[HN Gopher] Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials, Starting wit...
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Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials, Starting with Dead Space
Author : ahiknsr
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-05-16 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamespot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamespot.com)
| suddenclarity wrote:
| I like the idea. It would definitely make me test out more games
| that I'm hesitant of buying today, especially with a game library
| of close to 1000 games. It's crazy how you get multiple games for
| free each week nowadays. On the downside, I'm certain it would
| lower my tolerance in new games. If you buy it, you kinda need to
| give it a proper chance. Now you can try it for 20 minutes and
| just throw it away.
| htag wrote:
| I'm very interested in how this interacts with Valve's standard
| policy of giving refunds for games you've played for less than
| two hours.
|
| 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.
| imran-iq wrote:
| This already happens. Most people do not complete games[0]. You
| can verify by checking out the achievements for various games.
| This already leads to games having fun beginnings but
| lacklustre end games
|
| ---
|
| 0: https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/17/gdc-most-players-
| don...
| DANmode wrote:
| The way "achievements" have dropped in quality by any measure
| in the last decades should be scrutinized almost as much as
| lack of retained player interest.
| charlie0 wrote:
| This might get me to buy more games. Let me start off by saying
| I'm a very casual gamer, playing only a few hours a month tops.
| My two friction points are the return policy, which has a 2 week
| limit, and the huge download sizes for games.
|
| 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.
| weaksauce wrote:
| it was two hours of play time in the game not 2 hours from when
| you buy it... two hours of playing or 14 days since purchase
| whichever was sooner
| spadros wrote:
| They're saying they might pass 14 days since purchase if the
| download wastes their time to test it on the free night.
| pierat wrote:
| Well, nice.
|
| 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.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Seriously? are you not worried about malware?
| imran-iq wrote:
| Honestly if you are running any game on your system, you do
| not really care about security (because most game devs don't
| care about security, just performance).
| https://secret.club/2021/04/20/source-engine-rce-invite.html
| giobox wrote:
| With the long-standing Steam refund policy being no questions
| asked in first two hours play/two weeks of buying the game, the
| piracy step hasn't really been necessary (assuming your
| motivations are genuinely just compatibility checking...)? The
| refund policy is still more generous than this 90min demo
| window.
|
| If it doesn't work, just legitimately get 100% of your money
| back.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I'm curious to see if publishers will be willing to opt into
| this. On one hand, letting someone sit through the install time
| and see if they enjoy the game before paying for it probably
| significantly reduces the hurdle of "hmm, do I really want this
| game" for many consumers. On the other hand, if your PC port is a
| shameless, unoptimized moneygrab then players realizing that fact
| might balk rather than committing to actually buying the game.
|
| 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.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I've long believed that a market culture of releasing limited
| game demos increases the quality of games. If someone has the
| opportunity to play some section of the game they'll be able to
| judge the game on something other than marketing copy and
| curated screenshots.
|
| > 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.
| progbits wrote:
| Valve will refund any Steam purchase if made within 2 weeks and
| with less than 2 hours play time (see
| https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/).
|
| 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.
| gabythenerd wrote:
| I have about 150 games in the backlog that I buy in sales to
| play later, when I don't like them after 30 minutes I just
| refund them. Steam has been pretty good with this, doesn't
| matter if I bought it months before, they will still refund
| them.
|
| I guess the demos would be better for Steam as they don't
| lose credit card fees.
| vorvac wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've had this experience lately:
|
| "We will not be granting a refund at this time. The date of
| the purchase exceeds 2 weeks (our refund policy maximum)."
| DANmode wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| How much was the game in this anecdote?
| aaomidi wrote:
| I think refunds don't cost the company. Chargebacks do.
| zamnos wrote:
| Refunds don't generally get the fees returned, so I buy a
| game for $10, $0.30 in fees goes to Paypal, Steam gets
| $9.70. I return the game, Steam gives me $10, but PayPal
| only gives them $9.70, so they're out $0.30. Across a
| million returns that adds up.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| Honestly, I've always been too wary of playing 2.0001 hours
| and losing access. I like this system much better.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| You dont lose access. Just repeat the process to get a
| human review.
| whartung wrote:
| > Valve will refund any Steam purchase if made within 2 weeks
| and with less than 2 hours play time
|
| 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.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| >2 hours isn't enough
|
| 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.
| bityard wrote:
| We must be very different people... If a game or movie
| doesn't grab my attention within the first 15 minutes, it
| goes in the round file. Life is too short for mediocre
| entertainment!
