Microsoft To Offer Digital Refunds On Xbox And Windows For Video Games

Although Steam has been offering refunds to its video game consumers by default for a long time, Microsoft was only able to implement such a feature recently. Even so, it is still the first to offer a refund to customers for digital purchases in the console industry. The software giant will also implement this feature on Windows Store for PC gamers.

The feature is still in its Alpha stage, Ars Technica reports, which means that it won’t be available to the wider audience for quite some time. Even so, a lot of users are already trying it out to see if it actually works and what the conditions are in order to get a refund.

Much like how Valve’s own Steam refund policies work, Xbox and PC gamers have a limited window of time to file for a refund. There are also set conditions to qualify, including the one where the game should not have been used for more than two hours.

Just to make the practice extra hard, there are no buttons or obvious pages to make the refund request. Rather, players will need to go to the account.microsoft.com and look through their order history in order to get the refund. In this, Steam is at least the better option.

There is also the small matter of DLCs and Season Passes not being eligible for a refund, Gamespot reports. That’s right. Base games can be returned and gamers will get their money back. For extra story content, costumes, weapon packs, and skins, however, it’s a no go.

Despite all of these conditions and a bunch of others that gamers can read about over at Microsoft’s website, it still marks a historic moment in the console industry. For the longest time, gamers have been asking Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft to allow for self-service refund options. That’s one down and two to go.