Steam looks to game trials

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 12th December 2006
Comments (12) Stumble
"Hey, wanna play some Half-Life?" - You will soon be able to send your friends timed previews of all Steam games.

"Hey, wanna play some Half-Life?" - You will soon be able to send your friends timed previews of all Steam games.

Advertising in video games is a pretty big industry nowadays. In order to properly get the word out on a game, money gets spent in all sorts of places. But does anyone remember the days of shareware, where you used to be able to try it for a while because your buddy gave you the disk...and it wasn't illegal?

Well, Valve does...and rather than let Steam be only for purchased games, the company has given a bit of a nod back to the old days. Steam has allowed trial versions of games before, but they're usually limited to preview weekends. These free-for-alls allowed anybody to play a particular game during that time, with the account being disabled after the allotted period.

Now, Valve wants to have gamers share the love again. A closed beta of the system is being tried this week, but the end result will allow you to send free time-locked trials (ten days is the figure currently being discussed) to your friends. Want to get them in on a game of CounterStrike? Send a trial...if they like it, they can then purchase it when the trial expires.

The system has tonnes of potential to it, and greatly increases Steam's role as a genuine distribution network. What if a small credit was given to the referring person if his or her friend bought the game, good for his next purchase? Or perhaps a small discount for those who were referred by friends, in order to get everyone playing together?

Would you put this system to good use? What do you think about the possibility of referral discounts? Are there other things you could see that would improve on it? Tell us your ideas in our forums.
Quote MrBadidea 12th December 2006, 18:52
It was bad enough that they started accepting Paypal payments.

Now I just know my Paypal account is getting raped :@
Quote DXR_13KE 12th December 2006, 19:20
nice idea..... i hope it gets approved and that it works.
Quote bahgger 12th December 2006, 19:57
Good idea but I worry that some people will abuse it and register new accounts again and again to receive the free trials.
Quote aon`aTv.gsus666 12th December 2006, 20:16
I love the idea! 90s = shareware, today = demos.

Anyone remember Death Rally?
Quote speedfreek 12th December 2006, 21:21
I like the idea, then i can get back into dod. In source.
Quote plagio 12th December 2006, 21:53
Quote:
Originally Posted by bahgger
Good idea but I worry that some people will abuse it and register new accounts again and again to receive the free trials.

They'll put a limit to the invitations for sure.
Quote bllt2bnry 12th December 2006, 22:16
It can't be a bad idea!
Quote Cthippo 12th December 2006, 23:03
Yeah, seems like a good idea. THey'll probably only do it for multi-plyer games though because there aren't many single-player ones yu can't beat in 10 days.
Quote r0z|3o0n 13th December 2006, 12:19
It concerns me that if this is released then cheaters will abuse the crap out of it. To them it could be a source of unlimited Steam Accounts.... 10 days is a long time when you're speedhacking, and when you get banned, you just use the banned account to invite as many new accounts as steam will let you. Or people will use their main legit account to invite the maximum number of trial accounts to be used for cheating.
Quote nphekted 13th December 2006, 13:05
What if they only let you invite accounts that have already bought a reasonable number of games though? It wouldn't be worth abusing if that were the case.
Quote Bladestorm 13th December 2006, 22:57
Quote:
Originally Posted by aon`aTv.gsus666
I love the idea! 90s = shareware, today = demos.

Anyone remember Death Rally?

Ace game, used to play it with my brother, he'd drive, I'd shoot, we were both happy :D
Quote speedfreek 14th December 2006, 04:33
Quote:
Originally Posted by nphekted
What if they only let you invite accounts that have already bought a reasonable number of games though? It wouldn't be worth abusing if that were the case.
I figure its probably going to work something like that, or an accound has to be active for so long. I could see people making up bogus accounts and playing with 1337 h4x.
Log in

You are not logged in, please login with your forum account below. If you don't already have an account please register to start contributing.





Stats: 0.117 seconds