Man, I had really wanted to play/post about more Next Fest demos, or even do a video on a handful of them, but I got busy in the latter half of the week and the whole event just kinda came and went, huh.
I get why small devs with limited budgets can't keep demos available, generating support requests (and bad PR when the devs don't patch it) for a build from six months ago or whatever. I get it! But the limited time nature of these simultaneously grants a flurry of attention and yet closes the door way before anyone but hardcore enthusiasts can get to them. There were dozens and dozens of demos, and I tried maybe six of them.
And, yeah, some devs will opt to leave the demo up with a clear "THIS IS A JUNE 2023 DEMO BUILD" warning and such, but finding those demos is now gonna fall back on Steam's usual (dogshit) discoverability. When the festival was going they were all conveniently in one place.
Just kinda bummed about the whole thing, I guess.
I could write for hours about this, but “your success and support is measured by the performance of hardcore enthusiasts who are logged in and participate in an online store community in a short time window” is one of the core fundamentals underpinning both the Steam Store discovery algorithm and Valve’s store team engaging with you as a developer.
It’s a real Jursssic Park novel “we only checked if there were less dinosaurs, not more” situation.
(Having said all that: I like the short time window for the event, but I think there are better ways of handling that “oh man, I took a look at the list of games, but then I blinked and it was gone” feeling and experience in a world where other industries already account for delayed engagement on “event” content - they just conflict with the kinds of data and store engagement Valve is gathering here)