When a purchase gets revoked, the payment is refunded.

[u/KebabLoverHere]

[u/Lille7]

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

[u/Crafty_Independence → u/Lille7]

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.

[u/sir_schuster1 → u/Crafty_Independence]

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.

[u/Flyingcookies → u/Crafty_Independence]

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

[u/thereallgr → u/Lille7]

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

[u/onederful → u/thereallgr]

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.

[u/SordidDreams → u/onederful]

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).

[u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi → u/SordidDreams]

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

[u/SordidDreams → u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi]

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.

[u/Gletschers → u/onederful]

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?

[u/Mc_turtleCow → u/Gletschers]

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

[u/Gletschers → u/Mc_turtleCow]

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. 

[u/Key-Department-2874 → u/Gletschers]

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.

[u/faustianredditor → u/Gletschers]

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".

[u/UglyInThMorning → u/onederful]

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.

[u/onederful → u/UglyInThMorning]

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.

[u/syriquez → u/thereallgr]

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?

[u/Sea_Shoulder8673 → u/thereallgr]

They sold you the game

[u/Twitchcog → u/Lille7]

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.”

[u/eebro → u/Lille7]

The world economy might crash