About Demo Disc

Demo Disc is a weekly newsletter dedicated to spotlighting the best video game demos on Steam. It's written, curated, and smoked for thirty days by Rick Lane, a freelance video game journalist with more than a decade of experience.

Why on Earth did you start this?

The number of games added to Steam is growing signficantly every year. And despite having covered the industry for years, I've recently begun to feel like the extent of the medium is eluding my grasp. My hope is this newsletter will help me (and you) keep track of what games are coming out, and what's worth playing beyond the Global Top Sellers on the Steam chart.

What types of demos will you spotlight?

I don't plan to limit recommendations to any particular genres. Ideally, I'd like the selection of games in each newsletter to be fairly broad. I probably won't feature demos for hugely anticipated games or games from major franchises, because you likely already know whether you want to play those or not. That said, this isn't strictly a newsletter about small indie games. I want this newsletter to serve its readers. So if you really want to know about the demo for, say, Final Fantasy 16, let me know and I'll consider how to include games like that.

Is Demo Disc free?

Demo Disc in its current form is, and always will be, free to subscribe to. Should the newsletter gain a sufficient following, I may consider monetising it in some manner, whether that's a paid version with additional demos, an extra newsletter for paying subscribers, a shiny apple for every paid sub, or something else.

Why five demos a week? Why not six, or ten, or twenty?

I want Demo Disc to be a highly curated selection of demos, rather than a list of every demo that comes out. In my idealised vision for Demo Disc, I imagined readers checking out the newsletter on a Friday morning, downloading the demos, then coming home from work or school or the Institute to play them in the evening. With that in mind, I figured five demos was the right number for a single evening's entertainment. Also, five per week is roughly twenty per month, similar to what you'd get on a monthly magazine's demo disc.

I made a cool game and it has a demo! Can I recommend it to you?

Absolutely. Send me an email at rick[at]ricklane.co.uk with a link to the demo and a quick explanation of what it's about, and I'll take a look at it. I can't guarantee it'll feature in the newsletter, but I'm always happy to try new games.

I have a question that isn't answered by this page. What do I do?

Again, send me an email at rick[at]ricklane.co.uk, and I will endeavour to answer it in a timely fashion.