All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.
Turns out, they’re giving the full game away for free during their “early access” phase as a “demo”. But it’s the full game, just with only 2 class choices.
I had a blast! And now I’m probably going to buy it on release.
The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn’t work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.
What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you’ve played it?
Sadly I’ve seen a few games available for free recently which are slightly deceptive in mentioning that they’re actually only demos. The example that sticks out is Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, not to be confused with Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition (Base Game), a paid DLC which is actually the game. Obviously you see what’s going on pretty quickly, but the headline “game is free” is not the same as “demo available”!