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Being complex and taking time to get into is quite
| different than being mediocre. Some games take hours to
| just grasp the rules and its first by the fourth or fifth
| time you're playing that they become amazing. It's like
| dunking on racing because a guy without license can't
| figure out how to change gear.
| DigitallyFidget wrote:
| The two hour rule isn't solid. I've returned a game after
| completing a 1 hour tutorial of the game, only to get into
| the main game and find out it was nothing like the tutorial
| lead me to believe the game was. I had to AFK during the
| middle of playing, so I ended up with 5 hours of gameplay.
| I just told them what happened, said why I wanted to refund
| it, and I still got it refunded. It took five hours of the
| game running for me to determine that I just didn't like
| nor enjoy it.
| metalang wrote:
| Steam already offers no questions asked refunds if a game is
| played for under 2 hours (and based on my experience will give
| refunds outside of that policy if the game won't run).
| moomin wrote:
| My kid can spend longer than that in the character designer.
| aschearer wrote:
| As someone who makes games this strikes me as nuts. I can easily
| see players enjoying their 90-minutes and leaving satisfied, why
| pay for more? We know from achievements and other data very few
| players reach a game's ending. I wager this will just encourage
| more sampling of games without ultimately buying a copy.
|
| 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...
| waboremo wrote:
| It's still absurd Steam has done nothing to the refund rule
| when games are around or under 2 hours long.
|
| 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.
| soulbadguy wrote:
| > why pay for more ? I am guessing for the "lenth of the game -
| 90 minutes"
|
| 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.
| aschearer wrote:
| That may describe your patterns but it doesn't match my lived
| experience with a game on Steam... I added a demo and saw
| sales decline. I removed the demo and saw sales increase.
| I've heard similar stories from others.
| leoqa wrote:
| Perhaps your game is bad? Encouraging folks to gamble on
| their enjoyment seems like a losing strategy- instead make
| a compelling game?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| _Is_ it a losing strategy if the revenue increases?
| Consider how encouraging gambling on in-game items
| instead of making better games has served the mobile
| gaming industry.
|
| Unfortunately the world is not just and consumer-hostile
| behavior often ends up being more profitable.
| waboremo wrote:
| No, demos negatively affecting sales has been known for
| years now. Even studies as far back as 2013. This isn't
| some "your game is just bad" situation.
|
| 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!
| whalesalad wrote:
| Make a game someone wants to play for more than 90 minutes :)
| waboremo wrote:
| This is how we get endless waves of shallow games and nothing
| but addiction hooks to get people into the game for 91
| minutes :)
| whartung wrote:
| Is that the value proposition of modern games? 90m of content?
| I don't buy many new games, but I'd have thought that there was
| a higher ask of a game than just getting 90m out of it.
|
| 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.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Imagine going to a cinema and paying more for 90 min of movie
| and twice as much for popcorn/nachos.
|
| EDIT: forgot the 20 minutes of ads and trailers of other
| movies
| p1necone wrote:
| > Is that the value proposition of modern games? 90m of
| content?
|
| 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).
| wildrhythms wrote:
| How is this much different than players refunding the game
| within the 2 hour window? (the current policy)
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| https://i.imgur.com/E4Qcqu1.png (not my pic)
|
| 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.
| howard941 wrote:
| > they will block you from doing it if they think you are
| doing too many
|
| I was warned after refunding no more than about 6 games
| over 5 years. I'm still not sure how many are too many.
| waboremo wrote:
| FWIW, the current policy is also hotly contested for the very
| reasons outlined by the person you're replying to.
| hoffs wrote:
| They could already refund with playtime less than 2hrs, so not
| sure what is your point. Also the idea here is that you don't
| have to create a demo, you literally just give the game to
| them.
| aschearer wrote:
| You and wildrhythms are asking, "How is a demo different than
| refunding?"
|
| 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.
| gbear605 wrote:
| According to the article, this is _not_ a demo. This is
| just the first ninety minutes of the full game. So this
| can't offer anything that your game itself doesn't offer in
| its first ninety minutes.
| tux3 wrote:
| Players can already just download the full game before
| purchase, for the majority of games people play
|
| 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.
| ericd wrote:
| Anecdotal, but as a kid with no money, demos were super
| important, and 100% of my purchases were from games whose demos
| I'd played. I hope your effort in making a demo has been
| rewarded!
| p1necone wrote:
| I don't think the statistics are really communicating what you
| think they're communicating. I have hundreds of games in my
| steam library, a lot of which I've either not played at all or
| only played for like 30 mins or so.
|
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| I asked for a refund recently at around 2 hours into a game,
| because it kept locking up. I thought it might be my computer but
| the internet is full of people with the same problem.
|
| For a launch title, these things are common now. But this was a 2
| year old game.
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| Seems a like a logical next step given it was pretty much already
| supported with their instant <2hr played return policy.
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