Facepalm: One has to think that this was a mere oversight on the part of Valve and / or Microsoft. With any luck, a fix will be coming down the pipeline soon in the form of a corrected or extended refund period.

The latest release in the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator series is finally available but Steam gamers are already experiencing some turbulence.

Several early reviewers are blasting Microsoft and Valve for an issue related to Steam's refund policy. Per the policy, Valve will refund a game purchase for any reason so long as the title has been played for less than two hours.

As early adopters are finding out, the initial download for the game from Steam is around 500MB. After that, you are tossed into an installer to download the remaining 90GB or so of game data. The problem is that Steam's two-hour timer starts ticking once the launcher opens, meaning you're on the clock from the moment you start downloading content directly from Microsoft.

Depending on your connection speed, it could easily take more than two hours to download 90GB+ of game data and install it. In some cases, users are reporting that by the time they're actually able to play, they've already logged well beyond the two hours of trial time, putting them squarely outside the window of eligibility for a refund.