Great change imo. The new & trending tab feels a lot more useful now that it isn't 50% demos.
To imagine there was a long time games didn't offer enough demos anymore, and now we get so much that they need to be filtered 😂
Shovelware demos are useless.
I remember the time I played the demo for farming sim and DOA:Dimensions to death on my 3DS. Those were actually good demos.
Yeah it doesn't compare to old-school demos like stuff that came on discs with magazines, but at least it's a lot better getting the option to try something instead of buying and refunding everything. And at least some bigger studios and indi games are picking up on this as well.
For sure. But I hope they use the Steam Demo feature (same game page with a demo install button) instead of doing a free and premium type of publishing like they do with phone apps
instead of doing a free and premium type of publishing like they do with phone apps
It's not just phone apps, look at this shit on a big-name Steam game:
Calling your free trial "definitive edition" and having the "base game" as a paid DLC is purposely misleading
I mean... Aoe3 always had some sort of a demo version. Even the original base game had it. In fact, this is actually better, as now you are able to use 3 rotating civs, not just the English and the French, which you were forced to use before.
It's more than fine to have a demo, just call it a demo rather than tricking people into thinking it's the full version for free!
:(
Why tho
Presumably for the free marketing of appearing in the free-to-play list
This was more meant as a rhetoric question but it's most likely as you said. A bit annoying indeed.
I am not sure what demos you mention in particular but the one I recently played is news tower and I am hooked. Just waiting for a good sale to snag the game and even stopped posting the demo mid way. I for one appreciate all the demos being put out even if it is short. Their only purpose is to showcase the full game and they do a decent job of that.
I never said demos for actual decent games are bad. Just that trash games and asset swap games are and polluting the search results and library.
It's the current Steam publishing meta. A free demo will create traffic for the newly created Steam page of your game, resulting in more Wishlistings, which is usually the only way to be featured and seen anywhere before release for indie developers. And that's how your Wishlistings really explode and you make a lot of sales. Getting a demo out is by far highest priority for game publishing in 2024.
Hell yeah. Valve is making consumer friendly practices the industry meta!
The thing is, we don't need a demo trending page all that much. Since you says will find the demos only game store page, they ain't looking at the trending list to find them
this is the best timeline
I have a feeling a lot of these demos were just trying to game that very "new and trending" page, and this change will produce fewer demos.
This is why console demos are so rare anymore.
Try before you buy means fewer sales on launch day.
Informed consumers are careful with their money. And that's bad. Apparently.
When your core gameplay loop is all of 15 minutes long that feeds into a 40-60 hour repetitive grind to unlock a slightly better item, new title or recolored cosmetic, combined with a complete absence of quality or competent writing, innovative mechanics while it's apparent most of the budget went into marketing and pre-rendered cutscenes that can be just watched on youtube, yeah it's bad to give potential customers a 30 minute demo that displays everything your game is without hinting any additional benefit for purchasing the full game.
Oh my God this is so much nicer. I was getting so sick of trying to navigate the category and having the same live action free to play games appear every time. I have some games that I can remove from my ignore list now
This is just great!
Yeah I can't wait to try some new games today! Usually it's impossible to find a good F2P game unless it's really popular. Like Once Human, for example. I see why it's popular but the gameplay loop isn't for me. Too much gathering/crafting, and dungeons aren't fun as a solo player. I was bored after 2 days.
Thanks to this new category, now I can just go down the list until I find something I can enjoy.
This is a shameless self-plug but I post a lot of free games in !freegames@feddit.uk. They're primarily limited-time giveaways, but I also tag some with [Forever-Free Friday] which might be more what you're looking for.
I like free games, eg Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Minetest, Unciv, etc. Why would people be against free games, especially here where people are generally FLOSS advocates?
I'm not against free games, and if I was interested in a free game I would actively search for one. But usually if you're searching for trending games it's because there's a sale going and you don't give a shit about the free to play games at that time. Especially considering that the big free games that are "trending" are the same games every single sale.
I like the better separation between the two for sure
It's less that I hate free games, it's more that a lot of games on Steam that are free are either the freemium model, where they are basically mobile games with inapp purchases you're expected to buy to make progress, or some some shovelware trash that's a one trick pony and generally just a knock off of something more popular and better executed.
Yes there are examples of great free to play games, but overall so many of them on steam are not worth downloading and clog up the trending list since if someone really wanted their game full of microtransactions to get noticed, they can just work a bot net to register new accounts and download the game to cause the steam algorithm to pick it up and put it on the trending page despite it having a poor user count.
Who is against free games?
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