Tuesday, May 16th 2023
Play Before You Pay: Steam Allows 90-Minute Gameplay Before Purchasing a Game
For gamers that ended up buying massively hyped games and found them to be quite disappointing, Valve is there to help. Valve's Steam will now allow gamers to play games for free for up to 90 minutes before forcing them to either pay to continue playing or end the game there. Starting with the new Dead Space Remake, gamers will be able to enjoy the first 90 minutes of gameplay without committing any funds towards the purchase of the game. Given that today's AAA titles can cost 59.99+ USD, this is an excellent choice for gamers wanting to try out the game before purchasing to finish the gameplay.
The new measure is already available to gamers on Steam, as the Dead Space Remake is the first to kick off the wave of 90-minute trials. Previously available for 59.99 USD, the game is on a 20% discount until May 29 and can be had for 47.99. We need to find out if more games will support this policy of free trials or if Steam will force some titles to do the same. Valve's older measures, such as refunds, are still in place; however, refunds require less than two hours of the game being played, so a refund can be valid.
Sources:
Steam, via HardwareLuxx
The new measure is already available to gamers on Steam, as the Dead Space Remake is the first to kick off the wave of 90-minute trials. Previously available for 59.99 USD, the game is on a 20% discount until May 29 and can be had for 47.99. We need to find out if more games will support this policy of free trials or if Steam will force some titles to do the same. Valve's older measures, such as refunds, are still in place; however, refunds require less than two hours of the game being played, so a refund can be valid.
83 Comments on Play Before You Pay: Steam Allows 90-Minute Gameplay Before Purchasing a Game
90 mins without payment, when you buy you get 30 mins of play before your refund window closes.
As mentioned before its far more likely the 90min of free play time is just that, and when you own the game you will get the 120 for a refund.
Why? Because it would be PR suicide to do anything else.
That isnt to say they are being nice, I still think they are doing this because the transaction fees for refunding people is just a massive overhead. They did make it easy after all.
store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds
The actual policy, and thus far it states purchased items. Which free trials are not.
Doesnt say it includes trials at all and specifies purchases. This actually works to users benefit because any modification they make to include a free trial would be received negatively, which increased the likelihood that they wont do it.
As mentioned, there are business reasons why this is a bad idea and the tech industry is under scrutiny right now, from pricing to practices and more specifically, in a case of legalities like this Asus.
It would be bad timing for valve who otherwise has imo done right by customers by not making too many waves over the years to shoot themselves in the foot over 30min.
So yes, I think the times will be separate, technologically there appears to be a difference (to the system and your account) between "owning" and "trying" games.
I can't even.
Did you live already in the age of rental? 24 hours is a rental period for games, would cost you $5,- and was sufficient to binge that shit and return it. It was perfect for single player story based gaming. An 8 hour God of War story... you could even replay the thing the day you returned it :)Oh shit... the caveat is of course they start the 90 minute timer when you start compiling shaders... :DSome form of pre-load thing is bound to happen, yeah
*E: I should probably add this was my experience some years ago, at least several as it was pre covid. It seemed they didnt differentiate f2p time, if you were well beyond the 2hr playtime on your account - you were out of the auto refund period. I guess it is a pretty unique scenario. It was a coop game and it was the other person changing their mind, I wasnt interested in playing it myself so I went to refund and I had to resubmit the ticket twice to get it - first was rejected fairly quick. (FYI: not sure if it mattered, but I choose to refund to steam wallet on the 2nd try)
Do you also subscribe to netflix, binge-watch a series and then ask for a refund?
Besides that there is always the High Seas as an alternative but I never do that and don't recommend it. I haven't done anything like that since the mid 1980s and only then because we had little choice to be able to buy a lot of games.
I see the 90 minute demo as a good thing for PC gaming. Too many turds out there posing as AAA quality games.
I tend to try games by purchasing, trying for up to 2 hours and refunding if I don't like it. However, recently, Valve has started being passive aggressive in their refund emails saying they've seen a "significant number of refund requests recently" from me or something like that. That has caused me to buy less and focus more on things like Gamepass or other subscriptions. I've become afraid of committing money to a game I might hate, essentially.
This 90 minute demo feature would be great because I usually determine within the first 15-45 minutes whether I actually like a game or not, so I'll be more willing to take risks and actually buy more games because I'll be confident that I won't have the possiblility of being denied refunds.
I have refunded maybe a half dozen games in however many years its been offered (so 1 per year or so?), I dont think im on any abuse list for doing that!