Steam introduces new demo policy, making them even more useful

It’s a somewhat strange, yet delightful phenomenon that game demos are back. Not stronger than ever, necessarily, but certainly hugely relevant once again, and that’s all thanks to the common Steam demo events such as the Steam Next Fest. Now, they’re about to get way, way better, to boot.

The aptly titled ‘Great Steam Demo Update, 2024’ is all about “making demos an even more powerful and flexible marketing tool” from both sides of the equation. According to Valve’s recent Steamworks Development blog post, both the developers/publishers and the end-users will now find game demos way more useful due to their improved functionality on Steam. The update is also a handy way of dealing with the recent glut of “prologue” style releases that demoed the game with a free vertical slice of its gameplay loop as well as funneling improved visibility to the main (usually upcoming) game. I love Intravenous 2: Mercenarism to bits, for example, but that is what it was doing.

Steam demos now enjoy far superior integration with the full game

The blog itself goes into substantial detail on all the game demo improvements that are now available on Steam, but here’s the gist of it:

• Players can now both add and remove game demos to and from their libraries, and they can be installed even if the full game is owned
• Wishlisters are immediately notified of a game’s demo release
• Demos generally behave more like free games now, appearing in all the same sections and lists as regular games do; releasing a new demo for a game behaves similarly as releasing a free stand-alone title far as the algorithm is concerned
• Players can now review demos
• Demo store pages are tightly connected with the full games’ store pages, with widgets linking them together
• Developers can release demos either as optional buttons on the full game’s store page, or as separate entries (which gives them space to better describe the content of the demo), although doing the latter does not impact algorithmic visibility outside of positive user signaling

There’s more, of course, but these are the most important improvements coming to the system. Game developers will now no longer be particularly incentivized to release standalone “prologue” versions of games since demos, too, will appear more regularly during searches and recommendations, which should make it more obvious as to what’s what for the regular end-user.

Overall, then, a solid set of changes that are most welcome by virtually everyone. They appear to have been already implemented, and you can now easily spot demos by a mysterious icon in the upper left corner of their entry: “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,” as Valve explains it.