It died because to make games fit on discs/media they need to be compact making it very hard to ship a limited version without shipping all content. Back in the days generally all the "try before you buy" games shipped the full content leading to cracks that simply unlocked it.

Today a company that doesn't have a hard-on for DRM could of course run with the model and just chalk up piracy to advertisment and people that wouldn't buy the game anyway. Kinda like any company selling on GOG.

Of course those are the minority, most companies want / need DRM in some form and the model just works against it. It might be possible to make it work with something like Denuvo but I doubt anyone would be happy about that.

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Demos are wide spread these days. There's a ton of them for a wide range of games available on steam and the switch store. They've made a big comeback the past few years.

[–] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Helped by Steam having regular demo centered events. Which are awesome!

[–] supercritical@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Heck, I just played the demo for Octopath Traveler 2, but this was a self-published demo by the studio. It was enough for me to know this game wasn't for me but I'm thankful I didn't have to buy it and refund it as a result.

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Same. But I also played the triangle strategy demo and definitely want to get that eventually, which I wasn't going to do because of Octopath.

Long live the demo