Colin McRae Rally Steam release might not be what you were expecting; Codies offering refunds

When something called Colin McRae Rally popped up on Steam last week, it was natural to assume that it might be an HD remaster or remake of the PC version of Colin McRae Rally 1 or 2. It's not. It's an updated port of a Colin McRae mobile game, lacking car customisation, a lot of stages and cars, and sporting an interface that hasn't been adjusted for PC. Before yesterday, the game's Steam page contained a misleading description that didn't mention the word 'mobile' once, but that's now been updated, at least a little bit. It still has a few misleading sentences like "The classic rally experience races onto PC and Mac". More generously, Codcemasters are offering refunds to anyone who feels like they were duped into buying something they didn't want.

Here's Codemasters' statement, which was posted to the Steam forums yesterday :

"We understand that some people who bought Colin McRae Rally on Steam are upset and feel that it isn't the game they thought it would be. We have now updated the product description for clarification.

"Furthermore, as an act of good faith, we have worked with Valve to enable anyone that bought the game to claim a refund. The ability to refund will be available until the 19th August.

"To process a refund, please go to your account transactions page and you will see a “Refund” button for Colin McRae Rally. We hope this goes some way to restoring any lost faith and thank you as always, for your continued support."

The game's Steam page now features the following, more accurate description: "Colin McRae Rally features the car and track list from last year's top selling mobile title and features thirty amazing rally stages in three environments taken from the PlayStation classic Colin McRae 2.0 for this PC and Mac edition".

Colin McRae Rally—this new one—looks like this, by the way:

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.