[DRM free][Not Steam] Memoranda and MORE!

"You should read the description carefully:
"*Childhood is still in development. This demo shows the first half an hour of our game."
So you are not going to get the game for free, this is just a demo!"

Childhood isnt free, its just the demo version.

5 years ago

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Vee79

What Never Was is also free on Steam. I played it and really enjoyed it, very short but interesting nonetheless:)

5 years ago

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adam1224

I think you should try Marie's Room if you haven't played it yet :)
Similar tones, different setting and story.

5 years ago*

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heyday

Thanks. Were both games always free on Steam?
Edit: Ah nevermind, I looked it up on SteamDB and they were always free to play. ;)

5 years ago*

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Vee79

Thanks, I'll give it a try. It looks like a game I would really enjoy, surprising how many interesting game you can find for free on Steam these day and I guess it's a great way for devs too get recognizance.

5 years ago

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adam1224

I played like a dozen different free to play games, mostly under 1 hour (or even 20 minutes) in the past months, and I found some really cool ones. Though they have issues with the "profile features limited" tag as I noticed, which is sad - hard to recommend a game where you need name- and link-drop to do that, as it doesn't even appear on your profile.

Shameless recommendation: FrostRunner was also a really cool grappling hook - runner game, a bit similar to A Story About My Uncle in terms of mechanics, just easier, and individual challenge levels. Some devs could learn from them, as they made air-control a challenge, while landing was made easier. So despite kind of being a first person runner/platformer , it doesn't have the problem most first person platformers suffer from.
Luckily somehow I got these recommendations from the discovery queue :D

5 years ago

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Vee79

Thanks for the recommendation, it got some awesome reviews. I'm still unsure how the "profile features limited" works. I means this game has 1 272 reviews, most of them positive, that should be enough to tell that it's a proper game.

5 years ago

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heyday

I actually wondered this myself as I gave it a second thought. When Steam's criteria to fully approve a game includes the amount of sales without any exceptions for free games, every new F2P game won't ever reach this goal and will forever be on limited status. How ridiculous would that even be? Maybe Valve did this intentionally but who knows.

5 years ago*

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Vee79

Oh I didn't realize it had to do only with sales, I knew they took sales into consideration but somehow I thought it was mostly reviews. You're right that's pretty ridiculous, if sale is a criteria then they should at the very least have a special exception for F2P game.

5 years ago

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heyday

I'm assuming the sales figures are also part of these obscure criteria.
As far as I know, Valve hasn't revealed the exact details of these measures, just because to prevent devs from exploiting it. ;)
But Valve cannot be so ignorant and dumb to not make exceptions for F2P games, although as we can see, "What Never Was" with over 1000 positive reviews hasn't met the criteria yet, where on the other hand many asset flips are approved.
Oh Valve. :o

5 years ago

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Linkblade

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile

"Q. What metrics are used to qualify a game for profile customization features?
A. Our confidence metric is based on sales and player engagement figures. We do not include data from user reviews, wishlists, total playtime, or any other judgment of the "quality" of the game. We're simply looking for a broad player base."

So reviews and playtime are out. "Player engagement" could mean amount of total unique players, 24hour peak concurrent player count, user uploads (screenshots, videos, workshop levels, ...), maybe also traffic on the points shop items or the market items (trading cards, emoticons, backgrounds, avatars, ...), but I think that the amount of total unique players and the 24h peak concurrent player count should be the components with the biggest influence.

2 years ago

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Mayanaise

Copy-pasting the same response into two different 3 year old threads which link to each other is also entirely unnecessary.

2 years ago

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weirdfish

Marie's Room is a complete game, unlike What Never Was, and it's properly good.

5 years ago

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heyday

Wow thanks for your recommendation, I didn't even know this game before and I'm really surprised that such a new and enjoyable game is free on Steam. ;)

5 years ago

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Vee79

You're welcome:)

5 years ago

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weirdfish

What Never Was isn't a game, it's just a cramped room and a few puzzles.

It's a teaser on the best of days. And the full game isn't exactly behind the corner, if you believe the devs.

5 years ago