Steam adds new "Trending Free" tab to hide demos from new & trending

To imagine there was a long time games didn't offer enough demos anymore, and now we get so much that they need to be filtered 😂
- Shovelware demos are useless.
  I remember the time I played the demo for farming sim and DOA:Dimensions to death on my 3DS. Those were actually good demos.
  
  Yeah it doesn't compare to old-school demos like stuff that came on discs with magazines, but at least it's a lot better getting the option to try something instead of buying and refunding everything. And at least some bigger studios and indi games are picking up on this as well.
  
  I am not sure what demos you mention in particular but the one I recently played is news tower and I am hooked. Just waiting for a good sale to snag the game and even stopped posting the demo mid way. I for one appreciate all the demos being put out even if it is short. Their only purpose is to showcase the full game and they do a decent job of that.
- It's the current Steam publishing meta. A free demo will create traffic for the newly created Steam page of your game, resulting in more Wishlistings, which is usually the only way to be featured and seen anywhere before release for indie developers. And that's how your Wishlistings really explode and you make a lot of sales. Getting a demo out is by far highest priority for game publishing in 2024.
  
  Hell yeah. Valve is making consumer friendly practices the industry meta!
- I have a feeling a lot of these demos were just trying to game that very "new and trending" page, and this change will produce fewer demos.
- this is the best timeline

This is why console demos are so rare anymore.
Try before you buy means fewer sales on launch day.
Informed consumers are careful with their money. And that's bad. Apparently.
- When your core gameplay loop is all of 15 minutes long that feeds into a 40-60 hour repetitive grind to unlock a slightly better item, new title or recolored cosmetic, combined with a complete absence of quality or competent writing, innovative mechanics while it's apparent most of the budget went into marketing and pre-rendered cutscenes that can be just watched on youtube, yeah it's bad to give potential customers a 30 minute demo that displays everything your game is without hinting any additional benefit for purchasing the full game.

Oh my God this is so much nicer. I was getting so sick of trying to navigate the category and having the same live action free to play games appear every time. I have some games that I can remove from my ignore list now

This is just great!
- Yeah I can't wait to try some new games today! Usually it's impossible to find a good F2P game unless it's really popular. Like Once Human, for example. I see why it's popular but the gameplay loop isn't for me. Too much gathering/crafting, and dungeons aren't fun as a solo player. I was bored after 2 days.
  Thanks to this new category, now I can just go down the list until I find something I can enjoy.
  
  This is a shameless self-plug but I post a lot of free games in !freegames@feddit.uk. They're primarily limited-time giveaways, but I also tag some with [Forever-Free Friday] which might be more what you're looking for.

I like free games, eg Shattered Pixel Dungeon, Minetest, Unciv, etc. Why would people be against free games, especially here where people are generally FLOSS advocates?
- I'm not against free games, and if I was interested in a free game I would actively search for one. But usually if you're searching for trending games it's because there's a sale going and you don't give a shit about the free to play games at that time. Especially considering that the big free games that are "trending" are the same games every single sale.
  I like the better separation between the two for sure
- It's less that I hate free games, it's more that a lot of games on Steam that are free are either the freemium model, where they are basically mobile games with inapp purchases you're expected to buy to make progress, or some some shovelware trash that's a one trick pony and generally just a knock off of something more popular and better executed.
  Yes there are examples of great free to play games, but overall so many of them on steam are not worth downloading and clog up the trending list since if someone really wanted their game full of microtransactions to get noticed, they can just work a bot net to register new accounts and download the game to cause the steam algorithm to pick it up and put it on the trending page despite it having a poor user count.
- Who is against free games?

- This is literally an example of why Steam gets praised as the only good game store. They make a change, users complain that part of the change sucks, and they listen to the feedback
  
  Steam does provide a good product, no critique there. My point is the fact that they too are employing anti competitive measures and serve a billionaire. I wont stop criticizing that.
- You should evaluate why you came to a barely populated thread, and made up a complete straw man to get upset over.
  You're manufacturing outrage for yourself. That's not healthy.
  
  Instead they decided to ignore your comment and rile up people in sibling comments...
- What? Isn't this a common W for steam? This seems like a good thing to me.
  
  I was referring to the very vocal crowd that can not ever accept steam being criticized for dominating the market and serving its billionaire owner, however „less bad“ he is. There are no ethical billionaires.
  It could be viewed as a measure to get free games away from the main focus so valve can make more money.
- This would've been a useless comment even if it were relevant.
  
  Whatever mate. I wont stop criticizing anti competitive companies, there billionaire owners and the crowd that worships them.
- What?
- The irony of someone who uses "AI" and spicy autocorrect to rank employees trying to complain about a company people love to work at, and provides a good product.
  
  Let me see if I got your statement right: you took the comment I made on another post to spare people having to click a link as me talking about myself?
  In any case, steam does provide a good product but it also uses anti competitive measures to stay on top of the market and is owned by a billionaire. There are no ethical billionaires, sorry.