Valve has made significant changes to the way demos work on Steam, even letting players post demo user reviews.
With what Valve called ‘The Great Steam Demo Update’ of 2024, the company has addressed feedback from developers and players now that thousands of new playable demos launch every year as part of Steam Next Fest.
You can now add demos to your library without immediately installing them. You'll find an 'add to library' button appearing for demos now that lets you add to your library from the mobile app or other places where you may not be ready to install them immediately, Valve said in a post on Steam.
Demos can be installed even if you already own the full game, too. This is primarily about making it easier for developers to test demos, but it will also help players more easily manage installing/uninstalling demos, Valve said. To that end, demos can now be explicitly removed from your account by right-clicking > manage > remove from account. When a demo is uninstalled, it will automatically get removed from your library.
By default, a developer’s free demo appears as a button on the base game's store page. But now, a developer can create a separate store page for their demo. “Enabling a separate store page for your demo will give you space to better describe the contents of the demo, add screenshots, upload a trailer, and specify supported features,” Valve told developers.
If a developer makes a store page for their demo, it will let players post user reviews that appear on the demo store page just like reviews for any other free game on Steam. Valve has thus ushered in the era of review-bombing Steam demos.
Perhaps mindful of that, Valve issued a warning to devs that negative reviews may impact a demo’s visibility on Steam.
“The Steam store will treat your demo mostly the same way whether you have enabled a standalone store page or not,” it said. “One factor that may come into play is if your demo ends up having a bunch of negative reviews it might be less appealing to potential players and may get filtered out of some views if the review score is too low. Of course the flipside can be true too; if players are loving your demo, the positive review signal to other players may boost interest.”
Demos, generally, now appear more in the Steam store, and can pop up on the Steam homepage in charts, such as the "New & Trending" and "New on Steam" pages. Basically, a demo acts like a free standalone game on Steam.
Valve had a bit of fun with its Steam demo FAQ, or IAQ (Infrequently Asked Questions) as it called it. Here’s Valve’s reply to its own question about the demo icon:
Q. What is the deal with the Demo icon? Is that a plate? A vinyl record?
A. 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 the biggest PC video game platform on earth, Steam is an essential tool for publishers and developers when it comes to game releases. And so any changes Valve makes to the way games are marketed on its platform can have wide-ranging implications for the success — or lack of — of a video game. Clearly, the hope is that demos can become yet another significant marketing tool for developers as they fight for visibility on Steam, a platform that already sees hundreds of new games launch every day.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
