Five years after Valve kicked off its first Steam Game Festival (now known as Steam Next Fest), the company is making changes to the way it handles demos. In short, it's reducing the amount of work involved in finding and processing demos in libraries.

In a blog post published yesterday, Valve announced that it is changing the way it handles appetizers based on “feedback trends from both developers and players regarding process and functionality.”

First, adding a demo to the Steam library no longer requires immediate installation (at least in my case, I had to close Steam's install prompt tab after hitting the play button to get the demo). with Steam's free-to-play games. Similarly, demos now have a convenient “Add to Library” button that allows you to save them to your game list without being prompted to install them immediately. It also allows users to install demos of games they already own.

In addition to the Add to Library button, demos are now more like free games and can have their own store page. Previously, demos were restricted to a small green demo box on the main game page. But from now on, it is different. Developers can create an entirely new page “to better describe the demo, add another screenshot, upload a trailer, and specify which features are supported.” It also means that as long as the demo has its own complete page, it will be subject to its own distinct user reviews and scores.

But they do not have to have one. Some demos, if the developer does not feel the need to create an entirely new one, will simply appear as an additional option on the main game page and will not be subject to user review scores.

But that's not all. Demos now appear on the Steam home page under charts such as “New and Trending” and related tag and category pages, and Valve has also “changed some of the thresholds for free products to appear in these sections to better balance them with paid products .”

And finally, you can receive notifications from Steam when demos of games on your wish list or from developers you follow become available. By the time the next Steam Next Fest rolls around on October 14, your inbox might be puny.

Valve also explains to interested onlookers the identity of the strange round icons that appear on all Steam demos. It turns out to be “contained in a bound package of game journalism printed on dead wood and imprinted on a circular piece of media known as a compact disc, back in the days when demos were commonly distributed through the post office. I am older than sand.

In any case, they all sound like sensible changes to me. Maybe it's because Valve has (relatively) few employees, or maybe the company just works in mysterious ways, like introducing the option to hide games from Steam friends six years after they started selling literal pornography. Things work differently in a laissez-faire office with such a laid-back desk.