Google has agreed to refund Google Stadia players who purchased Farming Simulator and/or Tomb Raider Definitive Edition ahead of news both games would be available for “free” to Pro subscribers as part of a promotion in December.
As reported by Kotaku, though the refunds won’t be processed automatically, players can manually apply for their money back.
“We know that some users have recently purchased these two games for their collection,” wrote a Stadia community manager on Stadia’s community forum, responding to complaints from Pro subscribers.
“Because of the proximity between the launch of the platform, and the announcement of these titles in Stadia Pro, we’re happy to assist you if you’d like to request a refund if you have purchased either or both of these titles, even if it’s outside of our normal policy.”
It’s not been a flawless rollout for Google’s new service. Google acknowledged “an issue” delayed the dissemination of invitation codes to early adopters of its streaming service, Stadia, which officially launched last week. In some cases, players have already received their packs but were unable to use it without the invitation code.
Though the issue has purportedly only affected “a small fraction” of preorders, a number of customers reported that despite ordering the Founders’ Edition when preorders went live, orders were not shipped in order and they had yet to receive correspondence from Google inviting them to register their gamertag/nickname several days after launch – even though this was widely advertised as a perk of the Founder’s Edition.
Just days before its launch, Google confirmed a number of key features originally detailed to early adopters of Google’s streaming subscription service will now be delayed. Further to a Reddit AMA with Google’s Andrey Doronichev and Beri Lee, it appears Stadia’s Founder’s Edition will now launch without achievement notifications, family share, or 4K streaming for PC. It’s also been confirmed that the much-publicised Buddy Pass – which enables players to gift access to a friend – will be delayed for approximately three months.
Google recently responded to criticism that its Stadia streaming service is failing to meet consumer expectations after it was advertised that all Stadia games at launch would support 4K and said the onus was on developers to “continue to improve their games on Stadia”.
