Yes. Digital purchases aren't always readily refunded and some meet resistance trying to get a refund. The most recent example I can recall is people experiencing difficulty getting refunds from Sony for No Man's Sky.

As far as I know, this was not Microsoft's doing. The wording seems to imply this was Activision's. Whatever the case, a digital game purchase leaves the buyer at the mercy of the digital store's refund policy. Microsoft (and possibly Activision, I don't know how the two are handling this matter) could have just walked away with the purchases but they refunded players with, according to the article, no difficulty. This is praiseworthy and I am a firm believer in positive reinforcement. Good deeds are worthy of praise just like bad deeds are worthy of criticism.

On a related note, how does one foresee this issue of low player count BEFORE a game is made available for sale?

Horrible... In 2013, it would have been horrible. The year is 2016 with 2017 not far off. This Microsoft is a different one, a Microsoft that allows backwards compatibility on their console, that allows mods on their Bethesda games, that is slashing prices to the benefit of the consumer. A Microsoft striving to be competitive and when firms are competitive in an industry, the consumer wins.

Servers gotta be hosted somewhere.

Uniformity is why Steam, PSN, and XBL are successful.

The odd thing is MS should've seen this coming. MS Store is currently an offshot of XBL. Either you put them together with XBL players (and tell them to keep their keyboards to themselves) or allow them to play with other PC players. 

Thats the thing, the game has a PC release. "PC". There are already established outlets for PC game sales. I'm not saying MS can't have their own store and sell games as they see fit, but how can you sit there with a straight face and say it's in anyway ok for MS to release a PC game on the PC that can only be played with other people that bought the game from the same store you did. That inherently means that MS took the time and effort to have the game be specifically coded for them in a way that it shuts out other PC gamers all in an attempt to make the windows store the "best place to buy your ganes".

And about 2016? Well, just read my above paragraph. You still honestly think this is a different MS? Any good you see from MS today is because they are in a losing position. A losing MS is a good MS. But even then, you can still see traces or their true character every now and again. They aren't refunding people outta the goodness of their hearts. They just suddenly realized how bad the PR of this thing is for their windows store plans and how this little issue may have set their windows store plans back a couple of years. So no, I don't think MS should be oat on the back for stuff like this. 

You're still trying to go from not as much to complete ghost town for 2.

Still not happening. We're still going in complete circles. We'll be like this for weeks because you want to carry this on.

So their windows store is kinda dead? Lol. Given how popular steam is it was way too easy to predict.

You said earlier ITT that BF BC2 was still active on consoles and yet it has less players than this TF PC link you're providing, which you describe as a ghost town. You should probably pick one stance and stop shifting the goal posts so that you guys quit arguing in circles. You're backpedaling mightily from your initial stance, saying Steam users will quickly be asking for refunds from this game for the same reason W10 users are.

If BC2's 400 or so users is what you consider to be active, then well, even old CoD games like MW2, MW3, Blops, Blops II, Ghosts, etc, would still qualify as active on Steam by your own definition. Eliminating the need for any Steam user to ask for a refund "rapidly" because the game is a "ghost town". Of course, it bears mentioning that BC2 has almost 600 players according to Steam charts. And that's not even mentioning the fact that TF1 isn't on Steam and its playerbase suffers for it, making it an irrelevant comparison for a game like Call of Duty.

We all know PC users do not flock to the big mega online shooters and stay as long as console gamers. They have different tastes, there are far too many options for gaming on PC. But that does not make the experience "lesser" on PC. Certainly not to the degree you're still trying to paint it as, even after some hefty backpedaling.

I buy only Xbox exclusives. This is only the reason to rely on Windows store, the other baffles me.