Back in the summer of 2015, Valve introduced a new refund policy for Steam, so that players no longer need to fight with customer service, as long as they meet the conditions of 14 days of purchase and the game is running for less than 2 hours, they can refund for any reason. This refund policy was well received by players as soon as it was unveiled, and this 2-hour playtime was affectionately called "trial time" by players.
I don't know if the always cold valve listened to the voice of players, and a few days ago Steam officially announced the launch of a 90-minute game trial mechanism.
EA's third-person shooter Dead Space: Remastered, released earlier this year, was also the first game to support the feature. Currently, on the Steam detail page, you only need to click "Play Now" to automatically download the game and get 90 minutes of free trial time. If a player wants to buy the game after playing, the previous progress will be preserved and there is no need to start over.
In fact, demo play is a long-standing concept in the game industry, such as E3, Tokyo Game Show, Cologne Game Show, ChinaJoy and other related exhibitions have a very important function, that is, to provide new games to play to players. In the Internet era, with the development of information technology, players no longer need to go to the exhibition in person to have the opportunity to experience the game before paying, such as "World of Warcraft", "Sword Network III" as the representative of point card paid online games, will provide a short period of free game time.
Today, not only does Steam provide game trial services, but Sony and Microsoft announced last summer that they will provide free trial benefits for Premium PS+ members, and "Project Moorcroft" for XGP members. The game demo function has been launched on major platforms one after another, and the core reason behind it is that the traditional game promotion mode is incompatible with the current one.
Previously, there was a cost to experience a game, which refers to the real money required to buy the game, and also refers to the cost of the time required to buy a game disc or download, so in order to avoid sunk costs, players naturally want to know whether the game is suitable for them before paying the cost.
The most typical channel to do this is through reviews from IGNs or game bloggers, professionals who tell players about their experience. However, the entangled interests between game media and bloggers and game manufacturers have led to countless times when the former brainlessly advocated the quality of the game and the poor actual experience, and made players increasingly reluctant to trust these professionals.
The end result is that players can only choose to hear it and experience it themselves. And this is why Microsoft, Sony, and Valve have launched various forms of game trial services.
Of course, there's another big reason why Valve launched the game demo for Steam. They have repeatedly stressed on different occasions that "refunds are not a way to get free games", but it is not true that a considerable number of players use Steam's refund policy as a feature to try out the game. After all, as long as the refund request is submitted within the 2-hour game period, Valve will provide a refund without giving a reason.
But what if the entire game lasts no more than 2 hours? Previously, in August 2021, a game developer angrily criticized Steam's refund policy.
THE REASON FOR THIS WAS SIMPLE, THE DEVELOPER, CALLED EMIKA GAMES, SAID AT THE TIME THAT THEY DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH INCOME TO DEVELOP MORE GAMES DUE TO THE HIGHER AMOUNT OF REFUNDS, SO THEY WERE LEAVING THE INDUSTRY. EMIKA GAMES sold a thriller game called "Summer of '58" on Steam, its unit price is equivalent to about 13 yuan, and the game had a total of 512 user reviews at the time, 90% of which were positive. While conventionally a game with such a high rating certainly doesn't have a high refund rate, the problem is that Summer of '58 only lasts 90 minutes.
This means that if players can clear the level within 2 hours and then apply for a refund, they can play the game for free. Coincidentally, there was a similar positive review in a game called Everyday, "It's only 1.5 hours long, but the story and concept are fantastic", and ironically, "Product refunded" appears below this review.
You know, the length of a game does not represent its quality, relatively speaking, the long process of a game does not mean that the quality is necessarily high, after all, even the so-called 3A masterpiece games are not of high quality.
Although Valve does not explicitly state in the relevant terms, Steam's refund policy is actually limited in number, and too many times a player requests a refund will cause customer service to determine that you are abusing the refund system, and will no longer accept relevant applications in the future. The mechanism of game time within 2 hours launched by Steam is to protect the rights and interests of consumers, avoid damage to the rights and interests of users due to the quality defects of the game itself, and maximize the method of "suspicion from guilt". But as more and more users abuse this mechanism and harm the interests of developers, change becomes necessary.
Since players objectively have the need to try the game, and Steam's refund mechanism has been proven in the past experience, there is indeed a problem of abuse, so it is simply reasonable to directly launch the game demo function.