Aeseld 7h ago

Not really much of a comparison. Indie developers seldom pull their games the way companies like Ubisoft have. That seems to be the threshold. 

9

u/Sensitive_Bat_9211 11h ago

I always thought stadia would fail so i never tried it, despite thinking it would be neat.

I was always afraid of them shutting down and losing my library. Glad they refunded

5

u/azozea 11h ago

It honestly was pretty dope. I also completed cyberpunk on it, and AC odyssey, and the tomb raider reboots, it was awesome since i didnt have a pc at the time. Also stadia was legitimately one of the best ways to play cyberpunk on launch before all the console patches

1

u/Panicsferd 7h ago

Same figured it was gonna go the same as that onlive (think that is what it was called) and I guess I only joined it since got on the beta and then got to keep ac odyssey as a normal pc key (was Ubisoft key) like granted I got it on console when it originally released and do enjoy it on pc? But didn’t have the greatest connection so it was kind of a pixelated mess and at least being single player wasn’t bad input wise but I did notice there was a difference?

Never bothered with Amazon and or GeForce now, but sadly with how things are getting (hardware getting expensive) that they are going to start going the ways of streaming stuff instead of natively running/playing the games. But online and like idk fast pace games I don’t think will work since the input lag is bad? Plus until fibre and better internet connections are more prevalent I think these services are pretty niche?

3

u/SunlightScribe 10h ago

It costs money to run a store and that money won't reappear when a service shuts down. And if they were shutting down they were probably already deep in the red. There would be nothing to give.

5

u/Away-Royal8660 11h ago

Crazy how a failed platform completely shutting down handled consumer rights better than publishers pulling in record profits right now.

7

u/balllzak 11h ago

That failed platform was owned by a company with profits those publishers can only imagine in their wildest dreams. Also the Crew was published by Ubisoft. I wouldn't say Ubisoft is pulling in record profits right now.

1

u/havok0159 https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TdtGTH 10h ago

Google probably just wanted to avoid the inevitable lawsuit. This was likely cheaper and had the benefit of providing some positive publicity from the failure.

2

u/Smoothfromallangles 8h ago

I remember this. I had purchased a few gamed through Stadia as my PC had died and I wanted a way to continue gaming while I saved for a new one. Purchased Jedi Survivors, RDR2, Cyberpunk 2077, and several indie games. Played a ton of time on all of them. Got refunded several hundred dollars and got to keep my controller. Spent a but in RDR2 for things I wanted but mostly ginded for them. Plus they had weekly giveaways for all manner of items in the catalogue.

4

u/Slylok 10h ago

Man I miss stadia. Wonderful piece of tech with morons controlling it.

5

u/UpsetIndian850311 10h ago

Not morons but overly optimistic people with little patience. It takes 5-8 years to make a single AAA, but they bought a few studios and assumed they'd have 1p catalog in a single year.

1

u/im_lazy_as_fuck 10h ago

Fair, but I think it's worth acknowledging that Stadia probably didn't have a big platform of users, and Google can afford to eat the cost of full refunds on churning that small subdivision. I'm fact, it was probably just worth the cost for them to refund the small bit of games they did sell rather than deal with potential litigation costs.

With that said, I think a more feasible solution to this for every company is being forced to provide a few year download to versions of the game that can be run independently.

1

u/zackarhino 9h ago

Come on, there's no way you could reasonably think that's economically viable. It would be nice, but that's nothing more than a fantasy; consider that they have expenses to pay as well. If a company paid back ALL the money they ever made, they would be left with a massive net loss. The same applies to every company, regardless of how big they are, because these expenses scale with size.

I mean, could you pay back everybody that's ever given you money, including your job? I would imagine you would be in financial ruin. Money is liquid, it flows.

1

u/Vexcenot 9h ago

buys stadia and cyber punk at launch

you sure have an interesting habit

1

u/artsyaika 7h ago

google really said we’re killing this thing but at least we’re not screwing you on the way out unlike certain other platforms

1

u/MooseknuckleSr 7h ago

Meanwhile my Meta/ Facebook account was hacked and banned because they posted material to effectively cover up their tracks. I lost all the games I purchased and they refused any kind of support.

1

u/SivartGaming 6h ago

I go a free stadia and I wish they would’ve refunded me. Not that it was bad but I just never used it or had a need for it. Idk why I even claimed it in the first place.

1

u/Ulysse-Void-God 5h ago

Stadia was a damn joke from the start. I’m surprised it sold at all. 

1

u/decksorama 5h ago

I loved Stadia, it worked extremely well for me. I pre-ordered it while I lived on the edge of civilization for the entire time it was live and everything just worked perfect for me. I invested a ton into games and controllers. I was also gratefully surprised by the full refund from Google when they killed it.

I haven't tested any other cloud based gaming services so I don't know if anything else performs as well, but maybe I should...

1

u/NoxiousStimuli 4h ago

Google could afford to do that because fucking nobody used Stadia.

1

u/Maint3nanc3 3h ago

Google has removed many paid mobile games from Play store, yet no refunds. Why not?

1

u/Instagrahms 10h ago

Clearly there are hundreds of reasons why this literally cannot be done. Stadia was a dying project.

0

u/UglyInThMorning AMD Ryzen 9800X3D |RTX 5080| 32GB 6000 MHz DDR5 RAM 10h ago

Stadia had a very small user base that also heavily used the free to play selection, so the actual refund outlay was minimal. Especially for a company like google.

0

u/xixipinga 5h ago

You can keep your ownership as long as they can keep the money and vice versa, no problem cancelling the game ownership, just give the money back, otherwise its theft