The window for return should start when the game can be launched not when you launch a downloader. That said I have heard pretty good things about the game.

Here, here!
 
Steam says that I have played the game "19 hours", but on this hotel WiFi connection, all I have seen is the patch update screen.  37% done.  Might be at "57 hours" 'played' before I see any part of the game.  Crazy.

I didn't actually read it but I did see an article headline in my Google feed today that Valve is not counting the time played until after you first fire it up.  So I don't know all the details, but it was apparently their official response to the long downloads vs refunds issue.

I successfully got a refund from Steam.
Steam said that I had 38 hours played, but I explained that it was after 4 unsuccessful install attempts on 2 different computers and none of those 38 hours was actual play time.
I will buy the game when I hear that it actually works. Maybe it will be cheaper by that point.

ty_ger07
I will buy the game when I hear that it actually works. Maybe it will be cheaper by that point.

Or when the DX12 update comes out, that will help considerably with the CPU overhead/lack of multithreading problem. I still can't believe MS launched it as a DX11 only title at the same time they're trying to push DX12.2

Naw, no way will they do that. But I'm sure they WILL find new things to add as DLC by then and make it a big promotional update out of it. The impression people are giving is it will be a fair ways off yet. 

Brad_Hawthorne
The real story is that people just want to buy it to fly over their house, then get a refund.

No, I just wanted it to work.  You can read many negative reviews with the same basic sentiment.
 
I paid for the game because I wanted it to work.  It's pretty simple.
 
If you could get the game to download, install, and work, good for you.  Don't poo poo the thousands of negative reviews which state otherwise.
 
On my gaming laptop in a hotel, my install attempt:
Game downloaded and installed via Steam fine.  I then launched the game, the game showed the intro videos, and then got stuck on a screen with a plane with a blue loading bar which made zero progress after a long time.  I closed the game via task manager because there was no way that I could get the game to close by any other method.  I googled.  Turns out it is a common problem.  The only reliable solution is to uninstall and reinstall the game.  Ok, I did that.  Second Steam install, no problem.  I then reach the patch update process within the game.  It takes 27 hours over a period of 3 days on hotel wifi to reach about 66% complete.  Not the game's fault that the hotel wifi is slow.  Whatever.  Every time I had to go somewhere, I would pause the update process, close the game, and then resume the next time that I could.  Problem!  The final time that I tried to do this, it didn't find any new content, and proceeded to the flying experience.  But, I couldn't because the game would crash and I knew that it was a problem that 33% of the game was missing, because the last progress I had seen was 66% the day before; and I could find no way to manually force the game to discover that it had only downloaded 66% of the the game.  The verify game content function in Steam only validated the initial 1 GB install and found no problem.  It was the missing 33 GB from the Microsoft patch which was borked and I could find no way to fix it other than uninstalling the game for a 3rd time, deleting the Microsoft patch in the users/appdata/roaming/microsoft flight .... folder, and then starting all over again.  Since I was heading home soon, I decided to put this on the backburner and try installing it on my PC at home.
 
On my PC at home, my install attempt:
Game downloaded and installed via Steam fine.  I then launched the game, the game showed the intro videos, and then got stuck on a screen with a plane with a blue loading bar which made zero progress after a long time.  I know this problem already from my experience with my laptop.  I uninstall the game and reinstall the game.  Second Steam install, no problem.  I then reached the patch update process within the game.  The patch download way faster on home internet, but then all of the sudden the game closes after at least an hour of time downloading the patch.  No error message.  It just closed.  Crashed, without an error message, probably.  When I reopen the game to continue the patch download process, it doesn't seem to work.  It just says "Please wait...".  I know that I probably have to delete the patch data from the users/appdata/roaming/microsoft fligh... folder and start all over again.  Ugghh!
 
Ok... that's enough.  I then throw in the towel and request a refund.
 
The install process is frustrating and I am just going to wait until it is ironed out.  I am not going to accept paying full retail price at launch for a buggy game.

flyinion
Maybe try pointing the install to a custom folder?  I’ve installed it twice now in a week. Once via xbox with the end of my free gamepass period and once through steam for the premium deluxe version after uninstalling the Xbox version and wiping leftover files in the install location.  Both went well although took about 3 hours to install. I wonder if using the default install location is buggy. Only thing I can think of. Definitely makes me sad that so many people are having install issues. Yeah there’s some in game issues as well but nothing truly gamebreaking once you’re installed. 

Two people I know had Ty_ger07's problems, it's definitely common enough with the Steam version because MS uses their own downloader to bypass steam. One guy tried to install it to a different drive and had to give up, only got it installed on the third attempt to the default directory... and that was after some absurd number of hours to download it, when if it had been via Steam he would've finished it in under an hour. Microsoft always insists on reinventing the wheel, and always making a worse copy when they do... they should've just used Steam's backend.

I understand 2 hours for some games, but with a launcher like that it doesn't make sense to me. It's not the only game like that.

gterry180
I understand 2 hours for some games, but with a launcher like that it doesn't make sense to me. It's not the only game like that.

Yeah, Steam should be flexible here.  You aren't "playing" when it's patching for so long.

I feel this very much, my current internet is really slow and when i was downloading swtor it was counting the download hours as my playtime so i paused it and will download it when i have fast internet again