A fresh Steam update has just been rolled out, and while you may not think it’s anything too mind-blowing, we welcome the changes. Valve has decided to overhaul how free demos work on their popular PC gaming platform, Steam. In a recent announcement post, you’ll find many changes to the demo system. And no, we’re not talking about your Counter-Strike replays.
Free demos have long been a way of giving developers the chance to ‘sell’ their games, before purchase. Back in the day, you could get a demo disc of an upcoming game sent to you through the post, but that’s long behind us now. You may have noticed free demos situated on the store pages of many games, but now Steam is giving devs the chance to separate and better advertise them, among other changes.
Demos are now easier to find on the Steam store
One of the biggest changes in our eyes is that demos can have a separate store page, rather than just sitting on the same page as the final product. Valve says that “developers have been asking for a way to enable a full store page to better describe the contents of the demo” – which is a great idea. By default, free demos still appear as a button on the full game’s store page, but developers now have the chance to split the two. Don’t worry though, they’ll still be linked together with a “widget linking back to the full game”.
Since demos can now be treated as a title on their own, they now behave similarly to free games, instead tagged as ‘Free Demo‘. This gives users casually browsing through new game lists on Steam the chance to stumble across a demo they may be interested in, rather than having to know about the game in advance or manually search through every page (since most games don’t even have a free demo). On top of that, any game you have on your Steam wishlist will give you a notification if a demo for the game becomes available.
One side effect of a separate store page is a home for demo-only reviews. This is only relevant if the devs opt into an individual demo store page. These reviews and scores appear on the demo’s store page, keeping the rating separate from the full game.
Demos “behave better” in your Steam library too
With demos now acting a little more like independent games, you can add them to your library without having to install them straight away. Plus, you can even install a demo if you already own the full game, which is useful if you just want something quick to download and test, particularly nice for the developers themselves. And to stop all these free demos clogging up your Steam library, you can also remove them from your account.
Overall, this is a great way for users to discover demos they wouldn’t previously know about. Furthermore, a good way to know which games you can run before you buy – important for those on low-end hardware or gaming handhelds such as the Steam Deck.
