To Remove or Not to Remove the Demo Version After a Game's Release — Analysis by Chris Zhukovsky
Game marketing expert Chris Zukowski shared his thoughts on his How To Market A Game blog about whether or not to keep a demo version available post-launch or to remove it. He supported his opinion with statistics from indie games that were released on Steam in 2025 and received over a thousand reviews.
Rue Valley — one of the games that still has a demo version on Steam
Let's start with the statistics.
As Zukowski noticed, the creators of the vast majority of the games he analyzed removed their demos, with only 21.7% of projects still having them available.
Steam tags with the highest share of still available demos:
- Soulslikes — 66.67%;
- City builders — 50%;
- Rhythm games — 50%;
- Farming simulators — 40%;
- Automation — 40%;
- Creature collectors — 40%;
- Puzzle games — 35.71%.
Statistics on Steam tags
According to Zukowski, the issue of demos usually concerns horror developers and small games with linear narratives the most. They fear that after playing the demo, gamers will lose interest in purchasing the full game. Nevertheless, authors of 30% of horror games and 27% of narrative games took the risk and kept their demos. Judging by the fact that they managed to gather over a thousand reviews, it did not prevent them from attracting an audience.
Zukowski also looked into whether keeping a demo affects the visibility of games on Steam a month after release, when the initial launch hype has settled. In short — no. Games with a demo have an average subscriber increase of 10.62 people per day, while games without a demo have 10.57 people per day.
However, the presence or absence of demos does affect game ratings. According to the expert's calculations, in his examined sample, games with a demo received an average of 89.83% positive reviews, whereas games without a demo had a lower average of 82.22% positive reviews.
In Zukowski's opinion, prior to release, a demo is critically important for game promotion: it helps with entry into festivals and attracting streamers. However, post-launch, the situation becomes less clear-cut.
“My main advice: if your demo is good and people like it, keep it. But if maintaining it takes a lot of effort and requires regular patches, you might remove it without significantly affecting visibility,” Zukowski concluded.