Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials, Starting With Dead Space (gamespot.com) 22
Valve now offers Steam game trials, starting with 2023's Dead Space remake. GameSpot reports: Previously, players could buy a game on the platform and then return it within a two-hour window, but this new trial feature makes things a bit easier for consumers. It seems only Dead Space has a trial available on Steam right now, but the feature may come to other games later on. With Dead Space, you don't need to purchase the game to play during the 90-minute trial period. The Dead Space trial isn't restricted to a certain point in the game, allowing players to explore as much as they want within the 90-minute period. Valve and other publishers are likely watching this new feature closely to see if it's worth implementing across other games.
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Good friggin' lord is it that time of the season already again? Another year where you can't read any online board without first wading through hundreds of "vote for me, I'm awesome" spam without content?
I wouldn't even mind the political spam that much if it at least gave me a good reason to vote for someone. But either it's nothing (like this one) or baseless fearmongering along the lines of "Vote for X, because the world ends if Y becomes $office_holder".
I know that appealing to our reptilian part of the
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Good friggin' lord is it that time of the season already again?
That "season" is now a recurring meme, like summer in Australia, winter in Antarctica, or the rainy season in Scottland.
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Can we just say that $your_candidate is great, $other_candidate is the scum of the earth and be done with it?
Dead Space Mobile (Score:2)
That and the one on the Nintendo Wii are the only ones I've ever played. (I'm not a big game player, my wife is usually the one who brings those things home.) I think I still have the mobile one on my BlackBerry Playbook, the one on the Wii is crashes frequently so we rarely play it.
I wouldn't mind playing an updated version of either one. Even if all that changed was the ability to play on something modern. I never understand why they don't keep those sorts of things available. The Doom RPG games seem
Killer feature (Score:3)
Do any other platforms do this kind of thing? There are tons of games I'd love to demo - but that's a burden on the developer. If Steam can make that trivial (and it seems like they should be able to) then that seems like a huge win for everyone.
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Except of course games that you can play through in less than 90 minutes. But then again, this is Steam, not the EA store...
Re: Killer feature (Score:2)
But don't be silly, EA games can't be completed in 90 minutes. The single player campaign, maybe. But when it takes 200 hours of playtime just for a random chance to unlock the character you want, being too short is hardly the number 1 complaint for EA games.
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200 hours? Why don't you just buy loot boxes like a normal "gamer". Why punish yourselves playing our game?
- EA PR department.
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I can think of several games (obtained through Steam or elsewhere), where I certainly knew within 90 minutes of gameplay that this was not going to be my cup of tea.
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They're also banned on Google Play and in Apple's App Store, though I don't know the reason for that.
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Likely because demos would just clog the App Stores with more useless apps. If you want to offer a demo, just offer it in the main app and have an in-app payment to unlock the full thing
Bring back the demo (Score:2)
I'm sick and tired of having to wait for EMPRESS, CPY, to deliver functional demo copies. No not joking, plenty of people ask me why I have games in my steam library with 0 hours played, and the answer is simple I tired it and bought it when I liked what I saw, but then had difficulties / couldn't be bothered transferring the save I was playing.
This goes especially for games that have such long intro sequences that you can barely get out of the tutorial and experience actual gameplay within the automaticall
90min only? (Score:2)
Not sure if game publishers will really profit from a 90min trial ... I know that it took me several days' playtime (6+h) for some games to actually get a hang of them ... if I have to decide after 90min if a game is worth it, it might not even cover getting the game mechanics or how to play ... add to that downloads of 20-40Gigs+ ... Also, if they already implement a feature to limit the usage to a certain time, would it really hurt Valve or the publishers if they provided a decent trial time? (of course i
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I reckon the trial time needs to be adjusted to the level of complexity of the game
Got a point, but 90 minutes would be plenty for this game.
But what if this gets popular and becomes a standard of sort? Then you have to worry about the devs putting in all the best stuff in the first hour and making the rest a dearly mess. Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a great example when the late part of the game devolves into a gods damn mess.
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> But what if this gets popular and becomes a standard of sort? Then you have to worry about the devs putting in all the best stuff in the first hour and making the rest a dearly mess. Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a great example when the late part of the game devolves into a gods damn mess.
Got a point.
OTOH, considering the mess many recent releases have had with compatibility and stability issues, it will incentivize (or force) developers to release better quality code, otherwise customers won't even
Who cares (Score:2)
It already has a permanent free trail since if I ever want to play from Sweden.
90-Minute Trials Changes Game Design (Score:2)
Right now, if you sink $50-60 on a new game, you do so assuming that eventually the game will sink its claws in and hook you. For open-world games, that's not always immediate. The first 90 minutes can be story teases, tutorial quests, etc.
If gamers have a 90-minute risk-free opportunity to play a game, it kinda changes how games need to be developed. The first 90 minutes of a game have to be slick, seamless, and engaging. No slow-roll ramp-up style games. Character development and later features will likel