GOG's new refund policy is betting on the good faith of customers

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GOG’s new refund policy is betting on the good faith of customersMoney back guarantee

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GOG.comhave gone and updated their refund policy, and it’s a doozy. This week, the DRM-free storefront announced that their 30-day refund window is expanding, no longer limited to games that have sat unplayed and undownloaded in your library. Now, you can spend a whole month plugging in the hours, working out whether you want to keep your new toy before the clock runs down. It’s a generous move - twice as long as comparable policies, with none of the playtime restrictions. But it’s one places a lot of faith in their customers not to take advantage of that generosity.

GOG’s refund policy has always had a month-long breathing room, but there were strict caveats. You’d usually only get your money back if a game hadn’t yet been downloaded or played. A sort of “oh, I didn’t really want that” option for salvaging impulse purchases. Special consideration would be taken if a purchase had technical issues, but ‘til now, you’d usually be stuck with a game once you downloaded it - whether you liked it or not.

This week, GOG announced that it was kicking the doors to refunds wide open, whether you’ve downloaded a game or not.

We always believed in a ‘gamers-first’ approach and with this voluntary update to our Refund Policy you can get a full refund up to 30 days after purchasing a product, even if you downloaded, launched, and played it.More details –https://t.co/WfwZkyLkbo— GOG.COM (@GOGcom)February 26, 2020

We always believed in a ‘gamers-first’ approach and with this voluntary update to our Refund Policy you can get a full refund up to 30 days after purchasing a product, even if you downloaded, launched, and played it.

More details –https://t.co/WfwZkyLkbo

— GOG.COM (@GOGcom)February 26, 2020

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If you are that person (really, don’t be), GOG reserves the right to say no to refund requests. Still, 30 days is a long time. Long enough that you could beat all but the longest RPG sprawls and still potentially get away with a refund.

There’s a more troubling side to GOG’s policy, mind. See, the store’s big selling point is that, unlike Steam or Origin or that, none of the games it sells contain DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions of any kind. You shouldn’t ever have to check in with a server or launcher to verify ownership before firing up a game. Good stuff, right?

But it throws a strange wrench into this refund policy. Right now, it’s unclear what’s stopping someone from downloading a game and backing up the installer (or the game files entirely) on another drive before getting a refund.Responding to a concerned commenton their original Twitter post, GOG explained that they’re counting on their customers to just, like, be cool about it.

Time will tell if that faith holds out.