Steam Introduced Official Support for Advanced Paid Access to Games
Steam received small updates, including support for advanced access to games for preorder purchases and a minor but useful improvement to Steam Family Sharing.
Valve keeps enhancing its digital distribution platform with more features. These encompass novelties related with the Steam store, including a function that enables advanced access to pre-ordered games before their official release.
This innovation is essentially the official support of a trend that has become popular recently. It's about the "new" early access, which is a bonus for pre-order customers allowing them to play the purchased game a little earlier (usually a few days before its official release).
However, the Steam update is significant because it involves a change in the refund policy. If you take advantage of Early Access, you can return the game at any time up to its official release and for the standard 14 days thereafter.
Keep in mind that regular refund policy will continue to apply, meaning you can only request a refund for the game if the total playtime doesn't exceed 2 hours.
Moreover, Valve has introduced a feature on Steam that notifies users if a particular title is in the user's "Steam family" game collection, as pointed out by Pavel Djundik, the dev of SteamDB, via X. This feature is called Steam Family Sharing and it enables you to share your games with a maximum of five friends on up to 10 devices.
These aren't major changes compared to what was introduced last month. Nonetheless, this is another package of improvements that will make using Steam easier for both players and developers.
