The Steam Game Festival is returning this Autumn with more indie demos for players to try in advance of their full releases. This will be the fourth Steam Game Festival, with the first taking place last winter. That festival only featured 14 demos, with the number growing in each successive iteration.
The Steam Game Festival received a triumphant return this spring when it was introduced as a replacement for this year's GDC, which was cancelled due to the coronavirus. The spring festival vastly expanded the size of its predecessor by offering over 40 game demos for Steam users to try. The event was such a success that it returned again this summer and blew both of its previous iterations out of the water by offering over 900 playable game demos.
Now, Steam is gearing up to do it again. A new Steamworks update serves as a call to action for developers to prepare playable demos for the upcoming Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition, which according to the update is set to take place from October 7th to October 13th. The opt-in window for developers opens next Wednesday and runs for a week. Steam offers developers who might be interested a brief overview of the process, including building the demo, updating the game's store page, and preparing to opt in when the window opens. Steam also specified that the game's release date needs to fall between October 13th, 2020 and May 1st, 2021 for it to be eligible for the festival.
Since this announcement is geared toward developers who might want to participate in the Game Festival, there is of course no information yet about what games will be featured. There's also no indication about the size or scope of the festival, which are likely still being determined. The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition is going to be a hard one to top, but Steam has held fast to an upward trend so far. Interestingly, the Steamworks post does mention that there are going to be future Game Festivals in 2021, as another way for indie devs to get their games out there. With the huge amount of games that have been showcased at previous events, it's unsurprising that Steam wants to keep the ball rolling.
Independent developers are responsible for a lot of revolutionary games that have changed the gaming industry for the better. Groundbreaking titles like Undertale and Shovel Knight have come from humble origins to achieve recognition and fame on par with the biggest AAA titles on the market. The Steam Game Festival is an excellent way for games like these to get the recognition and attention they need to become successes. Even if the Autumn festival isn't as richly populated as the Summer one, it's sure to have a lot of high-quality games on offer that players might otherwise never have heard of, and for that reason, it will definitely be worth stopping by Steam when October rolls around.
Source: Steamworks