A Twitch streamer is embroiling in a hot coffee pot of controversy after streaming the PC version of Sonic Forces in its entirety, and asking Steam for a full refund in front of his viewing audience–five days after the game’s launch.
Cade McKown, known as WeeGeetheGod on Twitch, encountered a series of glitches previously reported by other Steam users, such as frequent crashes, stuttering, and poor optimization, creating a recipe for a disastrous playthrough. In one clip, during a stage where Sonic and his avatar go up against Infinite, McKown screamed into the microphone for 30 seconds after experiencing a sudden crash. In another clip, he disses the producers for poor scriptwriting in a cutscene where Infinite terrorizes the avatar, whom McKown dressed in AiAi’s ears and NiGHTS’ boots, after destroying the city.
The biggest elephant in the room, however, is the following clip where, after beating the game in about two hours and 40 minutes, McKown writes to Steam asking for a refund of Forces, not because of the glitches and other issues he endured, but because he “bought the wrong game.”
WeeGeetheGod falsely requests Steam refund for Sonic Forces
Steam’s refund policy explicitly states that it will refund users the cost of games bought within a two-week period and played for less than two hours. McKown beat Forces in under three hours, therefore he didn’t qualify for a refund. Yet he cheated the system by sweeping the bugs under the rug by lying about purchasing the wrong Sonic game.
McKown defended his erroneous abuse of the refund policy by telling Polygon, “If my actions truly did violate/abuse Steam’s refund policy, my request would’ve been denied.”
I purchased Sonic Forces, beat Sonic Forces, and refunded Sonic Forces all in one stream. We call that V A L U E pic.twitter.com/Ya9MQecFrf
— WEEGEE THE GOD (@WEEGEETHEGOD) November 13, 2017
He even had the audacity to reply to his own tweet with a damning meme in which he strikes a dirty business deal with Valve and makes fun of autistic Sonic fans at their expense.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m autistic–an Aspie, actually, but autistic nonetheless–and I’m highly offended by the joke below.
— WEEGEE THE GOD (@WEEGEETHEGOD) November 13, 2017
It’s one thing to request a refund for a game for legitimate reasons, such as the game being defective, but it’s another thing to lie about buying the wrong game in order to take back the money SEGA rightfully earned for putting in the time and effort to make Sonic Forces the best Sonic game possible–and live on a video game streaming site, no less!–after playing the entire game. This is akin to a high schooler buying a Kendrick Lamar CD and a Nicki Minaj CD from Best Buy, listening to both albums on repeat, and then having his mom punish him by returning them a couple days past the 15-day return window simply because she doesn’t like the idea of her child listening to rap music despite the fact that every teenager is listening to the same genre. In both cases, that’s blatant abuse of the system.
It’s bad enough that Sonic Forces has taken a beating by critics from major video game news outlets. Don’t make things worse by buying the game, streaming it for profit, and then returning it afterward simply because you detest the current state of the Sonic franchise. SEGA and Sonic Team deserve better than that bullshit.
Link: https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/15/16657156/sonic-forces-refund-steam-twitch
Sonic Forces is now available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
