Steam gets game trials with Dead Space being first, plus Valve dumps Google Analytics

Although if you're on desktop Linux, you might want Proton Experimental which recently enabled the NVAPI for it (for NVIDIA GPUs).

For those that aren't aware, you can enable NVAPI for those games that don't have it automatically enabled with
PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 %command%
as the launch option.

The game trial thing seems like a somewhat more convenient and automatic way to try out games compared to "abusing" the refund mechanic? Though the limited time offer seems... weird?! There is probably some business argument that weights the cost of refunding against when people miss the refund window and are stuck with the purchase...

Nintendo offered free downloadable game demos for the 3DS and Wii U*, for AAA games and indies both, and it was a great way to see whether a game was to your liking or not. My kid is still feeling out his tastes in video games, and it was an excellent feature for them. I like the idea of this being available for Steam, too.

* It looks like this is technically a feature for the Switch, but the selection is much more limited than in previous consoles.

Steam has had Demos for a long time, but of course it has depended on the developer. So is the Trial just time limited "you can play the first 30m of the game" Seems like it'd be much easier to deal with, that's for sure (from a developer's point of view). Wonder how this works with Early Access games... Like do they renew the trial whenever there is a huge new patch?

Valve helping us divorce first from Microsoft, and now from Google? I must be dreaming.

Steam has had Demos for a long time, but of course it has depended on the developer. So is the Trial just time limited "you can play the first 30m of the game" Seems like it'd be much easier to deal with, that's for sure (from a developer's point of view). Wonder how this works with Early Access games... Like do they renew the trial whenever there is a huge new patch?

On the one hand, it might be better to just play the actual game (albeit for a limited time) than the demo (case in point: Dying Light's demo was not especially convincing, because the player was dropped into the middle of a late game mission; playing the game since the beginning was much more enjoyable and I was very glad I eventually bought it despite playing the demo), on the other hand in some games it takes 1h to get through the introduction, and also the time is still flowing if you need to step away from the computer and leave the game open (young parents probably know it all too well). We'll see how it goes.

Valve mentions their focus on user privacy. An interesting point here is that Valve are dropping support for Google Analytics as "Google’s tracking solutions don't align well with our approach to customer privacy" and so they're building the more useful parts directly into Steam.

Sounds good to me..... The more companies get away from the likes of Google the better.......

Valve also separated the Steam Play enable checkboxes. The new default checkbox only allows you to install Windows games if the Steam Compatibility Tool says it’s okay. There is now a second checkbox for installing all software with Steam Play. Very very very annoying when I tried to install Yume Nikku.

Valve mentions their focus on user privacy. An interesting point here is that Valve are dropping support for Google Analytics as "Google’s tracking solutions don't align well with our approach to customer privacy" and so they're building the more useful parts directly into Steam.

Sounds good to me..... The more companies get away from the likes of Google the better.......

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Steam Deck UI and the new Steam desktop UI are based on CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework). The same browser basis steam used for web browsing in its previous revisions of Steam. So they've become even more dependent upon google imo.

Valve also separated the Steam Play enable checkboxes. The new default checkbox only allows you to install Windows games if the Steam Compatibility Tool says it’s okay. There is now a second checkbox for installing all software with Steam Play. Very very very annoying when I tried to install Yume Nikku.

Say what now? That's how it's been from the very beginning. They only changed it for Steam Deck.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Steam Deck UI and the new Steam desktop UI are based on CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework). The same browser basis steam used for web browsing in its previous revisions of Steam. So they've become even more dependent upon google imo.

Eh, Chromium is open source (with a very permissive license, too, from having a quick look at the license file). It is no more dependent upon a single dev or company than other projects.
Would Google drop it, the community would more than likely just pick it up.

There is no harm in such projects, same as something like using React.js in projects. Yeah, it's made by Faceb-... uhhhh "Meta", but it stands on its own.
And the dependency would only exist in case it was closed source, which it thankfully is not.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 17 May 2023 at 5:31 am UTC

Valve also separated the Steam Play enable checkboxes. The new default checkbox only allows you to install Windows games if the Steam Compatibility Tool says it’s okay. There is now a second checkbox for installing all software with Steam Play. Very very very annoying when I tried to install Yume Nikku.

Say what now? That's how it's been from the very beginning. They only changed it for Steam Deck.

I don’t think so, why would I have it disabled on my big rig suddenly?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the Steam Deck UI and the new Steam desktop UI are based on CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework). The same browser basis steam used for web browsing in its previous revisions of Steam. So they've become even more dependent upon google imo.

Eh, Chromium is open source (with a very permissive license, too, from having a quick look at the license file). It is no more dependent upon a single dev or company than other projects.
Would Google drop it, the community would more than likely just pick it up.

There is no harm in such projects, same as something like using React.js in projects. Yeah, it's made by Faceb-... uhhhh "Meta", but it stands on its own.
And the dependency would only exist in case it was closed source, which it thankfully is not.

There are more examples, too. Think of Golang and Kubernetes. How about Visual Studio Code? When a company does something that meets my wishes, I will partake. It's fair.

I was hoping to see Plausible Analytics mentioned here. It would have been a big boost for them. Sounds like Valve are inventing their own wheel though.

Apparently, Valve has not separated from Google as much as it seems. The Steam Cloud savegames are still being hosted there. I guess moving those over to another host would be a huge pain, but please, don't stop at the Analytics, go all the way.