Steam now offers 90-minute trials for select titles. You’ll love this if you like free trials. Early-access is a common model today, with a demo that offers a level or 2 of a new title. The full game is unlocked with a free trial, but the time limit for it is limited.
Steam is offering 90-Minute Trials
Steam has offered demos on its store pages or Steam Demo page for quite some time. You can download demos of many different games, and experience the first levels or missions. You’ve likely used demos before but you may not have tried a free trial.
Free trials with a time limit are when you unlock the entire game, but cannot access it after the trial period has passed. Steam limits you to only 90 minutes of a brand new game before you have to pay.
Steam offers a free 90-minute trial of the Dead Space remake. You can try it out for free. There are many gamers who enjoy playing scary videogames. The recent remake, which has been critically acclaimed, may be of interest to you. You should also keep in mind that Steam’s refund policies are not affected by the free trial. This means you can still return a purchased game even if you’ve only played it for two hours.
For titles with a free 90-minute trial, this means you can play the game for three-and-a-half hours – 90 minutes during the trial period and two hours following the initial purchase – without fully committing to the title. In three and a quarter hours, you could be half way through the story of many triple-A titles.
Steam will decide if it wants to expand the feature. This is a Steam-only feature so you can expect to see a wide range of studios covered. If, for example, EA gave a 90-minute trial to its Dead Space remake, it’s possible that Square Enix and Ubisoft will do the same next time. Steam doesn’t have to limit its free trials to 90 minutes. In the future, you may find that Steam offers a trial of three or four hours.
The popularity of Steam and the gaming industry will determine whether or not free trials are widely available.
What are the benefits of free trials for gamers?
You may wonder if the 90-minute trial period for Steam games is the best move. Do they represent what is best for you or the company? Are they really best for you?
How you view it and what you think is more important will determine the answer.
Do you want to see what a game has to offer quickly before making a final decision? Some gamers feel that they must commit to a particular game in order to complete it. It can be difficult to decide which game to play when there are so many options. Maybe you can relate to this: A 90-minute trial before making a decision is helpful.
You may not like the idea that a game is only just getting good and you are then restricted from playing it. You want the final build of the game, and you don’t wish to be restricted in your gameplay. A time-limited free trial would be the best option for you.
Developers often polish the first few hours of gameplay as much as possible. In conferences, boardrooms, event showcases and YouTube videos, the first two hours of gameplay are shown.
After a few hours performance issues begin to appear, mouth movements and voice acting are not synchronized properly, and cracks start to appear. Imagine how many crashes your games could have. A game could be used to catfish you.
Free trials may not give a true representation of the game, and as a result they aren’t as beneficial to the consumer as the company.
Steam’s time-limited free trials are here to stay.
Will you use Steam’s free trials?
You might want to take advantage of the free trial for Dead Space, which was released with critical acclaim. You may not be interested in the title, but you have others that you’d like to try out if it were offered.
Steam is trying to do something different and explore ways to encourage users to play new games, despite the rising costs of the industry.