Five or ten years ago, one of the best ways to quickly get a feel for a wide variety of titles was looking for free, limited-content demo versions of games that were distributed via disc or download. However, in today’s world of free-to-play games, $1 mobile downloads, and 90 percent off Steam sales, that traditional idea of a game demo is starting to seem a little long in the tooth. The new Origin Game Time demo program that EA is launching Fall of the Titans this weekend is an interesting update to the concept that we hope will get some legs.
Starting this weekend, players will be able to download the full version of Fall of the Titans and play it as many times as they want during a 48 hour period. The clock starts when you first load the game and continues to run whether you play or not, so you might not want to sleep if you really want to make the most of the free chance. It’s just like the free weekend trials that Valve periodically offers on Steam, except you can choose the 48-hour free play period instead of playing on the platform’s schedule.
If you decide to buy the game after the trial period, you get to keep all the progression and experience points you’ve collected in your free time. That takes away one of the biggest frustrations of playing most game demos or betas: the prospect of having to start over with the “real” game when you’re done.
The Fall of the Titans The Game Time promotion will launch on EA’s free games page worldwide “in the next few hours,” and EA says more games will be coming to the Game Time program in the future, with varying amounts of free time for each. We can only hope that other publishers and platform holders will be just as forward-thinking with their free demos in the future.