Thx for the demo! Not sure if I'd like this game, so it's nice to be able to take it for a test run first. ;) My only gripe with demos on GOG is that they can't be deleted from the library. They can only be "hidden".

I asked this question because I posses knowledge about technical aspects of insides of Steam. So I know that there are for example expiring licenses there.
Also Valve has major amount of it's documentation publicly available...
Which cannot be said about GOG...
In general regards GOGs documentation is basically non existent as far as public access goes.
And GOG has been so far ridiculously unclear on such occasions what "available until" means. It could very well mean "obtainable until" but could as well be "no longer downloadable after".
As things stand it's uber unclear.

I tend to dig the free demos for one reason besides testing the game. FREE PROFILE WALLPAPER! :D but yeah I'd wish there was a way to remove demos for good off accounts as an option besides hiding them.

Yes, GOG are not very clear.

That said, I still have all 88 demos listed in my library. The very first one I got was System Shock over 3 years ago.

I have an independent list in an Excel file, that lists 91 demos at GOG, but two of those belong to full games, and the third was the temporary Spellforce 3 Free Preview, which was later removed from our libraries, as we were told and expected.

EDIT
Make that 88 + 2 = 90 now, which also includes the newly added Disjunction Demo.

https://www.gog.com/game/disjunction_demo

I already own this game, but demos are great. In the early days of pc gaming there was almost always a demo available. They usually had the first stage or two. If you were subscribed to pc gamer (before it turned into trash) you got a disc full of the latest demos every month. Then there were the "shareware" discs you could buy at places like kmart for $5 or $10 that had a decent portion of the game to try out. Back then it was just another advantage of pc over consoles. Im glad to see more and more demos recently so we have a chance to try before we buy, i think it shows the devs confidence in their product

My whole point is:
Steam has said functionality (expiring licenses) available. You can also check every single (public, so not prerelease or "access hidden") subid for exact specifications if you know it's number.
Meanwhile GOG is so ridiculously unclear and their documentation is NOT public, that people even with high technical knowledge like me are forced to guess.
I would say, if GOG does NOT currently have this kind of functionality somewhere in their system it's only a matter of time before they implement it (even with their exceptionally slow pace of impleneting some common sense code practises). And I would say there is a high chance said functionality is already on GOG and they may use it any time - question is - is this the time?

Consoles have homebrew. And there were demo discs in the past, although not many users had them (afaik they weren't TOO popular outside of Japan).

Yeah, demos are definitely a good thing. I don't understand the industry trend of not making them. It doesn't really cost a lot to make one. It's not like in the past when demos were often some custom levels that weren't in a full game. Now it's almost always "play until a moment X" (like a certain X showing up in a certain remake with a number 2 in the name). So it is just a matter of copying content and excluding majority of it, making QA for cutoff points and wrapping it.

The industry wouldn't even have to make demos. A time limited stream cutting off at x-amount.hrs(); allowing to gain an firsthand impression and the option to buy from GOG, Steam, Epic ... Steam weekend like.

Yes, this would tie customers to a client by necessity, which many are opposed. Yet this would open up another source of income for developers both big and small. Unlocking additional play time, x-amount.hrs() = get.sum-money(); Say 5 Euro or dollars will unlock an additional 3 hours up to expected total play time which is logged and monitored. Publishers and/or developers could offer the amount already paid as discount on purchase and allow continuing to play on/offline and download save states from a cloud service. No additional work is required as almost all Online shops offer clients, necessary services, only lacking the option to buy time in addition to the full game.

It is up to developers or AAA studios to determine the initial amount of time to unlock necessary to allow a customer to gain a good first impression. Long enough to incentivize potential customers to hit that buy button after time has run out. The only other thing they would have to consider is the amount asked for to unlock additional time. Several variables could be used to come up with a balanced price.

For customers the benefit is that they will see and get to experience exactly what's in the game at any given point in time. A time-locked full version would by necessity always have to receive updates and patches reflecting the current state a game is in so there aren't any surprises in case you decide to play and buy. This can't be said from demos. They are released with a disclaimer stating that content may be subject to change. Consider playing a demo released months back and finding content you may have enjoyed in your demo session is gone in the full version. You would not like that and wouldn't have bought the game if you knew.

I for one would absolutely love to see something like this being realized. I would even go so far as to say that this would cause me to use Galaxy. If only for that as once I buy a game it's going to be available for download always from my library.

A time limited demo? Whose genius idea was that :P

I still have it (the full thing) on the wishlist. 85 bucks are a bit extreme though; dunno if I find time for the demo. Dunno if it will even convince me. But at least thanks for that cheap laugh :D

Time limited extendable full version! ;-)

Trialware exists since forever and there are time limited demos out there. Divinity Original Sin 2 was limited to two or three hours. XBOX actually started to offer time limited trials a couple of years ago and it caught on with many who bought a game they might otherwise have not.

So, the only new thing is a payment model to unlock additional playtime on top of the option to buy the full version after time limit expires. This would be the better option to make another case for my idea. :-)

I know about limited play time; I was talking about the limited time to even get the demo like its an exclusive ice cream flavor ;)

I know what you've been talking about and this is indeed not the smartest thing to do. On the one hand it draws attention and people show interest but on the other leaving people behind who might have had an interest to give it a whirl who heard about the game late and had to miss out on it. Ancient Forge Studios did this recently with The Tenants. They released a demo for a limited time during Steam Autumn Festival.

Worse even to impose a time limit on a demo that is in itself limited ... Those do exist! Its good to see demos making a comeback in recent times. Better to play a demo than eventually burning money and asking/begging for a refund.

Agree. A demo is definitely better than no at all and I doubt they mind (as in wielding the piracy club) those getting shared after the limit. Although the XX GB size might limit that.

Demos certainly seem to be coming back into vogue.

But there can be other reasons why they avoid making them.

Maybe they negatively impact sales sometimes.

Many developers are strapped for time, and toward the end of projects start cutting corners and compromising (hence the bugs that are so common in the industry) ... that often doesn't lead to time to expend on providing a demo.

Do they provide a large demo, that has full game content, but has a limit built in, or do they expend time tracing and setting up, modifying even for all dependencies. It could be quite tricky to do that, especially in a timely fashion or the time allotted to make a demo.

Highly debatable.
Why?
A LOT of people pirate game LITERALLY to check if they like it and then they buy it (or not). Major amount of these people get tempted and just never buy the game if they like what they see in pirated copy so they use just that.
I would say by not providing demo you give those people more incentive to do so and thus you are making your sales even lower.

That doesn't have anything to do with what I said. That's a whole other aspect ... and I mostly agree with what you said.