Looks Like Steam Now Has Timed Demos, Dead Space Up First - Kotaku

[Heroine of the Dragon]

Have you ever wanted to demo a game?

I've been known (back in the day) to hire a game and try it for a weekend before buying it, or not.

The ability to try before you buy has been a thorn in gaming retail’s side for generations. From the demo discs of old to the subscription models of today, publishers and shopfronts have had to wrestle with the idea that a lot of people only want to spend money on games they’ll enjoy.

Whether that’s right or not, I don’t have the bandwidth for today — the idea that you could get a refund for a bad movie is laughable, but then, movies don’t cost $US70 ($97), and what even is a “bad” game anyway? — but regardless, I’ve always been fascinated by the systems and processes companies have tried over the years to help sell their games.

Like this! Steam has long been a battleground for this kind of stuff. You’ve long been able to download demos on Steam if the studio/publisher wanted it, and free weekends have also been here for ages, but for a while now the accepted practice on the platform has been buy a game, play it for a bit and if you don’t like it within the first two hours, you can just refund it and get your money back.

That’s not an ideal scenario for anyone. Games are big downloads these days, and companies are actually losing money on processing fees every time you have to refund a transaction. So Valve looks to have thought of something new: a demo, only you get to play the full game, only you get a very limited amount of time to actually play it.

Dead Space is the first to offer the “Timed Trial” feature — which is baked into Steam itself, so surely it’s more than a one-off — and you can see how it works below:

-https://www.kotaku.com.au/2023/05/looks ... -up-first/

[Booyakasha]

Timed demos seem like a dumb thing. The whole point of a demo is that it lacks most of the game--------what does it hurt to let people play the first level of a game until they go insane if they want?

[Shane]

Timed demos seem like a dumb thing. The whole point of a demo is that it lacks most of the game--------what does it hurt to let people play the first level of a game until they go insane if they want?

That requires effort, whereas this makes it sound like the developer just says okay Steam, let people download our whole game and play for free for a while. I don't exactly want to download a 30GB "demo", but I'm sure there are those who won't mind.

[Booyakasha]

...yeah, I guess. It's a cutthroat industry, less effort is competitive, etc. Anything that might make developers work their people a little more gently and less like stolen mules is definitely a good thing.