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Steam issues refunds for Battlefield 2042 as player count plummets

Ceadeus

Member
I wish Xbox Store would be doing the same. I gave the game a chance and tried its features for a little less than 10 hours before reaching the conclusion that the game indeed, sucks.

They won't refund me so I uninstalled and promised myself to never buy a Dice or Battlefield product in the future.

It's 110$ through the window, it really sucks.
 
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N° 2048

Member
Garbage mess of a game. Had I know Deep Rock Galactic was coming to PS+ this month, I would have never bought this shit called 2042.

Already have 36 hours into DRG in a week and 60 in BF2042 since it came out.
 
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jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
I don't know much about these controversies as I haven't played a Battlefield game in 10 years or so. I am glad we seem to be nearing the tipping point for what is actually acceptable to sell to customers, however.
I'd like to think you're right about this, but...

It's more like mob justice, or cancel culture. If enough people make a stink about something then the corporations will bow to the pressure and give in. I'm pretty certain there are games being sold on Steam that are WAY more buggy, but they're indie titles that might be relatively unknown and won't give Steam / Valve any bad press so they won't bend the rules to give players refunds. The last time they made one of these exceptions was for Cyberpunk 2077, for basically the same reason: high profile game overpromises and underdelivers, upsetting fans.
 

winjer

Gold Member
The concurrent players of basically all games 'plummet' over time after the launch peak, and many devs complained in the past that Steam's refund limit of 2 hours or 14 days never existed they always refund so many users exploit the system, an average of 10%-15% of a game's revenue on Steam dissapear due to refunds and chargebacks.

A multiplayer game doesn't have such a huge plummet in player numbers, unless it's a bad game.
Steam's refund policy protects consumers, and improves trust in the platform. And this in turn also benefits developers.
In a time when so many games are being released in an unfinished state, with many problems, this refund policy is extremely important.

Yes, some indie devs that make under 2 hours worth of game, are being hurt b some scummy gamers.
But the alternative of not having a refund policy is unthinkable in a time of so many broken releases.

EA and Dice have only themselves to blame for this debacle.
Steam and consumers are not at fault.
 

Dibils2k

Member
current state nowhere near warrants a refund... crazy world we live in

although it is PC, so maybe it still performs like shit on PCs that arent "Elite"
 

Droxcy

Member
Steam refunds have been great honestly never been refused even if i'm above the limit.

DICE thinking right about nice
Big Cats GIF by NETFLIX
 

Burger

Member
It's because they made it like Call of Duty. But everyone who wants to play Call of Duty is playing... you guessed it. Call of Duty. Or any of the other low TTK reaction games out there.

People who wants to play squad based stuff are playing Hell Let Loose or similar.
 

Shai-Tan

Banned
Main reason I stopped quickly is the new maps are terrible and apparently it's because they were chasing some trendy game modes like Battle Royale which were then repurposed. And I already played >1000 hours of old bf3/bf4/bc2 maps. Those old maps are still good though if you've never played them

YouTubers like Jackfrags made only a handful of videos on it since release and made more nostalgia videos playing bf5/bf4/etc which should be embarassing for EA
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
BF's biggest points have always been:

- giant maps
- destruction
- tons of vehicles

It's not like the other key games have copied them in full. Ya, COD and others have big battle royale mode but it's not the same as playing a standard BF/COD mode at large scale. If BFV and 2042 are trending down, it shows gamers care more about polish, gameplay etc.... over their traditional boasting points.... or now dynamic tornadoes or whatever they got.

They got to focus on key shooter mechanics, then push for their usual grand scale features.
 

Klik

Member
I'm a HUGE Battlefileld fan, couldn't even finish 10hour free trial. I instantly refunded it.

I preordered because Battlefield is only fps i play but honestly i never thought its gonna be that bad. Its quite shocking AAA dev can make a game like this..
 
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Edgelord79

Gold Member
What a disaster.

A win for consumers though. Hopefully after Cyberpunk and now this it will make publishers start to think twice. If they can't get your cash then laugh their way to the bank because you can't get a refund they will have to start thinking twice about releasing broken games. We are far from that reality still but this is a start.
Maybe players will have to start thinking twice before buying these games hand over fist year after year as well. Can't always rely on companies like Valve to come to our aid. Sometimes people have to help themselves.
 

RaptorGTA

Member
Never played it so I have no position on the game but is it actually that bad? What exactly is wrong with it?
It’s a number of things. Is the game at its core bad? No, if this was EA Presents “FPS: The Game” where it was a new free to play or $30 online only shooter that borrowed from BF and other shooters.. I think the game would be accepted.

