Valve says the time it takes to download Microsoft Flight Simulator won't affect refund requests

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Spending hours just downloading the files counts as 'play time' on Steam, but it won't be counted in the refund process.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Downloading Microsoft Flight Simulator takes a while: It's a hefty game weighing in at around 127 GB. The Steam download is only a 532MB client, though. The bulk of the game is installed as an 'update' from within the game menu.

While the game client is open, the 'hours played' clock on Steam begins ticking. That means that even when all you're doing is downloading the games files, you're racking up minutes or hours of 'play time.'

Steam's policy lets you refund a game with fewer than two hours played, but for most people it takes more than two hours to download the game. So, some worried that if they wanted to request a refund of Microsoft Flight Simulator on Steam for whatever reason, their request would be automatically rejected simply because Steam thinks they've actually played it for more than two hours.

We asked Valve about the issue, and VP of Marketing Doug Lombardi replied. "The time it takes your machine to download the additional content will not be counted against the Steam Refund Policy," he wrote in an email.

"We are working with Microsoft to see if we can improve the download experience," Lombardi also told us, though he didn't elaborate further.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.