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In brief: Digital storefronts on game consoles and mobile platforms typically feature easily accessible sections highlighting free content. Steam has recently adopted a similar approach, giving demos and free-to-play titles more prominent placement on its storefront. The change is part of a broader response to developers' increasing focus on free playable promotions.
Users browsing the tabs midway down Steam's front page may notice that Valve has introduced a new section dedicated to highlighting items like demos and free-to-play games. These recent changes to the storefront are part of Valve's efforts to help users more easily discover and manage free content.
The new "Trending Free" tab is positioned alongside lists for new releases, top sellers, upcoming games, and discounts, just below the main selections on Steam's store page. Currently, it features items like the demo for Worshippers of Cthulhu and the free benchmark tool for Black Myth: Wukong.
Steam has long featured sections for demos and free-to-play games, but the links to these sections were previously buried in the store's category list. Moving them to a prominent position in the new tab on the front page significantly increases their visibility.
Valve is responding to a growing trend where developers release free games, often with "Prologue" in the title, as a way to promote larger commercial releases instead of submitting traditional demos. This strategy effectively doubled a game's shelf space, as demos were confined to the main release's store page while prologues benefited from the added visibility of a separate listing. However, many users complained that these free promos could easily be mistaken for full games.
Steam's new policy addresses this issue by giving demos their own distinct pages, eliminating the need for prologues. Additionally, the change allows users to add demos to their libraries without installing them, making it easier to manage and remove demos when desired.
Players can now write reviews and receive notifications specifically for demos. As a result of these changes, the "Trending Free" section now consolidates demos, prologues, and other free software.
Additionally, new rules for store page descriptions prohibit linking to external websites or other Steam games. Valve has also banned the use of images that imitate the Steam user interface.
These changes, effective in early September, are aimed at developers who previously linked paid titles on the store pages of free promos. Under the new regulations, demo pages will automatically include links to the full game.