How do I successfully escalate a refund request with Steam?

For the first time I had a bad experience with a game on Steam. The port to PC was very poorly documented, such that the help text in-game was sometimes pointing to controller buttons when I was using a keyboard. That itself was disappointing and it slowed me down when starting out the game.

What made things worse was that I couldn't finish the first boss fight because the finishing move required to get the boss to stop fighting required two buttons be pressed at the same time. But, the in-game help text pointed to "Q" (fine, that's easy) and to a button that doesn't exist on keyboards. I experimented with a lot of different button presses in conjunction with "Q", but nothing worked.

I didn't pay a large amount for the game (just over $12). But, I was a small amount over 2 hours of playtime on the game (about 3.33 hours total) by the time I was blocked from progressing further. Evidently, from Steam's perspective it's absolutely fine by them that I've hit a wall in the game, as they've turned down the refund request (twice, as I refiled it with more information the second time around). The stated reasons for refusing were over 2 hours of gameplay and me having owned it for just over 14 days. Concerns I raised were not addressed in any way.

Obviously, if they refuse to process a refund then I no longer trust games offered by Steam and I'll never buy one on their platform again. But, if I'm able to work this out then I might.

I'm not sure how I might be able to work this out, though. Any insights others here have had would be helpful and appreciated.

No clue, but what game was it?

Here is what I do when I buy a game I'm not entirely certain about. Kill the internet, play offline, and steam won't accurately log your time. You gotta kill your internet on your PC, or steam will still log your time in offline mode. This way you can actually play it for more than 2 hours, and they'll be no wiser that you played it longer. This worked very recently for me on a game called Greedfall. I had 3 crashes within about 3 hours, so I just refunded the game. I had 45 minutes of time, when I had played the game for at least 3hrs, and they immediately (within 1-2hrs) processed the refund, and the funds were returned to my steam wallet.

And no, it won't update after you relog/connect, because if it did, then that would mean game time logged would be stored client side, and if that was the case, people would be hacking game time to get their cards, instead of using idling programs to do it.

I personally think 2hrs is not enough time, especially since a lot of games start extremely slow, and that's not enough time to get an accurate assessment on the game's stability, or bugs.

You can always sail your ship with black sails, and if you enjoy that game, support the developers.

My thanks to those who provided feedback.

To bring this to closure, I did some searches online and found a limited amount of helpful advice. I went ahead and appealed (twice) and all three times I asked my request for a refund was rejected.

I was only slightly over their cutoffs for refunds, so the experience was disappointing. The amount of money was also quite small, which makes their refusal even more puzzling. I won't be spending money on their platform again, after having been a (paying) customer for years; the math for Steam favored saying "Here's your refund, we're sorry you had such a disappointing experience."

All water under the bridge, though, at this point. I've had a lot of fun with the games I did purchase on Steam, overall, and I'll keep my focus more on that as I move on to other gaming options.

For another data point, I've refunded exactly one game in Steam and it was painless. I filled out the form, said the game wasn't what I expected (and I only had like 2 hours in the game), and they refunded me that day without any more questioning.

That was a while ago, though, so it's very possible that they've grown and failed to scale appropriately since then.

I have refunded a few games on Steam, didn't even know that they had a 14 day policy.