The issues is it has the BF name attached to it. So when you compare it to other titles you see it missing a lot. All BF games have bugs and so does this game, but I think the main issue for a lot of people (myself included) is the game would need a lot of work to be what I expected it to be. For me, I only get so much time to play my games. So do I want to invest in a game where I am not having fun and I don’t think will have a player base in a year…no.

Now I will also agree with others and say there is an issue with the whole ‘its cool to hate this game’ mentality. It's basically the mob mentality social media and streamers have created.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
Still confused about why this is hated soo much.

What are the objective reasons for it being bad?
What about subjective?
I only played the demo/beta, but my criticism is that the maps are fucking waaaay too big to play as infantry. And it is boring. I didn't even run into any technical issues, just a boring game that they are trying to charge money for when there are vastly superior free options.
 
I got turned down for my refund. I don't know that they are really bending their rules.

It appears they aren't "bending their rules" in any sort of large scale way. The article is clickbait, they took a handful of users getting refunds outside the typical refund window (which, as was explained earlier in the thread, is possible for any game) and extrapolated it as if Steam has put out a bulletin letting 2042 users know they can line up for refunds because they've decided to bend their rules on mass for this particular game.
 
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sSIF8lS.jpg


Amusingly the Free Weekend did nothing. There are single player games on Steam with better user engagement.
If I owned Dice I would demand a blood sacrifice right now.

I bought BF2042 on my XSX and I still have hope for it, but figured I'd try out the PC version that weekend. Downloaded and installed, started up the game and every match I'd get in after about a minute or so I'd get kicked back out to the main menu of the game with no warning/error message/etc. Probably tried playing maybe 20 times out of sheer curiosity that weekend just to see if it would ever work and it never did. Felt bad for any PC only/primary gamers who were looking forward to it. What a shit show.
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I actually just resubmitted a ticket about an hour ago since I did try to refer refund finally about a month ago and was denied. And truthfully it's not because I want money for nothing it's something I paid for that's really doesn't work on my system so hopefully I can get my $80 back
 

R6Rider

Gold Member
Still confused about why this is hated soo much.

What are the objective reasons for it being bad?
What about subjective?
I myself am enjoying it, but the biggest complaints I see are the lack of the class system from past games and the implementation of specialists. Along with that, the maps haven't been well received overall.

The ironic thing is that Portal still has fantastic renditions of classic BF games (although limited guns and maps) and very few people play it.
 
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DeceptiveAlarm

Gold Member
I actually just resubmitted a ticket about an hour ago since I did try to refer refund finally about a month ago and was denied. And truthfully it's not because I want money for nothing it's something I paid for that's really doesn't work on my system so hopefully I can get my $80 back
They have denied me twice now.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
Maybe players will have to start thinking twice before buying these games hand over fist year after year as well. Can't always rely on companies like Valve to come to our aid. Sometimes people have to help themselves.
You arent wrong but thats not an excuse to let publishers sell unfinished software.

Imagine going into a movie and it stops playing with 20 minutes left. It wouldnt be tolerated. Thats not on the consumer.
 
You arent wrong but thats not an excuse to let publishers sell unfinished software.

Imagine going into a movie and it stops playing with 20 minutes left. It wouldnt be tolerated. Thats not on the consumer.

Where do you get the impression that the game isn't finished? Have you even played the game? A smaller selection of guns or vehicles doesnt necessarily mean unfinished, same goes with the lack of leaderboards or voice chat or any of the numerous complaints about it.

In fact that's probably the most egregious part about it, this is what their finished product is, these decisions appear to be deliberately designed this way. THIS is Battlefield in their image, saying the game is unfinished suggests hope that things will be added later on down the line to "complete" it that will dramatically alter its current state. I just don't see that happening, this is it folks. This is what we have.
 
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Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
Where do you get the impression that the game isn't finished? Have you even played the game? In fact that's probably the most egregious part about it, this is what their finished product is. THIS is Battlefield in their image, saying the game is unfinished suggests hope that things will be added paper on down the line to "complete" it that will dramatically alter its current state. I just don't see that happening, this is it folks. This is what we have.
Game crashed straight to dashboard several times for me. Funny enough the only other game to crash that hard on xbox for me was BF4 xbox One launch.
 
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Game crashed straight to dashboard several times for me. Funny enough the only other game to crash that hard on xbox was BF4 xbox One launch.

