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

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.

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