With a large number of digital retailers available today, it's never been easier to buy and start playing video games. Returning video games, on the other hand, has remained a little more difficult, but digital games store GOG is changing that.
GOG, the digital retailer that specializes in re-releasing old games like the original Warcraft and Warcraft 2, has just updated its refund policy, now allowing customers to get full refunds up to 30 days after purchasing a product. Not only is this double what the Epic Games Store and Steam offer, but there's no limit on the amount of time playing the game before requesting a refund.
GOG, which is owned by the same parent company responsible for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, announced its new 'gamers-first' refund policy on Twitter earlier today. Already, gamers are blown away by this change in policy. Before, the store considered all purchases final once the game had been downloaded. At that point, the only way customers could get a refund is if the game had technical issues.
While most gamers are loving this new policy, there are a few who are worried this may hurt GOG in the long run. GOG offers DRM free copies of their games, meaning players can play the game any way they want, without having to sign in to GOG.com to play it. One customer suggested that some customers could buy the game, download a DRM free copy, and then ask for a refund, all while still keeping the game on their computer. It seems GOG has a lot of faith in their customers, so hopefully not too many of them try to take advantage of this exploit.
In an effort to police this, GOG does mention that they have the right to refuse refunds on individual cases. Specifically, it seems they will refuse refunds if a customer asks for "an unreasonable amount of games to be refunded." Since this new policy has the potential to be taken advantage of, they will be monitoring the effects of the current update to make sure it doesn't end up hurting the developers. Here's hoping GOG doesn't end up having to lay off more staff after losing money to this policy.