Game demos are not a new thing – and they are not a new thing over on Steam either.
Over on the PC marketplace, people could dig around for games that perhaps offered a demo experience as a way to see if the game was to their liking, or would perform correctly on their machine. The only issue was that quite often it was difficult to identify what game even offered a demo, because they were nested in the store page for the full game.
But that has been overhauled with a change that Valve is calling “The Great Steam Demo Update, 2024“, to make things a bit simpler to navigate and understand within the platform.
GAME DEVS! 📢
— Indie Game Joe (@IndieGameJoe) July 25, 2024
Steam has made updates to how demos work!
- Demos can now have a separate store page
- User reviews for demos
- Demos now appear more in the Steam store
- Wishlisters notified when you launch your demo
I've left the full changelog below 👇 pic.twitter.com/luToD74G1k
Simply put, Demos have now been separated out from full games – appearing as their own entity in the game search on Steam. This means you can now easily dig around for demo experiences, and see them appear with clear labelling.
And, because a demo is now a unique entity, it also means that demos can actually receive their own review score – as a way to gather feedback on the demo itself. This can be useful for those who use a demo as an introductory experience prior to a full release, if only to silo the feedback that only applies to that experience.
Really the biggest win is simply that people browsing Steam are now equipped to stumble upon demos with relative ease – especially with big events like Steam Next Fest driving a ton of traffic for people to play demos of upcoming titles.
The Steam community blog post also has a fantastic little callback to the days of yore with their ‘Infrequently Asked Questions’ section:
Q. What is the deal with the Demo icon? Is that a plate? A vinyl record?
A. That classic icon, my friend, is from the days when demos were commonly distributed through the post office, contained in a bound package of game journalism printed on dead trees and imprinted on circular media known as Compact Discs.
Oh boy. Demo discs.
What a time that was.
Are you excited to find some more demo opportunities in your Steam deep dives? Tell us all about some neat finds in the comments or on social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
