Steam = no refunds unless it's a pre-ordered title that hasn't been activated yet.
This isn't anything new, its been going on since video games first came out. Any unopened game could only be exchanged for the same title, and back in the Atari and NES days that was good enough because if a game didn't work, a replacement usually did. But when it came to pc games, unless the disc was scratched it usually was just a buggy game. I remember some game in the 90's that was buggy, and Best buy said I had to get the same thing which I did, and then that copy was buggy so I went back and told them and they were going to make me get the same thing again but that's when I just went all agro and they caved and gave me a refund. But I really had to go all out to get them to do that. These days with Steam, they're all locked in an office somewhere and they don't have to deal with irate customers over the phone or in person,.
Its one of the reasons why I very rarely do online shopping, I prefer to deal with real people if there's an issue because they'll usually cave.