How to get a refund for a played game from GOG

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.

GOG today revealed a new refund policy in which it would accept returns on games for up to 30 days after the purchase, even if they’ve already been played. This would make it one of the few gaming platforms that I know of that accepts refunds for games that have been played to excess  — even Steam will only accept returns if you’ve played for less than roughly two hours.

GOG is sort of working on the honor system in this case, and also says these refunds are intended to be for games that “don’t work as expected.” It also stipulated that it reserves the right to refuse a refund:

This is why there are no limits but instead, we reserve the right to refuse refunds in individual cases. Please respect all the time and hard work put into making the games you play and remember that refunds are not reviews. If you finished the game and didn’t like it, please consider sharing your opinion instead. Also, please don’t take advantage of our trust by asking for an unreasonable amount of games to be refunded. Don’t be that person. No one likes that person.

So though I’m showing you how to do this, I do urge everyone to not abuse this. GOG’s pretty cool — let’s not take advantage of this goodwill.

[Read: How to play games on Nvidia GeForce Now]

In order to request a refund, you’ll have to contact GOG’s customer support. The page for requests is the same page for all technical issues. You’ll have to enter your email address and the Order ID, which you can find in your receipts.

Under “Problem type,” you’ll likely want the option “Other Order-related Issues,” as none of the others fit the description of a refund. Then you’ll need to outline exactly what your issue with the game is in the subject line and description. It’s definitely not as easy to use as Steam’s refund mechanism, but this is likely to try and discourage abuse of the system.

Good luck, and hopefully your GOG games all work as intended.