The MMO Atlas is in troubled waters at launch. Allegedly, Steam is refunding money even if players have played for much more than two hours. This intensifies the criticism of the launch.
This is usually the case: When purchasing a game via Steam, you can easily return it and get your money back, provided that you have played for less than 2 hours. The game must not have been in your possession for more than two weeks.
This is the case here: On reddit, a player reports that he was able to return Atlas after 8 hours of gameplay. However, this did not happen automatically, but only after 5 or 6 of his requests were denied.
Then he received an email 12 hours after his last attempt, stating that the money was now in his account.
The user says: The player who allegedly received his money back now advises other disappointed Atlas players to request their money back and to wait for an employee to manually transfer the money.
Critics feel confirmed
This is how the internet reacts: The astonishing thing is how much attention the thread on reddit has attracted. It has over 1300 comments and more than 13,700 upvotes.
People believe that Steam is making an exception for Atlas because the launch was so buggy that it falls under special circumstances and Steam is being lenient.
In the thread, many write about how poorly Atlas performs and what a disgrace the release is.
The harshest critics connect the sales success of Atlas on Steam to the fact that streamers on Twitch have been “bought” and their fans buy every game they are presented with.
Steam shows leniency in technical difficulties
What’s behind it: People would like to see this exception rule as evidence that Atlas was released in such a catastrophic state that tailored emergency plans are being enacted.
It seems that Steam is willing to negotiate if they believe that players have not actually played, but were stuck in menus or suffered from other technical difficulties.
On Steam (via steamcommunity), someone posted the email from a support employee. It states that players always receive an automatic rejection if they have more than two hours of playtime or if they have owned the game for more than two weeks.
Then they should persist and explain that they did not spend the time playing, but rather renewing server pages or dealing with failed login attempts, and that support would generally respond.
Has there been anything like this before? Even with previous difficult launches like Bless, there were refunds, even if players had spent more than two hours in the game. In No Man’s Sky, an exception rule was in effect.
With Bless, the developers even offered that disappointed players could get their money back.
