Bethesda Refusing Refunds for Fallout 76

The trainwreck that is Fallout 76 and everything surrounding it has led to people wanting refunds for the clearly broken game, however Bethesda says no. They are apparently allowing some users to get refunds but not everyone?

This is specifically related to the Bethesda.net Launcher which Bethesda has complete control over.

I've "uninstalled"(the launcher apparently doesn't uninstall anything other than the uninstall.exe file, since i told it to remove everything and that was the only thing it removed) the launcher as i feel that if i cannot get a refund or have to struggle to get a refund for something like this, then the service isn't worth trusting.

Steam is pretty lenient around refunds, i can trust that if the game is THIS BAD, i can get my money back.

But since it's Bethesda's own launcher, i have no voice or any real chance to get my money back, atleast with Steam being so big, you know that governments are paying attention to it, but Bethesda that has only a handful of games, i think not.

I don't know if i worded my concerns adequately but i hope i get my point across.

Also the recent huge data leak of the people that wanted some form of compensation doesn't help.

Why are you looking for a refund? You can't demand a refund just because the game is bad.

I got wonder if theyre only honouring refunds of those in EU territories because somethkng not fit for purpose has to be funded by law if you wish to trade there

For me it seems strange that people want refunds for a "bad" game. I'm fine with refunds if you haven't played the game or played less than 1 hour or whatever. I can also see deceptive marketing as a reason (however it's been pretty clear about the contents of this game).

Do you also try to get refunds for bad movies? Bad books? Bad concerts? DVD's? It's some very strange logic at work here.

YES! Of course you try to get a refund. If a movie is terrible I will leave. If a concert is terrible I will leave. If a product or service does not meet my expectations, bet your ass I will ask for a refund.

Bethesda didn't sell what they said was coming. They have delivered similar products in the past that relatively few people had gripes with. This time, expectations were not even remotely met.

@yesiamaduck: They got a working product so they don't have to refund you, you could appeal this in court, but that's way more expensive then the game itself. Most of EU consumer law is more based on you buying a vase online and you getting it shipped broken stuff like that will get you a refund or a compensation. With digital products it's way harder, and most of these things get fought of in court. A other good example is u buying a disked game and u notice there's big scratch on it you could easyliy get a new disk from the retailer cause your physical disk was damaged in shipping or production.

@rahf: So you have got refunds for leaving movies and concerts because it wasn't to your liking? Never tried that but it is very entitled to say that a certain thing must match your taste otherwise you won't pay, people have still worked to make it happen.

Sometimes you put out money for stuff you like, sometimes you're disappointed, it's just life.

I'm sure you can squeeze some fun out of the thing. It's what we did in the old days ;D

Between the actual quality of the game, the bag fiasco and now them actually leaking people's personal information to the world, I'm surprised they haven't just pulled the plug. This game seems cursed.

Bro, "the government" is not paying attention to your video game refund eligibility. This is all getting blown so wildly out of proportion.

@vampire_chibi: people are going too far with this, at least there was some true misrepresentation with No Mans Sky and even those people were overly entitled. The game sucks, reviews indicate that, you took the risk by pre-ordering/buying day one. I put probably a thousand hours into fallout 3/NV/4, and didn't even THINK about this one until reviews came out.

@bleichman: There's a difference between not liking something because of its content, and not liking it because of poor craft-- I place Fallout 76 in the latter category due to its issues. If a product is poorly put together or something completely different from what marketing promised, I will definitely ask for a refund. If a band or artist gives an amateur-ish performance I paid $100 to see, of course I'll ask for a refund; I paid money for a certain level of quality and/or promised experience.

As a sole proprietor/consultant in a creative field, I expect others to hold me to a certain standard if I promise something they've paid for, too. And since I charge what others would deem a hefty fee, I expect clients to have expectations and demands.

With all of the bad signs with this game since the announcement, I don't feel bad for those angry over Fallout 76. Anyone who plopped down 60 bones for something this fishy is a sucker from the moment of purchase.

Not to be harsh, I'm sorry but caveat emptor "Let the buyer beware" or more accurately: the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made.

I've bought bad games, paid for bad movies, read bad books, eaten at bad restaurants - if it turns out bad because that's what it is no refund, if there is an unfixable issue then a refund is in order. You not liking it isn't grounds for a refund - the goods were provided as they were and you accepted that. Now if it were in someway cheating you/stealing money that's a whole other story.

Fallout 76 looked like a bad game from the get go, and I like Fallout. I will say the nylon/canvas bag thing does deserve some kind of refund.

@stalefishies: You can demand a refund if the food is bad, if the movie was bad, if you didn't have a good time at the comedy center, there are plenty of good reasons why and where you can demand for a refund.

@bleichman: That's not how the world works.

