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The Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition is coming in October, and it will likely have a more manageable selection of demos to play than last time.
Valve announced the next round of its Steam Game Festival series in a post to its official Steamworks development community. The post reveals that the Autumn Edition of the Steam Festival will run from October 7th to 13th, and it will be followed by further festivals in 2021 (so don't expect a Winter Edition this year). In order for a game to be included in the next Steam Game Festival event, it must have a planned release date set for any time between October 13, 2020 and May 1, 2021.
The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition had no date-related submission criteria, and it ended up offering more than 900 demos to play all in the space of a week. It's not like it's bad to have a bunch of stuff to play for free, but it could be frustrating if you were hoping to try them all, or if you were a developer aiming to get your game noticed in the crowd. Hopefully these release date requirements will make for a more focused festival experience.
On top of letting Steam users play a bunch of demos for free, Valve will also encourage participating developers to host gameplay streams and live Q&A sessions throughout the event. I'm still clinging to a dimming hope that the virus will have been completely contained by October so we can spend the whole month sipping PSLs while doing spooky Halloween things outside, but failing that, this should be a nice way to pass a week.
