Valve Corporation Refused to Deliver or Refund Undelivered Digital Goods and Then Threatened Me Bellevue Washington

I've had a variety of issues with Valve Corporation. To try to keep a secret that I resent them on a personal level would be difficult at this point. But considering what I have been through, I believe that losing all sense of self-awareness and chewing them out is reasonable under these circumstances.

To the point...

An issue that actually needs resolution to this day began on the 9th of June, 2017 with the purchase of "Final Fantasy XIV Starter Edition." At the time, the online listing stated that it would add game time to pre-existing Square Enix accounts. This is what drew me to make the purchase in the first place. Reactivating my account to continue playing and getting the Heavensward DLC for $33.01 seemed fair enough at the time, and I really wanted access to the Steam community while playing so my friends knew when to drop in and play with me without my telling them.

Well, things got complicated. Between installing from the Final Fantasy XIV game client and troubleshooting why the codes did not apply to my existing account, I learned that the listing had lied to me. After several complaints demanding a refund for my purchase being denied, the store listing conveniently changed to mention that only new account would have game time added to them as well. The codes Valve game me were not redeemable on my existing Square Enix account at all and they first refused the refund on the grounds that I "spent five hours playing the game" and later despite the initial dispute being within two weeks of buying the game, "because the game was purchased more than two weeks ago."

Valve's excuses are, of course, invalid. The game keys are not even redeemed and the "play time" was not spent in a working game at all. And the initial complaints were filed within just a few days of purchasing the game and were permanently closed with no way to be re-opened as tickets. Simply put, this is a case of sales fraud that could easily have been resolved with humility and a quickly processed refund. But instead, I was ignored throughout a lengthy complaint process and only got intentionally copied and pasted responses telling me to give up.

I was ready to forgive Valve because a friend gave me a gift to cheer me up. I was ready to move on. But they were not done toying with me quite yet.

Later, on the 20th of December, 2017, an odd red notification appeared on my Steam client, the property of Valve Corp., claiming that my account is temporarily banned until January 17th for a chargeback I never made. The chargeback was for Cuphead, and the product was removed from my online account. I found it suspicious if not a confession of discrimination that they would do this sort of thing when $50.08 was sitting in my Steam Wallet at the time.

Naturally, I refuted their claims before even looking into the matter. Looking into the matter, Chase Bank confirmed not only that I had not charged Valve Corp. back, but that no charges were revoked with Valve Corp. for any reason for the past 365 days. VISA confirmed the same after much begging and pleading for some sort of information on the matter.

Two possibilities remained. Either Valve Corp. failed to charge me for the purchase in the first place or had removed Cuphead from my account as a false punishment for a product that had actually been paid for. I will investigate the matter more thoroughly and match debits to my account against purchases made on Steam.

Either way, Valve's uncalled for aggression over something I am not responsible for is physically painful for me and triggers unpleasant PTSD side effects. They already scammed me out of $33.01 this summer, and now they're threatening me with permanent account ban if I ever charge back a purchase again when I have not charged back a purchase at all in this case.

In my experiences with other vendors, they are willing to investigate a little more thoroughly before becoming aggressive, acknowledge their own mistakes, and I daresay in the case of a few truly remarkable vendors even leave accidentally shipped products with the customer as a gesture of goodwill when the customer is not at fault and willing to work with them.

Valve Corp. is different. They are hostile to what can only be an illegal fault, and I doubt any cleverly hidden TOS jargon can excuse them from this pattern of behavior. I gladly, candidly, and with pleasure write on this matter to relieve myself of these abused emotions. I believe that once enough Valve Corp. customers come out with how horribly they are treated despite the fact that they hold previously purchased digital goods hostage, something can be done to humble this ridiculous Internet tyrant at last into treating their customers like something better than dirt.