@mikachops: Not really, if the game didn't work for whatever reason on PC you would just get your money back or swap for a different game. It was often that games wouldn't work because of drivers or something beyond your control.

@nnickers: My government is, anything you spend money on should have regulation of some sort.

@sahalarious: I never said i preordered or bought the game. What about you pre-ordering a pizza, wouldn't you want your money back if the forgot half of it?

@ghost_cat: That's victim blaming.

@bmccann42: Imagine any company using this excuse for their product doing harm to others or failing to do what they said it could do.

EDIT : Deleted all the other comments and just placed all into this one.

@vampire_chibi: In my world you don't demand a refund if:

- The food is bad (if you get sick or if it's impossible to eat it's another matter obviously, otherwise you suck it up and don't go back)

- If a movie is bad (No, a movie can't please everyone it's highly subjective, even the "craft" as @Rahf mentioned)

- If you didn't like a stand up show (Humor is not really on a scale of bad / good)

You aren't sending a specification to game developers and they tailor a game to you, you buy something they made. The NPC's weren't taken out last minute, there have been plenty of previews showing what this game is about. I'm sorry you are disappointed but back in the day you bought bad games all the time but that has never been a reason for return if you have opened and played it.

@vampire_chibi: I'd never request a food refund, foods a gamble as is entertainment.

@bleichman: With this in mind and if it were a reality, a marketing firm can do whatever they want. But the way to pull out the weeds is to complain and force a company to better themselves. This shitstorm surrounding Fallout 76 cannot stand, it simply cannot. Because if Bethesda get to walk away from it with nothing more than a PR slap on the wrist, you'll see this type of conduct repeated. As a consumer I for sure should have some rights to voice my opinion and demand recompense if a company did not deliver, even more so if I am one amongst many.

Ultimately it's up to the company if they grant a refund, but to say that we should suck it up and accept defeat is a slippery slope into a dark brush of thorns.

Agree to disagree.

@rahf: No hard feelings.

I can definitely get refund claims for the canvas bag issue, that's just bad. But regarding the game itself I don't see what exactly has been promised that they didn't deliver on.

Yeah, this what I'm flabbergasted about. In terms of technical quality, I think Bethesda needs to get their shit together with the Fallout franchise. But the game they presented upon announcement is pretty much the game that is today. If you, the purchaser, knew this is not the kind of Fallout you wanted, then why did you get it in the first place just to go through this unpleasant experience? And if you, the purchaser, were just skeptical about what was presented in the beginning, why not just wait for reviews and playthroughs first to see if this is the game for you?

I played the game (Fallout 76) for maybe 2 hours, made a refund request ticket, and got the money returned to me within 5 days. No questions asked.

Yeah I'm having as much fun as the next guy watching Bethesda somehow dig deeper and deeper holes regarding this game but you can't just be expecting refunds for a game you just don't like.

The angry mob mentality surrounding this game is getting worse than all the related PR bungles by Bethesda put together. And most of the people that are so negative and furious have never even played the game or played very little(not necessarily here but all over). It has plenty of issues, but it is very playable, and the weekly patches and hotfixes have begun to address many problems already. The canvas bag thing is currently being addressed and resolved for people who bought that version.

There was plenty of info to go by before release, including the "beta' to allow players to avoid the game and/or cancel their preorders. Hopefully this whole PR fiasco forces Bethesda, and Zenimax to rethink and restructure their current PR policies and feedback loop, but this hate train needs to stop already.

The game they basically came right out and said would be broken is in fact broken

With Steam being the defacto platform for PC games and making refunds extremely easy I can totally understand people being frustrated.

With Steam it's easy and fast to test out a game for less than 2 hours and then return it if it's not what I expected. While I'm not saying everyone should copy their policy as I'm sure in a lot of ways it can screw over devs I can understand that over time people expect similar treatment from other storefronts

I do think they should be giving refunds, especially since they dropped the price in half a week or two after release, but I also think buyers had ample evidence this game was going to turn out poorly.

They issued a press release expecting "spectacular bugs". You can complain about a buggy product, but you can't say you were mislead on the technical quality. I can understand going "Oh Haha it's just Bethesda being buggy as usual" but that's not the right mentality to go into when buying something. Wait to see how buggy it is and how it affects everyone, not just the "well I'm 20 hours in and nothing happened to me" anecdotes. The problems with the launcher alone should have warned people to stay back until everything settled, not to mention the buggy beta.

i personally never do refunds. it encourages me to be sure of something before i purchase it, and accept the consequences if i don't like it.

It isn't just bad, it's unfinished. People are 100% justified in wanting refunds.

@bigboss1911: from the videos and talks they put out, it seemed "unfinished" even before released.

