Steam Game Festival Kicks Off With 40 Free Game Demos

With the current social situation, many of us are confined to our homes with pretty much all social plans abandoned, so you may be wondering how you're going to occupy your time this weekend. Or maybe not - we're gamers after all. But still, it's good to have a choice of games and Steam is giving us a helping hand in that regard with its Spring Game Festival.

The Festival is already in full swing and will run until Monday (March 23). During that time, you'll be able to download up to 40 free game demos that were originally intended for this year's GDC which was cancelled at the end of February, due to concerns over the coronavirus (or COVID-19).

The cancellation of the event was a huge blow to many developers who were hoping to showcase their games for the first time. Luckily, Geoff Keighley, host of The Game Awards, got together with Steam to allow those developers to bring their games to players worldwide via the Spring Game Festival. Steam describes these demos as "first-look" versions and they're the same as you'd have been able to play, had you been attending this year's GDC.

The Game Festival has its own hub page on Steam and as well as giving you access to the available demos, you can check out live broadcasts from the developers as they showcase their different games. You can find the Game Festival page here.with a full list of what's available.

Valve

This isn't the first time Steam has held an event like this. If you cast your minds back to The Game Awards held in December, you may remember the first Game Festival where players were encouraged to download demos so they could experience the games for themselves.

It's a really neat idea and a great way for smaller, indie studios to get their games noticed, as well as giving you more games to play. I mean, okay they're only demos but they're free to download and play. And who knows? Maybe you'll find a hidden gem in there.

In related news, Steam broke its record for the most concurrent users again last weekend, hitting a pretty astounding 20 million. That's 1.1 million over the previous record which was broken a month earlier. Perhaps the Spring Game Festival will help push that figure even higher this weekend?

Topics: Steam