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Comment by shittyadmin | Hacker News Reader

I think the classic "shareware demo" model is a good one, have some free stuff to introduce the user and make sure they like the game, then give them a wall and tell them to pay if they want more. It's fair to them and fair to you. It doesn't violate their privacy, it makes sure your customers actually want to be your customers (reducing chargebacks because the game has an issue for someone) and you get paid without polluting your art.

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I actually like a "skill shareware" (my made up name) model in puzzle games. When you have lots of levels, you split them into groups. You can only advance to the next one if you solve all previous ones perfectly, (3 stars / 100% / some other metric) or pay for full unlock.

I've never been on the other side, so I don't know how well that converts. But as a customer, I love the idea. "Euclidea" does this for example: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hil_hk.euc... They also have IAP for dark mode.

As a customer it may be great, but this isn't great for the developer in my opinion. Perhaps it's just the way I play, but I will already refuse to advance until I've got a level fully beaten, so I'll basically keep at that until I get bored of your game or beat it fully and you'll never see a penny from me.

To add to this a bit, it also provides a motivation for developers to make games that are too hard and will force users to pay if they want to enjoy them, but people who play like I do will get bored quickly.

This is why I loved the old Peggle games from PopCap but hate the new mobile one.

I miss this model for games. Demo disks were my favorite thing in the world. I'd play a demo a dozen times or so before I decided that it was worth begging a parent to buy the game for me.

It has been a long time since I played games, but I thought games still had demos. In Steam, do you have to buy a game before playing it?

Unless it is a Free to Play game, you pay before you play. Some Early Access games start out free, but less and less now days.

Some games do have demos, but not that many.

In steam you can return for a full refund if you have played less than 2 hours within the first 14 days, so you effectively get a 2 hour demo.

To summarize the other comments:

Yes.

-Very few games provide demos.

-Steam allows refunds under certain conditions, but also reserves the right to ban accounts that abuse that system, and declines to define abuse. Therefore it's generally advisable to avoid using refunds to try games, and save them for when there is a issue.

So there is definitely a gap where demos would serve well.

I love the shareware concept. I think ads and baiting people into MTX due to the psychology of humans is making companies too much money to ignore.

Yes. As long as you clearly indicate upfront that it's a demo.

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