And would you consider bf4 to be "unfinished" because you had a few hard crashes to the dashboard? That game had like three times the feature set 2042 has. I dunno, maybe the idea of a game being unfinished is subjective but I'm fairly certain the general concensus of what an unfinished game would be consists of missing content or something. And if we are going to use the generalized metric of what an unfinished game is this isn't it. Many of the design decisions, as bafflingly stupid as they may be, appear to be carefully curated. They were purposely steering Battlefeld in a very different direction, which honestly os more depressing than if the game was just legitimately rushed out to meet the holiday season and is missing half of its content.


Edit: to be frank, imo, having the mindset of the game being unfinished just takes agency away from the boneheaded and tone deaf decisions Dice has made with this game. No no, this IS the game Dice decided to release, this is the content they put out. People should be letting Dice know that the issue isn't with the game being unfinished, it's the changes to the fundamental core of why fans love the Battlefield franchise. That they somehow came to the conclusion that this is the finished game players want.
 
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Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
And would you consider bf4 to be "unfinished" because you had a few hard crashes to the dashboard? That game had like three times the feature set 2042 has. I dunno, maybe the idea of a game being unfinished is subjective but I'm fairly certain the general concensus of what an unfinished game would be consists of missing content or something. And if we are going to use the generalized metric of what an unfinished game is this isn't it. Many of the design decisions, as bafflingly stupid as they may be, appear to be carefully curated. They were purposely steering Battlefeld in a very different direction, which honestly os more depressing than if the game was just legitimately rushed out to meet the holiday season and is missing half of its content.
It was 100 percent unfinished. If the game literally doesn't allow me to play it and finish it without it constantly interrupting me due to the software failing to execute its unfinished.

And a few is not how I would describe it in terms of crashes with BF4.

BF2042 not only crashed on me but of the matches I played during the trial there were constant graphical issues along with server issues. Not only could I not play the game at times, but when I could get into a game it wasn't displaying properly and had slow down that made moving my character impossible to perceive what I was doing. Thats not an acceptable product.

My favorite was I reached out to EA tech support and their solution was to swap my disc. (BF4, didnt buy 2042)

The general consensus of what an unfinished game is not what you would described imo. What you described is more akin to under baked/not fully realized.
 
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Dammit, I bought this hunk of crap on Origin. I mean I would have done it on Steam, I had just forgotten that EA put their stuff on Steam now. Guess I'm eating the L.
 

Concern

Member
you know it was a shitty year for gaming when Bf2042 is in my top 3 games of the year. I actually like it a lot.


Its been shitty, thats for sure but if you're enjoying the game. Thats great on you, no shame in that.

Insurgency has been my sleeper shooter for 21.
 

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
Is avengers really that bad? It looked like a fun singleplayer adventure in the youtube reviews I saw. The microtransactions can get fucked, though.

Single player wasn’t horrible but all mp didn’t work at launch abs months after. Had to play it for way over 10ths to find that out.
 

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
I love BF 2042, because it encouraged me to explore other fps games and move on from this franchise(at least for now). I'm having fun with Insurgency series recently, they both great games. I found Red Orchestra 2, pretty hard game(and very old), but it's still more enjoyable. Verdun and Rising Storm 2: Vietnam are ok too. I'm looking forward to try Hell Let Loose, Post Scriptum, Beyond The Wire(early access, ww1 game), Day of Infamy(from Insurgency devs) and maybe Squad one day.

I hope you guys get a refund and give another FPS a chance. AAA studios getting worse everyday. We should support these new creative minds.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
EA right now
Ralph Wiggum Reaction GIF


I wish, probably nothing will happen. How do they keel failing and still be alive? I think i only played SW Jedi Fallen order in like since mirror's edge in 2008.
 
$70 daddy war bucks down the drain... stockholm syndrome victim here ;-) Waited for 10 minutes on PS5 only to get a game going with >90% bots... izzz dead bois.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
You arent wrong but thats not an excuse to let publishers sell unfinished software.

Imagine going into a movie and it stops playing with 20 minutes left. It wouldnt be tolerated. Thats not on the consumer.
Yep, big, unfinished triple a games have been a blight on this industry, but they try to defend it by saying “well its a live service” i think halo infinites campaign is a rushed unfinished mess with a few bright spots, battlefield is missing major features, cyberpunk is still missing major features. This shit is unsustainable. Ill give activision credit for putting out a cod game this year that at least feels like a complete product. None of this “we promise we will add features in later” bullshit. Maybe the problem is that these games are too fucking big and they need to be scoped more appropriately.

Edit: also far cry 6 is a “live service” that was able to come out finished. Whats halo’s excuse?
 
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