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EA has announced that game titles brought on its online Origin service will be able to be refunded by unsatisfied customers.
Unlike Origin’s main rival, Valve’s Steam platform, which doesn’t offer refunds of any sort, Origin will feature a ‘Request a Refund’ button for eligible games in users’ order histories.
As outlined on an EA support page titled ‘What’s the Great Game Guarantee?’, the refund must be requested within a week of the purchase of the game, or if the game has been launched, within 24 hours.
The ability to essentially return a game should assist players who find that the game runs poorly on their system, or who are entirely dissatisfied with the game itself. Whether EA will introduce extra measures to stop players buying games, completing them within a day and then returning them is unstated.
While the opportunity to receive money back on poor purchases is a move in the right direction for people who currently see digital media as overly-restricted, with EA itself accused in the past of restrictive DRM, Origin refund requests are currently limited to EA-only games and do not cover DLC.
EA states on the support page that it is ‘continuing to explore how [it] can expand the program over time in with games from other publishers and developers.’
