To me, the interesting bit here is less about Steam in particular, but about the industry overall.
Fourteenthousand games. That’s insane. Sure, the vast majority is going to be asset flips and shovelware crap, probably a lot of AI generated spam games in there, too. But the sheer amount is still staggering. That’s a fair few games compared to when I started gaming in 1987, playing Squirm on a C16 with a tape drive.
There are a few important things here.
1, most platforms don’t have refunds 2. Youtube clicks that immediately result in not watching the video negatively affect the algorithm. So, the comparison is even more valid.
But ultimately, the game doesn’t have to be good. It has to be good enough. And the actual point I’m making that I want you to understand is that games will need to be made for thr algorithm first, and for the player second. Refunds, which are not available on most platforms, are not solving anything there.
Let’s agree to disagree, I do not see that happening games, you think will happen let’s leave it at this.
Then regarding the refunds availability nowadays I would say that most platforms have it available, they are on epic, steam, gog, Microsoft, Google Play/App Store. Sony offers but it’s more for mistakes when buying or for games completely faulty/broken, cannot test games so not very useful.
The only big exception is Nintendo which you could get one contacting support on rare occasions but it’s not usually the case, and when it is usually is a faulty case similar to Sony. And of course third party sellers keys.