SONY has confirmed a major change to the way it refunds games to PSN users, but the news has been met with mixed emotions due to some flawed features.
Sony seems to spend half their time ignoring what fans want (crossplay, free money, a nice house) and the other half granting their wishes using a monkeys’ paw. Every single wish they grant has some horrible drawback. This isn’t an RPG, you can in fact just give us nice things.
For example, while we can now change our PSN IDs it doesn’t work across the board and can actively mess up some games that have online functionality (all games have online functionality).
This time it comes with a new refund policy. While the old refund policy may not have been what everyone wanted, this one seems actively antagonistic by comparison. Everything you download is now no longer refundable.
Aside from a few small subscription services on PSN, everything that enters your PS4’s hard drive is no longer an option for a refund. If that seems utterly absurd to you then that’s because it is.
The idea that the second you get the chance to try something out it becomes ineligible is absurd. What if the game simply doesn’t work because it is a buggy mess? What about those games that instantly trash the console they get downloaded to? What if you weren’t the one to buy it, and you somehow purchased Senran Kagura because of your baby as chewing on the controller? Nope, nothing, nada, zip.
There is good news if you pre-order something at least. Though again, not if you download it. If you pre-order you now have a full two weeks to request a refund. This only applies if you haven’t started the download or the pre-load though, so be very careful with what you’re letting your PS4 do.
With all of this, you may be thinking “well, at least if I am careful I can get my money back”. Well, not quite. As per the rest of the refund policy, this part has not been put together in your best interests.
If you buy a game or some DLC the only refund you can get is through the PlayStation wallet. Meaning if you put money into the Sony ecosystem, it is probably going to stay there.
What can you do about it though? Turn off automatic downloads for one. You can do this by going to Settings, then System, then go into Automatic Downloads and make sure it is turned off.
This may well seem a little bit extreme, but if Sony won’t be reasonable, then you have to make sure you are looking out for yourself. It is always a good idea to make sure you aren’t going to get stung if a game is a mess.
Sony has said they will still refund buggy games, but it is hard to say how you could prove this or exactly what the criteria are.
Is a game that crashes regularly considered buggy? What about if it doesn’t crash but has missing textures, or characters refuse to load? What if it’s Anthem?
Having this kind of grey area in an official policy from a company is a given, unfortunately. It just doesn’t normally come with so many stipulations in the first place.
This may well be the worst refund policy out there. Sure, it is better than no policy at all, but only by an infinitesimal amount.
This could well be down to the arrogance of being in first place that Sony seems to be suffering from.
This is yet another thing that could easily come back to haunt them when the next console generation releases and Xbox are flirting with gamers everywhere.
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