Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials
gamespot.com
gamespot.com
It could also end up encouraging longer "tutorial" sections at the beginning of games, which you can aggressively optimize to give players a misplaced confidence that their computers can run the game effectively.
Therefore this doesn't really change much when it comes to realization that the game sucks very early on.
I suppose there is some small risk difference between "play 90 minutes for free, then decide to pay" vs "play 120 minutes for full game price, then get it back". But in my experience and from what I've heard over the years the refund policy is reliably honored.
I guess the demos would be better for Steam as they don't lose credit card fees.
"We will not be granting a refund at this time. The date of the purchase exceeds 2 weeks (our refund policy maximum)."
How much was the game in this anecdote?
Yea, I tried to take advantage of this when I picked up Stellaris, but that's not a game (I don't think) that you can evaluate in 2 hours. I gave it a couple of stabs, but found it just way more complex than I was interested it. I obviously played it more than 2 hours, and they wouldn't refund my money. No harm, no foul, but for some games, 2 hours isn't enough.
A slow start is a flaw, but in my eyes a forgivable one.
MS Flight Sim comes to mind. Apparently game content is downloaded in-game, and it's in the region of 120GB, so many folk blow through 2 hours before they even get to play the game.
I can see this being useful to fill up a steam cache though, depending on how it works.
> It could also end up encouraging longer "tutorial" sections at the beginning of games, which you can aggressively optimize to give players a misplaced confidence that their computers can run the game effectively.
This made me wonder about "optimizing the tutorial" for content of the game such that it actually takes the same amount of or less time to play through the rest of the game after. I wouldn't be surprised if this is attempted in some cases and it would be pretty disheartening to see it widespread.
And I had the same thought last weekend, when Diablo 4 had their Server Slam for 2 days (70 GB download).
When a customer refunds a game, steam keeps its 30% cut. This lets players try games without punishing the developer by making them pay that 30%
I suspect anyway
I normally pirate my games to see if they work with my setup. If they do, there's a chance I'll buy them. But having it just work with Steam is much more likely I just pay a few bucks for a game, rather than look for it on a private tracker.
If it doesn't work, just legitimately get 100% of your money back.
There are different ways to get into trackers, if you want to embark on the journey. You can get an invite directly, you can buy one (against TOS, if they find out they ban you & the inviter usually), there are sometimes free registration periods, and they sometimes do cross-promotion, like if you're a member at X for a time, then you can register to Y.
For games, maybe a lesser PITA is to look for repackers. But of course, as these are on the open internet, there are clones too.
Customer friendly policies and programs are absolutely worth rewarding. I have a wallet, and I might as well vote with it!
I suspect there will be more demo downloads, but fewer total (non-refunded) purchases with this modal. The question is where do you apply friction, before download or after 90 minutes of gameplay.
I'm also generally concerned with demo-hacking. Putting all the novelty in the first 90 minutes. Placing one large cliff hanger or achievement near the 90 minute mark. Building a starting place that takes just over 90 minutes to get out of. I do get the impression PC devs are aware of the 120 minute mark and try to make the first two hours strong. This lowers that bar.
---
0: https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/17/gdc-most-players-don...
One quick example from my steam library: Terraria
- Chop down your first tree. (You can do this immediately after you start playing): 86.5%
- Craft your first work bench. (Can be done immediately after cutting a tree): 56.8%
- Survive your character's first full night (24 minutes of playtime): 78.8%
> “Statistically, most players don’t finish games. We’ve all seen numbers that say something like a third [do finish games], on average," Rouse III said later in the presentation.
Note: I do not play terraria and am assuming moon lord is the end game boss from here: https://terraria.fandom.com/wiki/Moon_Lord
Obviously this isn't the case for every game but that skews the numbers too.
There is also the problem of very short and cheap games, those should probably be excluded l.
For a launch title, these things are common now. But this was a 2 year old game.
If I wanted to play a game, I'd have to wait a few hours to download the whole thing. I don't have Google fiber. My time to have played that game is usually gone by the time that's over and I might not get a chance to play again for another 2 or 3 weeks. Having the 90 minute trials would completely solve this problem for me.
Additionally, creating a compelling 90-minute demo _on top of the game itself_ is daunting! I recently-ish created a ~30-minute demo[1] and it nearly killed me and my colleagues...
[1]: Shameless plug https://store.steampowered.com/app/1446350/You_Will_Die_Here...
