Update: apparently, they do! Read here for an update to this story.

I finally purchased Puzzle Quest a little while back on the recommendation of pretty much everyone on the internet, including a couple of friends and at least one co-worker. I figured rather than pick it up on the Wii, I would instead get it on Steam so I could download it onto my laptop and play it over my lunch breaks at work.

Man, was that a mistake.

Now I’ve got a pretty good IBM Thinkpad laptop. I checked the system requirements for the game and I more than met and/or exceeded every aspect of the recommended specs. I thought I was good to go. I downloaded and installed the game and ran into issues immediately.

Evidently, there’s a known issue with some laptops where the mouse will do this strange “rubber banding” thing. When you attempt to move the mouse in a certain direction, it will bounce rapidly back and forth in the general direction you’re moving the cursor, but when you stop, it stays rooted exactly on the spot where you left it. It’s an issue that’s been out there for a few months now, and there’s several threads on the topic on Infinite Interactive’s tech support forums, with absolutely no response from the company at all on the problem.

One workaround for the problem was to hold down on the right mouse button while you moved the mouse around, and that certainly did work, sort of. My hand cramped up after doing it for just a few minutes. It was tiresome and sucked a great deal of the enjoyment out of playing the game. I tried changing my mouse settings. I downloaded new drivers. I changed out the mouse several time. I even re-formatted my laptop. Nothing worked.

Finally, I got sick of holding the right mouse button and sick of no one at Infinite Interactive even bothering to care about the issue. I no longer wanted it to work properly, I just wanted my money back that I wasted on something that I can’t play. I sent a support ticket to Steam to request a refund. This was the response I received.

Hello Nathaniel,
Thank you for contacting Steam Support. Unfortunately as with most software products, we will not offer refunds for purchases made online as outlined in the software license – please review Section 4 of the Steam Subscriber Agreement for more information.

Steam Subscriber Agreement
http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=subscriber_agreement

And it’s in there. No refunds. That’s it. No recourse. My game doesn’t work properly, but neither Infinite Interactive nor Steam care one bit. They got their money, I’m just some poor loser who probably should have learned a lesson from this. I’m not sure what the lesson is, exactly. Don’t buy Infinite Interactive products? Don’t buy anything off Steam?

I think I might just go ahead and follow both of those lessons in the future. But the massive FAIL here is all on me, unfortunately.