![]() ![]() Granted, it’s easier for a developer to be confident in people trialling their game when, as with Anno 1800, it’s been out for four years (on PC) and has a long track record of success, but maybe a push towards free trials would ensure that those who aren’t confident in their product will hold off releasing it, knowing that not having a free trial is a bit of a bad look in this trial-ful utopia that I’m envisioning.įree trials do exist in various forms already, but they’re relatively limited and often with caveats. I say this as someone who ranked Elden Ring their #1 game of 2022, but the amount of poor folks I saw on social media who were utterly flummoxed by the game’s trademark FromSoft obscurity suggests that they’d have appreciated knowing what fresh hell they were signing up for by actually playing it first. Martin open-world RPG’ marketing got to play it for eight hours. Meanwhile, I’m sure that Elden Ring’s sales would’ve looked a bit different had casual players who bought into its highly effective ‘George R.R. ![]() A couple of hours in something like Stray would suffice, while a couple of weeks should give you an idea if an online shooter or premium service game is your kinda jam. Being a sprawling city-builder strategy game, Anno 1800 is aiming to get its hooks into players over the long haul, so a week isn’t an obscene amount of time. Naturally, developers would tailor the length of the free trial to the type of game it is. RELATED: 10 Best City-Building Games, Ranked It could also help cut down on publishers releasing their games in unfinished states, instead of the current practice of effectively using Day One buyers as QA testers/Early Access adopters, even though they never signed up to being either. It got me thinking: wouldn’t it be amazing if this was standard practice for triple-A games development? If free launch-day trials became industry standard, then it’d be a great way of separating devs that are confident in what they’re releasing versus those who know that their game is a bug-ridden mess (because if you really believe in your game, then why wouldn’t you want people to properly sample it). ![]() There’s a little irony there, because you can also preorder Anno 1800 should you wish, but hey, at least all options are available to you (though, frankly, I think people who preorder a game when they can trial it first need to have a long hard think about their lack of consumer savvy). It’s basically the opposite of a preorder–which asks that you put your money down before even knowing what the game is like. How cool is that? You get to figure out whether the game is for you by playing it for a week with no strings attached. It was full, unadulterated access to the game for a whole week. This wasn't a carefully curated demo that isolates you in a polished part of the game while everything around it is an underdeveloped mess, nor an open beta where you get to play an unfinished version of the game for free for a bit in exchange for precious data. Ubisoft does not commit to providing customer support for the demo.In one of the coolest acts of developer confidence in recent memory, Ubisoft let us play its impressive city-builder Anno 1800 free for an entire week when it launched on PS5 and Xbox Series on March 16. Please note that maintenance may also occur at any time during this period, rendering you unable to access parts or all of the demo. This demo is provided AS-IS, may not contain the same content as the full/final game, may not function as expected, and may crash. *This software is a free demo of Anno 1800, playable from 11th December, 2019 2pm CET to 18th December, 2019 6pm CET. To play Anno for free this week, please visit:
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