Steam users celebrate "welcome change' that makes free games more accessible

Sometimes it’s the most simple improvements that can make the biggest difference whether that's implemented in a video game sequel or even browsing on digital platforms such as the PlayStation Store or Xbox Marketplace.

One such simple but welcomed change has been made on the PC platform, Steam and it’s been very much welcomed by the community. The change in question comes in the form of making free playable demos more accessible.

Check out the Euro Truck Simulator 2 demo below!

“Steam has just kicked all the demos from the 'New & Trending' tab into the new separate 'Trending Free' tab - A Welcome change,” exclaimed Redditor Vox___Rationis kicking off the discussion on the thread.

Now, the ‘Trending Free’ tab sits alongside ‘New & Trending’, ‘Top Sellers’, ‘Popular Upcoming’ and ‘Specials’ on the Steam store homepage. This will make it a lot easier to not only filter through the thousands of free demos on Steam but also those that are worth checking out.

“An extremely welcome change indeed, the New & Trending tab was essentially unusable,” replied Naftak with Miserable_Abroad3972 simply saying “Thank you, Gabe [Newell]!”, a nod to the co-founder of Valve and Steam

This tab hasn't quite been implemented to perfection just yet, as it also includes free-to-play titles, which is a very different form of a free game compared to a bite-sized demo, as asked by Evilcon21. “I do question about the free-to-play games. I may sound like an absolute idiot for asking about it, but do they also apply to free trending,” they said.

Reddit user Phyrolito replied: “I think that free games are not equal to demos as well. It was hurting the normal trending tab but now the demos seem to be taking places where actual free games could be.”

However, at the very bottom of the ‘Trending Free’ tab, you can select ‘Free to Play’ and ‘Demos’ to bring up a separate page for each, rather than a singular chart. Hopefully, this is just the next small step to improving the Steam store as a whole and maybe soon, free-to-play games and demos will have separate trending tabs.