Unable to get to demos on steam deck

[AwkwaBear]

Is anyone else having trouble downloading demos on steam deck?

I am trying to download the demos for Card Shark and Spark the electric jester 3.

When searching the games there are listings for the full games AND separate ones for the demos but both just forward to the same full game listing.

The “download demo” button is missing from the steam deck version of the store page but on my laptop I am able to go to the pages and download the demos just fine.

Anyone else running into this issue or am I missing something obvious?

[Punkovich]

ive run into this as well and believe it a lazy dev/publisher issue. They atcually have to bother to go in and customize the settings for the steam deck store page.

you can switch to desktop mode and install them .then switch bak to game mode to run them

[NDragon1412]

I'm not certain if the following also works for this issue, but it solved a similar one for me on a regular Linux PC:

1. Go to your Settings (Steam Button > Settings)
2. Go down to the lowest tab, the Developer Settings
3. Under the Section "Steam Play", turn on both settings you have there (roughly translating to "Activate Steam Play for Supported titles" and "Activate Steam Play for other titles" (rough translations because mine is in german))
4. Just to be safe, restart your Steam Deck (not sure if necessary) and HOPEFULLY you can download your Demos now

[Chris ';--]

Reviving this old thread to add a detail I noticed.

If the game does not have a version available for purchase, but does have a demo version, the store page will correctly show the "download demo" button.

If the game does have a version available for purchase, then it is not possible to download the demo version from the version of the store page that the Steam Deck gets.

The workaround I've used is to add Demo versions to my library by downloading them first on another machine. Then, the Demo version of the game appears in my account, which I can navigate to in the Steam Deck UI. I can then download the game from my library.

TLDR: Download the demo on another machine first.

[SpicyMonkey]

Desktop mode is the easiest way to install a demo. It shows up fine for me in game mode after installation. If the game developer has a separate store page for the demo then it seems to work better. Downloading on another machine doesn't always work for me unless I play the game a bit on the other machine.

It's a good idea to boot up Desktop Mode every once in a while for updates anyway.

[HIAParker]

Originally posted by Chris '--:

Reviving this old thread to add a detail I noticed.

If the game does not have a version available for purchase, but does have a demo version, the store page will correctly show the "download demo" button.

If the game does have a version available for purchase, then it is not possible to download the demo version from the version of the store page that the Steam Deck gets.

The workaround I've used is to add Demo versions to my library by downloading them first on another machine. Then, the Demo version of the game appears in my account, which I can navigate to in the Steam Deck UI. I can then download the game from my library.

TLDR: Download the demo on another machine first.

Take my award because this helped me with the Faith demo, bless up.