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submitted 1 year ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

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?

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[-] smeg@feddit.uk 6 points 1 year ago

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"!

this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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