<story><title>Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials</title><url>https://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-now-offers-90-minute-game-trials-starting-with-dead-space/1100-6514177/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>OkayPhysicist</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m curious to see if publishers will be willing to opt into this. On one hand, letting someone sit through the install time and see if they enjoy the game before paying for it probably significantly reduces the hurdle of &amp;quot;hmm, do I really want this game&amp;quot; for many consumers. On the other hand, if your PC port is a shameless, unoptimized moneygrab then players realizing that fact might balk rather than committing to actually buying the game.&lt;p&gt;It could also end up encouraging longer &amp;quot;tutorial&amp;quot; sections at the beginning of games, which you can aggressively optimize to give players a misplaced confidence that their computers can run the game effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>progbits</author><text>Valve will refund any Steam purchase if made within 2 weeks and with less than 2 hours play time (see &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;store.steampowered.com&amp;#x2F;steam_refunds&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;store.steampowered.com&amp;#x2F;steam_refunds&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Therefore this doesn&amp;#x27;t really change much when it comes to realization that the game sucks very early on.&lt;p&gt;I suppose there is some small risk difference between &amp;quot;play 90 minutes for free, then decide to pay&amp;quot; vs &amp;quot;play 120 minutes for full game price, then get it back&amp;quot;. But in my experience and from what I&amp;#x27;ve heard over the years the refund policy is reliably honored.</text></comment>
<story><title>Steam Now Offers 90-Minute Game Trials</title><url>https://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-now-offers-90-minute-game-trials-starting-with-dead-space/1100-6514177/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>OkayPhysicist</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m curious to see if publishers will be willing to opt into this. On one hand, letting someone sit through the install time and see if they enjoy the game before paying for it probably significantly reduces the hurdle of &amp;quot;hmm, do I really want this game&amp;quot; for many consumers. On the other hand, if your PC port is a shameless, unoptimized moneygrab then players realizing that fact might balk rather than committing to actually buying the game.&lt;p&gt;It could also end up encouraging longer &amp;quot;tutorial&amp;quot; sections at the beginning of games, which you can aggressively optimize to give players a misplaced confidence that their computers can run the game effectively.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>metalang</author><text>Steam already offers no questions asked refunds if a game is played for under 2 hours (and based on my experience will give refunds outside of that policy if the game won&amp;#x27;t run).</text></comment>