How to Get a Refund on Every Major Game Store — and Where You Can't

Everyone can recite the Steam rule: fourteen days, two hours, click the button. Almost nobody can recite the rules on any other storefront, and that is where refund requests go to die — because the policies are not variations on the same idea. They are three different philosophies of what you are buying, and one of the three major consoles will not take a digital game back at all.

The rules, store by store

Treat this as the bookmark version. Each store’s own policy page is the authority, and details do change — but the structure below has been stable for years.

• Steam — 14 days, under 2 hours, self-service. The reason it is the famous one is that it is a genuine policy, not a plea: meet the two conditions and the refund is yours, even if your reason is “I didn’t like it”. Pre-orders refund in full any time before release, then run on the normal clock.
• Xbox / Microsoft Store — 14 days, limited play, evaluated case by case. There is no hard two-hour number in the policy; Microsoft looks at playtime, your refund history, and the reason. Self-service through your account’s order history. Technical problems are approved far more readily than buyer’s remorse, so say specifically what broke.
• PlayStation Store — 14 days, but a download voids it. This is the trap that catches almost everybody: Sony’s policy treats starting the download or stream as consuming the product. And a PS5 begins downloading a purchase automatically the moment the transaction clears. If you buy and immediately regret, cancel the download in your queue before anything else — that single move preserves the refund. Faulty content is the exception; describe the failure (error codes, screenshots) in your request.
• Epic Games Store — 14 days, under 2 hours, self-service, on purchases labelled self-refundable. Close to the Steam model.
• GOG — 30 days, even if you played it. The most generous policy of the major stores, which fits GOG’s good-citizen positioning.
• EA app — 24 hours after first launch, or 14 days if you never launched it. Launching is the trigger, not playtime.
• Nintendo eShop (US) — nothing. Nintendo’s terms make all digital sales final: no window, no playtime allowance, not even for a game you have not downloaded. Defective purchases are handled case by case through support, but that is a discretionary process, not a policy you can rely on. The one firm exception: pre-orders can be cancelled up to 7 days before release, after which the purchase is locked.

Two purchases are refundable nowhere: wallet top-ups and gift-card codes. Once the money is in store credit, it is store credit.

The part worth internalizing

Notice what the three philosophies actually are. Microsoft copied the PC model — a time-boxed trial you can abandon. Sony runs the older digital-goods model, where downloading equals consuming. Nintendo sells on trust alone: buy first, find out later. None of these is a law. They are contract terms each company chose, and they can change, which is why checking a store’s support page before a large purchase is money in the bank.

It also means your refund rights are not the same thing as your legal rights. The United States has no general cooling-off period for digital purchases — the 14-day cancellation right people sometimes cite is a European Union consumer rule, and it does not apply here. What US law does give you runs through your payment card instead: federal law lets you dispute a billing error on a credit card statement within 60 days, and a charge the merchant refuses to reverse can be escalated to your card issuer as a dispute. That route is slower and is not meant for “the game was mediocre” — but for a charge you never should have seen (a duplicate, an unauthorized child purchase, a subscription you cannot cancel), it works on every store, including Nintendo.

The order of operations when something goes wrong

1. Check the store’s policy page first, not a forum post about it — windows and conditions move.
2. If the problem is technical, say so precisely: error codes, what you tried, when it started. Stores approve broken, not bored.
3. Cancel any in-progress download before doing anything else on PlayStation; on every store, minimize playtime while you decide.
4. Refused, and the charge is genuinely wrong? Dispute it with your credit card issuer within the 60-day federal window, after telling the merchant — issuers typically ask whether you tried to resolve it with the store first.
5. Note what refunds return as: original payment method where possible, wallet credit where it is not. A wallet refund on a store you are leaving is a coupon, not a refund.

A refund policy is part of what you are buying when you buy a game — as much a part as the frame rate. Stores that treat it as a feature tend to treat the other parts of the purchase that way too.