Steam has made it easier to find, download and even review game demos

Demos were once a cornerstone of PC gaming and they arguably will be again thanks to events like Steam Next Fest. The latest update to Steam seeks to make those free slices of potential delight easier to find for players, and easier to promote for developers.

The Great Steam Demo Update, as the announcement calls it, makes several changes. Demos will now behave differently in your library: you can add them without immediately installing them; they can now be installed even if you already own the full game; and they can be manually removed from your library, or will be automatically removed when uninstalled.

Demos can also now have their own separate store page, if a developer so chooses. This allows a developer to explain the demo's contents in more detail, add unique screenshots and trailers, and even allows players to write user reviews of the demo.

All demos will also now appear in more places around the Steam store, acting more like standalone free games.

When I started my career twenty years ago, it was my job to make coverdiscs (both CDs and a DVD) filled with demos to be stuck to the front of a PC gaming magazine, and to write about the contents of the demos inside the magazine's pages. I got to watch up-close as those demos grew in filesize, becoming hard to fit even on a DVD, and as their creation grew less and less common. It was a terrible shame.

I imagine there's still debate over whether or not demos help developers sell their game - and I imagine the answer varies wildly depending on the game, the demo, and whether either are any good. As a player, I have little invested in that debate. For me, demos are an unequivocal good: free, hypothetically fun, and great way to avoid spending money on games I wouldn't like. It's great that they've had such a huge revival and now we get to write about them in events like Wishlisted.