Could Valve Be Making Game Demos Great Again?

A Single Free 90 Minute Run Of The Dead Space Remaster Isn’t Much To Go On, But We Can Hope

It looks like Valve may be changing how they give customers a chance to try a game before they buy.  Currently, you can request a refund on a game you have purchased within the past 14 days, as long as you have spent less than two hours playing online, offline or as part of a shared library.  That refund came in the form of money applied to your Steam account balance, so many consider that more of a trade in than a refund.   The lack of warning can also be a little awkward, if you decide you want to return the game only to find out you spent 121 minutes playing before you came to that decision.

A Slashdot reader spotted something new today, as part of the 20% off sale on the updated Dead Space Steam is also offering the ability to play for 90 minutes, no money down.  There is a very obvious button on the game page to install the game and start playing, as it is apparently already present in your Library.   The 90 minutes is not limited to a certain portion of the game either, you could do your best to speed run it or you could use the time to explore and ponder if the full experience is worth the price of admission.

One single 90 minute free to play offer, on one single game is not a lot base the belief this will become more common, but if it leads to sales of the full game they might decide to try this on more games.  An old gamer can hope for the return of game demos, right?