In fact, as mentioned above, Bethesda actually had the tone-deaf audacity to let people know ahead of time that it's guaranteed to be broken at launch - and still released a $200 Collectors Edition.

there was an episode of south park about this stan and kenny watch passion of the christ and hate it they ask for refunds but the clerk says he can't cause they already saw the movie so stan declares " This is America, and in America, if something sucks, you're supposed to be able to get your money back!" then they try pestering mel gibson for a refund

there's totally potential for an episode just like that but they go to Todd Howard's house

I'm kind of surprised to see so many people objecting to refunds, I've absolutely seen plenty of cases where I live where people get refunds for shitty food or when they walk out of a movie, wouldn't know about concerts. At the least, you get some kind of reimbursement / replacement. I think if this had come out on steam there would've been a lot of refunds, I couldn't fairly tell you how long any one individual needs to play this to see that it's held together with duct-tape and bubblegum (and I say this as someone who does still play it here and there) and if I had to pay full retail for it, I'd be a lot more irritated by it but I'm finding a drip-feed in terminals and holotapes that scratch some Fallout itches that I really like such as Modus, the Enclave computer, having had a couple of transcribed conversations with ZAX [the computer at the bottom of The Glow in Fallout 1

It might sound like a really minor thing but I really thought it was neat. It's still a minuscule balm for all the places this game chafes you, however. There are also other little things around that I enjoy but I can fully admit there's some serious work that needs to be done for this to be worth the price they ask. I can see trying to bear it and see if it gets better and finding that it just does not improve for you and requesting a refund. A refund policy like Steam's would have torn plenty of money out of their pockets for the amount of people I imagine are furious with the game.

@sod: I feel like the only time shitty food would warrant a refund is if it were undercooked and in this scenario it would be more like if on the menu it included a warning that this may be the case.

Whereupon if I ordered it anyway....maybe then that's on me.

When the creators of the game jokingly invite you to break the buggy game in spectacular fashion together, brace yourself to go through a buggy game. The bag they promoted as canvas turning out to be made of nylon is a 100% legit reason to ask for a refund though. That's straight up false advertising.

I haven't played fallout 76. I like the fallout games but nothing from what I saw leading up to game seemed like something I would really like. That said my question is what did you think you were going to get that they didn't deliver? People seem pissed there is no story, but they said no NPCs. They seem to say that you would make your own story with friends. So if you don't think there is a story maybe you failed to make it. Once again I don't know cause I haven't played it, so those in this thread that want refund I ask, what did they fail to deliver?

I am a fallout fan and I look forward to buying this game some day for $10, and giving it a try. Maybe rather than asking for refunds people should learn to be patient. If you followed GBs coverage of the game you would have know the game wasn't worth buying.

The only thing here where I feel like people are really entitled to a refund is with the special edition bag situation. In that case, it seems like they really didn't deliver what was promised.

In terms of the actual game? We all had the same info about the game. Previews, reviews, etc. I used that information to not buy the game. I'm not a big fan of people demanding refunds for no particular reason.

Bethesda warned people well before launch that the game would be 'a work in progress' even after launch, that not all of their "spectacular bugs" (their wording I think) would be fixed in time.

I can't see how anyone could have missed this info, every gaming site and "critic" has exploited these statements.

If a company warns about their product not being 100% perfect at sale, and the consumer still decides to buy it, the fault lies with the consumer in my opinion, if s/he is unhappy with the product. You own the risk, so to speak.

If Bethesda had not been upfront about these issues my opinion would be very different of-course, but that is not the case here.

They sent support ticket replies to the wrong people, accidentally giving out players' real names, addresses, and the last four digits of their credit cards. And the only reason they even got those support tickets was because of their false advertising with the canvas bag. If I had bought that game I would ask for them to delete my account and any of my personal information they have saved anywhere and a full refund for the game since I'm sure you can't play it without a Bethesda account of some sort and I don't think that's the slightest bit unreasonable.

Bethesda has screwed this up on every level and I don't fault anyone for wanting their money back to distance themselves from that garbage fire.

Does the video game work? Is it so broken that it completely hinders the average customers ability to play? If not you don't deserve to get a refund. You bought a bad game, that's on you in this day and age.

It's 2018, access to information and raw video of games has never been greater so I don't think there is much of a leg to stand on regarding a refund for buying a 'bad' game.

I don't know man thats a flimsy leg to stand on. You can watch all the trailers and gameplay in the world but if the game you buy consistently crashes and messes up on you in technical ways then those trailers were never going to show you that. Not saying this is happening here, in the case of FO76 it just seems to be poorly made and somewhat half finished, but I'm just saying that "raw gameplay" will only get you so far until you've laid your own hands on the product.

@humanity: Trailers are obviously designed to give the ideal look at a game but the real value for the customer comes from streams and YouTube videos. Of course some of these are paid for to show the game positively but it’s not hard to find genuine voices out there (this very website for example) that you trust to give a good look at the game within days of release.