Steam, a digital video games storefront owned by Valve Corporation, offers refunds to anyone who purchases a game on its storefront, provided that the customer has played less than 2 hours of the game, and it has been less than fourteen (14) days since the game was either purchased or published (whichever occurs later). This enables gamers to have recourse against con artists who use misleading screenshots, trailers, and descriptions to sell games, while still keeping the window of opportunity sufficiently narrow to prevent people from essentially getting "free games" by completing the games and then refunding them.

Some game publishers want to include content in their games - such as microtransactions - that they know full well will cause many customers to not buy the game if they know the content is in it. Because the window of opportunity to get a refund on Steam is so narrow, many corporations will release the game initially without the offensive content, wait only two weeks so that those who pre-ordered the game, as well as those who bought the game on release day (collectively amounting to a majority of the game's sales) can no longer get a refund, before slipping the offensive content in. Activision Blizzard is one of the most notorious practitioners of this business practice, whereby they add microtransactions and loot boxes into their games after people - who would not have bought the game if they knew about the microtransactions - had already bought it.

The most recent egregious offender of this business practice is Bethesda Softworks, the publisher of the critically and commercially acclaimed game "Doom Eternal." Just slightly over two weeks after release, the game was updated to include Denuvo Anti-Cheat, some computer software that, on its face, purports to prevent cheating in multiplayer competition. Despite its official purpose, however, the software is notorious in the PC gaming community because it (A) has administrator privileges to your computer, giving it the ability to do whatever it wants, and (B) is notoriously easy for cyber criminals to hack into using back doors. For these reasons, Denuvo Anti-Cheat is considered de facto "spyware" by many consumers, and for that reason, many consumers would not have purchased this game if they had known that Denuvo Anti-Cheat was going to be in it.

A quick, easy, and simple expedient to this problem would be for Valve to update its refund policy. Under this new policy, whenever a game publisher releases a newer version of the game, customers now have a renewed two hours of playtime and 14 days of real time to seek a refund. This new policy would produce a much-needed chilling effect against unscrupulous video game publishers who attempt to circumvent Steam's refund policy by baiting and switching their customers. Early access games could be an exception to this new policy, since being updated is the whole point of that brand of games, and buyers already enter into that purchase agreement with some inherent assumption of risk anyway.

To prevent customers from abusing this refund policy to get a refund for the game after they have completed it, simply by waiting for the next regular update, Valve could require purchasers to specify what, about this new update, makes them want to refund the game. If buyers repeatedly reference content in the games' updates that do not appear to be offensive or justifying a refund, such as the inclusion of an unfavorable daily challenge to the game, then Valve could read between the lines and refuse to honor the buyer's refund request, and potentially even lock them out of future refund requests if they continue to abuse the refund policy. If a large number of people in a short amount of time request refunds for the same reason (such as Denuvo), it is most likely not abuse.

The undersigned all agree this would be a prudent solution to this problem and request that Valve Corporation implement this new refund policy at its early convenience. This petition will be submitted to Valve Corporation if it receives 100,000 signatures.