The PC platform seems to be the most affected

Oct 1, 2014 11:31 GMT  ·  By

Somewhere along the line, game publishers and developers managed to trick us into buying their games without letting us play them first. The change was subtle and strange at the same time, because very few people seem to notice this important fact.

If we rewind 5 to 10 years ago, we will find that very few games didn't have a demo released before the official launch. Players would get to play a little slice of the game and decide if they want it or not. It was also a very powerful tool for studios to promote their titles.

Apparently, I missed a meeting or a memo from publishers that said they were done with demos and people should just take them at their word. If you get burned, well, that's too bad for you.

Demos are no longer hip

Apparently, developers no longer go through all the trouble of building demos for their products, but the gaming industry seems to be the only one adopting this trend. Regular applications for various platforms, like Windows and Linux, usually come with trial versions, limited releases, or a number of other solutions. Games don't have this option anymore, so if you buy a title (usually digitally), you can't return it if you're not satisfied.

Returning a game is still an option for major stores that sell physical games, but digital stores don't usually provide refunds unless there is a problem with that game. If you just don't like it, you don't have any recourse.

It's unclear when this practice became normal. The problem is less obvious on consoles, which still receive some demos from time to time, but that's not the case on PC. If we take a look at Steam for Linux, we’ll will see only demos for relatively unknown games and most of the big publishers are not even represented.

Disappointment is guaranteed

The PC platform receives somewhere between 10 and 15 triple-A games each year, and they are usually priced at around $50 (€40), give or take, and that means that most users will choose a few to get from that list. Now, imagine you just paid that money for a game that turned out to be really bad.

I had this problem with The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. I really wanted it because I loved the recent XCOM titles. It was made by 2K Marin, so it wasn't an unknown developer. The game was well below my expectations and I wasn't the only one who thought that. I preordered it, although there wasn't a demo available, and I paid the full price.

Had I played the demo, I would have never bought the game. Now, as a recourse, I no longer preorder anything and I stay away from games developed by 2K Marin until I read some reviews after launch (so far, they didn't make anything else). The second part of my protest could have been avoided just by making a demo. Sure enough, I wouldn't have bought the game, but at least I would have had a better impression about the publisher.

I know that demos won't be a thing again and I'm not making a case for them. This is just probably a new business model, but at least it makes game reviews and reviewers more important than ever, because they can now really influence the sales of a product.