I don't think this is correct. The majority of people never have those problems.
Note too that they do give out refunds, but admittedly not as much as I'd like. However, they did refund Splinter Cell: Conviction (which didn't work well on my hardware not due to an incompatibility but do to the performance) and Mirror's Edge (which I tried to play through WINE unsuccessfully.)
>The majority of people never have those problems.
I disagree completely. The majority of people I know who use Steam have a huge library of games that have never been played because they bought most of them as an impulse purchase when they were on sale, and then realized the game wasn't worth playing for one reason or another. It's kind of telling for the market when in a large amount of cases the most reasonable thing to do is to just not use Steam altogether, but their promotions have to it that people forget about that. It's just the same sleazy, destructive sales tactics that we've seen a million times over. It's no surprise that their software prices are trending towards zero in an Apple/Google-esque spiral.
That isn't really a refutation of what I said. I'm saying that most people don't have the problems GP described: buying a game that is unplayable and not being able to get a refund. Not only are most people able to play their entire game library (even if not permitted by time or interest,) I've been able to get refunds even in exceptional circumstances.
Doesn't matter. The minority of people with issues are always the loudest on support and general game discussion forums. Couple this with the fact that the majority of people are risk averse by nature and you get a pretty good explanation for the observed behaviour.
Note too that they do give out refunds, but admittedly not as much as I'd like. However, they did refund Splinter Cell: Conviction (which didn't work well on my hardware not due to an incompatibility but do to the performance) and Mirror's Edge (which I tried to play through WINE unsuccessfully.)