Refunds are for 'this product does not work', and they will block you from doing it if they think you are doing too many. Demos are zero consequence for the customer.
I was warned after refunding no more than about 6 games over 5 years. I'm still not sure how many are too many.
That message in the screenshot is semi common, I've got it myself. But I've never seen anyone actually have their refund permissions revoked ever.
1. A demo is a promotional product. It has to have emotional beats that culminate in strong desire for more and a call to action to "Buy now!" The unedited first X-minutes of a game is unlikely to hit those beats.
2. A demo should be like a chocolate box, filled with delightful surprises, sampling the game. The first X-minutes of your game should be like a gentle hike into the woods, easing the player into the game's setting, mechanics, etc.
3. Refunding requires purchasing then taking action to reverse course. Furthermore, that action isn't entirely comfortable for many. That is, most people are honest and don't want to abuse refunds. A demo works in the opposite manner.
This is just more convenient, so it makes it more likely to convert into sales
If the game can't keep people wanting to play it more than a couple hours, and players decide they don't want to buy it anymore, they could already do that with a refund.
Making games more convenient to play always increases sales, if you think there's any chance at all that the product you're selling is worth buying.
From my experience as a gamer, now days between the free games on mobile, epic game store and xbox game pass, the almost infinite amount of dirt cheap games on sale at any time on steam and the "sink all you life always online: experiences like destiny, overwatch etc... etc... The main resources for games is time not money. The idea that someone would find a game that they actually enjoy and decided not to pay for it (or wait for it for a sale) i don't think is realistic. Sure some people will sample the game, but the people who won't buy the game after sampling it are the same people who wouldn;t buy the game either way.
Unfortunately the world is not just and consumer-hostile behavior often ends up being more profitable.
Besides, even if it was, it's not like developers set out to make a non-compelling game. Like woops, let me just press the "compelling" button before shipping!
I mean, I understand your point. My friend bought a used Mac once, and it had Sim-City on it. We hadn't seen it before and we fell into a black hole of playing it for 3 hours straight before someone accidentally kicked the plug.
"Well, that's that!" and I can attest that none of us really went back to it. It certainly kept our interest for 3 hours though.
EDIT: forgot the 20 minutes of ads and trailers of other movies
It's not, it's just that there's a lot of very good sales and subscription services that firehose free games at you (humble bundle). So a lot of people have hundreds of games that they don't really need to extract any value from to get their moneys worth, so they only play most of them for a few minutes if at all, only putting real time into the few games that are really good.
The games themselves don't only have 90 mins of playtime, it's just that most of the players have lots of games and not so much time to play them.
There are short story-driven experiences, but even those generally last at least a few hours (the "walking simulator" genre - I'd recommend Firewatch as a good example of that type of game).
Why not? That sounds like a pretty sensible game length to me. I'd even say that within some genres stretching it longer only makes games worse. The current 2 hour refund policy is quite harmful for hand-crafted unique experiences created by small studios. These days nobody wants to finance short focused games. I wonder where the next Loom or Portal is supposed to come from in such environment.
This doesn't mean I actually want games to only have ~ an hour of playtime, it's just that they were all either very cheap or free through things like humble bundle. So I grabbed them with the intention to play them later when I feel like it and maybe messed around in them for a little bit to see if I felt like properly diving in now.
There are zero consequences to "buying" games like Superhot, A Short Hike, Journey, and Before Your Eyes; completing them, and refunding the game. None. They do have an abuse warning system in place, but I have never seen validation that it works for short games, just frequent refunds/odd cards used.
EA has 10 hour trials, but we haven't heard anything about how successful they are. EA likes to boast, so one can only assume it's not all that successful in getting people to actually a) stay subscribed to EA play or b) get people to buy the games. We also know generally that demos, especially for lesser known games, can negatively affect sales.
I can see publishers only supporting this for already very popular and well received games to secure every last potential sale, but everyone else has little reason to.
Hot Take Edit: It's gamer Karens requesting the refunds. "I had information available to me that said the game time was under 2 hours but I bought it anyways and now I'm severely disappointed that the game was under 2 hours long and I deserve a refund!"
I wouldn't demand a refund for a movie, for example, if it finished in 1:59. I wouldn't demand a refund for beating my friends in a round of Top Golf in an hour. Nor would I demand a refund if I decide I'm done after spending less than 2 hours in a museum.
On the other hand treating your customers with respect and letting them try what they are buying ultimately increases sales and works out in everyone's benefit.