no way to play the demo now ?

[Archie]

I downloaded the demo the other day but now i cant access it

[Grey-fox-13]

It's unfortunately how it works these days, demos stopped being a thing long ago and while the steam next fest gets people to put out demos they are then most of the time taken down as soon as the next fest is done. For what it's worth I have seen some games just rebrand the demo as early access and start selling it unchanged.

But long story short: Next Fest over = No more demo

[E.V.Tamens]

Very strange for demo...
I was downloaded it but can to play only today and later. But it is unplayable now. I delete it. Best demo expirience... :/

[giraffeandy]

Same, I was looking forward to play it and didn't know it has limited access...

[Duros001]

Yeah, I went onto my steam library and saw the "Purchase" Option, my heart skipped a beat and I was so stoked...then read this :( lol

[Not Anonymous]

I cant believe i missed it. Played 20 minutes and had to go.... hopefuly they let us try the demo again

[KILLINGJOKE]

Hopefully another demo will be released. I was looking forward to a full play-through.

[Bro-ski]

im in the same boat. why release a demo just to take it away? i was interested in playing and buying this game, now I dont care as much.

[Chelds]

The demo was only available during the steam fest as often during festivals

[Riut]

I imagine the reason next fest demos get taken down is because demos traditionally are meant to show you what the final product is like to entice you to buy it, meanwhile the nextfest demo is about showing people what your game is about, but where it's currently at in the development. If they kept the nextfest demo up indefinitely it could give people the wrong impression about the final polish of the game given that the nextfest demo is likely much more rough than the final product.

That being said I was without a computer for most of february and missed the entire nextfest so I would greatly appreciate a chance to play the demo.

[Bl00dM00n]

After playing the demo over and over for 18hours, I can't play it any more now. I must admit i have now addiction withdrawal symptoms. H-helpa

[=SWF=pershainovitsh (AL)]

Would have been nice to play the demo, but I was too busy to play it in the restricted time. What happened to old school demos that you could download whenever you wanted, test it and buy the full game if you liked it? I was very interested in this game and was waiting for the moment to try the demo.

[Grug]

Originally posted by =SWF=pershainovitsh (AL):

Would have been nice to play the demo, but I was too busy to play it in the restricted time. What happened to old school demos that you could download whenever you wanted, test it and buy the full game if you liked it? I was very interested in this game and was waiting for the moment to try the demo.

Old school demos were branched off the final version of the game that already on disks and in stores. Steam Next Fest demos are more like the demos at conventions, highly polished slices of an in-development game. They aren't meant to be available forever, as the game will change significantly over time and may no longer match the demo.

[Bro-ski]

Originally posted by Grug:

Originally posted by =SWF=pershainovitsh (AL):

Would have been nice to play the demo, but I was too busy to play it in the restricted time. What happened to old school demos that you could download whenever you wanted, test it and buy the full game if you liked it? I was very interested in this game and was waiting for the moment to try the demo.

Old school demos were branched off the final version of the game that already on disks and in stores. Steam Next Fest demos are more like the demos at conventions, highly polished slices of an in-development game. They aren't meant to be available forever, as the game will change significantly over time and may no longer match the demo.

if you put it that way i guess it makes sense. it didnt really promote the game to increase sales though.

[Techbane #FreeHK]

Originally posted by Grug:

Old school demos were branched off the final version of the game that already on disks and in stores. Steam Next Fest demos are more like the demos at conventions, highly polished slices of an in-development game. They aren't meant to be available forever, as the game will change significantly over time and may no longer match the demo.

This is only quasi-true. There's never really been a "standard procedure" for demos and some worked like that, some didn't. Demos would most often release just before or on launch, but some would launch weeks or even months ahead of time, and often featured a little disclaimer that they weren't necessarily representative of the final product... even if they were put out two days ahead of launch.

Back then there wasn't really a way to rescind the distribution of a demo either, but what did happen sometimes was you'd end up with not just session-based time limits, but permanent ones. A value denoting how much time you'd spent playing the demo would be recorded and hidden somewhere in the Windows registry, and once you'd spent an hour or two with the demo that was it, it effectively became dead weight. Although this was more common in trial versions of expensive production software (which would usually track how many days since they had been installed instead).

So, in the sense that there's not really any particular "standard" for demos to operate on, that hasn't changed. Some Steam demos, whether made for Next Fest or not, are only available to download within a certain window. Sometimes they remain available after that window, sometimes not, sometimes they're set to expire even if you already downloaded them, and sometimes you can continue to use them as long as you had them downloaded. Unfortunately this is almost never actually clarified up front and you have to find out the hard way.

But if we're going on majority use cases, the trend has definitely shifted from unlimited access demos just before launch, to demos months or even years before launch that you're only allowed to launch within a period of a week or two, regardless of whether they remain an accurate vertical slice of the end product. And it's beyond frustrating, especially when HUNDREDS of demos become available within the span of a couple weeks, all competing for not just attention, but availability. I explored some really good stuff this last Next Fest, but inevitably I'll continue to stumble upon stuff like this after the fact.

[Greed Is Addiction]

No rhyme or reason to removing demos.

edit - store page says the demo is coming back from March 10-17. Not sure how accurate it is.