Steam breaks its refund policy to appease ‘Battlefield 2042’ players

DICE’s first-person shooter Battlefield 2042 was highly anticipated, but unfortunately had a number of issues before launch. The game continues to struggle since its release back in November, with game-breaking bugs, server problems and players leaving in droves. Now, the popular PC gaming marketplace Steam is making an exception from its own refund policy and is issuing game refunds to frustrated players.

Reddit user Roboserg posted screenshots showing that Steam issued them a refund “as a customer service gesture” even though Roboserg had more than two hours of total game time logged. Steam’s refund policy is typically that if a player has logged more than two hours in the game or is requesting a refund after 14 days since purchase, they’re ineligible for a refund.

But after some earnest pleading, this refund likely occurred because Roboserg explained that they spent multiple hours stuck in the game’s settings. They explained that “the broken state of the game and its bugs” made it impossible for them to test out the game or set keybinds and begged Steam for a refund for the “broken, buggy game.” After the explanation, Steam chose to refund them for the game.

Battlefield 2042 has “mostly negative” reviews on Steam, with 67% of more than 85,000 reviews being disappointed and angry critiques of the game. One player wrote that “It’s true that some of the bugs we’ve seen in the beta have been fixed, but either way, this part is a disgrace and a disaster for this venerable series.” It’s also been largely panned by streamers, as popular Twitch creator Moist Cr1TiKaL rated Battlefield 2042 the “second worst game of 2021.”

To make matters worse, gamers have particularly hated on the Hazard Zone game mode, which Redditors in the Battlefield 2042 subreddit are calling “a fucking failure of a gamemode.” Yikes.

Since launch, Battlefield 2042’s PC player base has more than halved every month, with only 15,000 average players in the past 30 days. As players continue to demand refunds, it seems the Battlefield franchise’s reputation may have been seriously tarnished in the eyes of gamers.