Steam drops a ton of free downloads for November

With so many video games on offer - old, new, and upcoming - it can be tricky to find what truly tickles our fancy. After all, a marketing campaign for a video game can make it look to be the best ever, but reality may come crashing down when we actually play those hyped games.

Now and again, we have the opportunity to experience playable demos. Try before you buy, if you will. Back in the early 90s and into the 2000s, playable demos were commonplace, mostly in the form of demo discs via magazines.

Check out the Street Fighter 6 trailer below!

In the rise of digital platforms, playable demos were also very prominent on the PS3’s PSN Store as well as the Xbox 360’s Marketplace. Unfortunately, the opportunity to test-run games eventually dwindled over time and that luxury can mostly now be seen paywalled behind the likes of Sony’s PlayStation Plus Premium subscription tier.

Yet, if you’re a PC gamer and you want a flurry of playable demos to get your mitts on, then Steam has you covered this month. At the time of writing, Steam is running an Autumn Sale promotion which ends today, so if you want to bag a bargain, time is of short supply. Thankfully, however, even if you miss out on sale tidy discounts, this promotion also highlights free playable demo downloads, many of which will still exist once the Autumn Sale promotion is over.

There are simply too many games to mention, but we’ll give you a quick rundown with the best picks of the bunch. Playable demos available right now on Steam include Hitman 3, Final Fantasy XIV Online, Deltarune, Football Manager 2024, Last Train Home, Far Cry 6, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Street Fighter 6, Detroit: Become Human, plus many more.

Head on over to Steam right now and bag yourself loads of free playable demo downloads, and you might even discover that those games have a discount on the price of the full game. Happy days!