Try Before Buy

[iShi]

Give Developers/Publishers on steam the option to enable "Try Before Buy". Let them set the amount of time everyone can play the game before steam prompts them to buy or uninstall.

[a random horse]

Won't happen. The death of demo's in AAA games is directly from the publishers. Their stats say demos lose sales, so no more demos.

[Ben Lubar]

So a timed demo? Steam does support that, I think. I don't think I've seen anyone using that feature because if a game developer is going to release a demo, putting an arbitrary time limit on it does not improve the player's experience or likelihood to buy the full game.

And cutting out a piece of a game to be the demo (or worse, spending the time to make something entirely new to avoid spoilers) costs developer time, so you're not going to get a demo with every game that releases. Only from developers who go above and beyond with things like The Stanley Parable Demo.

But there are other ways to find out whether you'll like a game before you buy it. Find a YouTuber with similar tastes to yours and see what they think about the game, for example.

[✨Saint✨]

Back in the day we had freeware and shareware of games, a time when there was no such thing as Google.
These days you can find so much information about a game, you do not really need to try it before you buy it, in fact, there are plenty of free weekends, and you can "demo" plenty of games.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Dead Space Remake had one...

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1693980/view/5264189392020524722

https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-just-quietly-added-a-new-free-trial-system/

[guardian1368]

did you know that some flash player games are on steam but they cost over $20
they say that flash wasn't safe but i at least never had a problem with flash but also by removing flash means game company's can sell their games instead of it being free

[Ben Lubar]

Originally posted by guardian1368:

did you know that some flash player games are on steam but they cost over $20
they say that flash wasn't safe but i at least never had a problem with flash but also by removing flash means game company's can sell their games instead of it being free

Flash dying has nothing to do with developers being able to sell their games for different prices in different places. I picked up Mindustry on Steam after playing the itch.io version which allows you to download it for free to see if I liked it. itch.io didn't have to "die" for me to do that. Paid versions of games on Steam having free versions elsewhere isn't specific to Flash.

[Citizen Cook]

Originally posted by #1 Pervitin Enjoyer:

Won't happen. The death of demo's in AAA games is directly from the publishers. Their stats say demos lose sales, so no more demos.

That’s interesting. Back in the day I used to play the demo discs that came with gaming magazines. I bought many a game I previously wouldn’t have because I had the opportunity to try for free. It was the there so I thought, why not, I might as well give it a go. In particular I remember playing the original Splinter Cell over and over until it launched and then I bought the full game.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by iShi:

Give Developers/Publishers on steam the option to enable "Try Before Buy". Let them set the amount of time everyone can play the game before steam prompts them to buy or uninstall.

They can already can create demos, if they wish, otherwise you would need to purchase the game as the developers intended.

[Tito Shivan]

Devs can do demos
Devs can do free weekends
Devs can do limited play time trials.

Originally posted by ✨Saint✨:

Back in the day we had freeware and shareware of games, a time when there was no such thing as Google.

Back in the day, without a widespread internet connection, the best way to get your game known was to ship an appetizer of it on a magazine CD.

[HikariLight]

Devs are free to make a demo, but they are not required to.

Steam cannot and will not force them.

Go do your own research.