Ubisoft and Valve get Fined for their Refund Policies

Ubisoft and Valve have found themselves on the wrong side of the law (why does this keep happening this week?) over in France thanks to their refund policies - where Valve will allow a refund in 14 days so long as you only play less than two hours, whereas Ubisoft will simply refuse to issues refunds at all. As it turns out, both of these policies breaks French law, where all products, digital or otherwise, should be allowed to be returned within a certain time frame, regardless of how many hours you put into the game.

"The consumer has a period of fourteen days to exercise his right of withdrawal from a contract concluded at a distance, following a canvassing telephone or off-premises, without having to motivate his decision or to bear other costs than those provided for in Articles L. 221-23 to L. 221-25."

L221-23 to L. 221-25 basically says something can’t be returned if it was broken somehow by the buyer. Something that’s not really applicable to online games in most cases.

Here’s the tricky part: technically, under French Law, it’s perfectly reasonable to have a no-refund policy like Ubisoft and Valve employ, but only if it’s made perfectly clear before the customer spends any money that the product in question cannot be returned. So really, the problem isn’t the refund policy itself, it’s the transparency of the refund policy.

Valve got a fine of $171,600, while Ubisoft for a slightly heftier $210,100 fine, although they’re both just slaps on the wrist for such giant companies. Ubisoft made a statement to save face and try to come off as innocent, but they’re not going to make any serious effort to fight the charges, by the looks of things. The only thing this will probably lead to is more transparency for the French online marketplace, which isn’t much, but hey, it’s not bad.

Plus, bad news for Ubisoft is good news for us.