Steam Guest Passes - New Info

[-smash-]

Thanks to The Steam Review, new information regarding the forgotten subject of Steam "guest passes" have surfaced. But, what exactly is the objective behind these Steam guest passes? It's fairly self-explanatory, actually. Via Steam friends or email, free passes to participating multiplayer games will be made available to those that purchase the game so that they can distribute free trials to a select few of their friends. The Steam Review explains...

The big question is how the guess passes will be handled and restricted; the good news is that most of the story can be extracted from the steamui_english.txt file.

• There are only so many guest passes per game
• Passes can only be held in receipt by one account at a time
• Passes are returned to you after each use and can be resent
• You can only send someone a guest pass once every 24 hours
• An account cannot receive a guest pass for the same game twice
• Guest passes "expire" after an indefinite amount of time (minutes, hours and days are mentioned)

The question of how well Valve will be able to keep this concept from being exploited by those malicious few still stands. I guess we'll have to wait and see as this develops further.[br]More information can be found at SteamReview.orghttp://www.steamreview.org/posts/guestpasses/.

 

[Qonfused]

Oh, damn, that's cool.

 

[Trooper]

Very cool idea. Let's hope it can be controlled properly to avoid exploits.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

This sounds fantastic, it's obviously to lure people in but what the hell! Friends will give passes, find the fun playing with friends together and miss the experience to the point of wanting to buy the game, very clever!

 

[xombine]

Valve is too damn good.

 

[-smash-]

This sounds fantastic, it's obviously to lure people in but what the hell!

And I've been waiting for this! :thumbs:

I fear that, maybe the reason behind developers are not jumping onto this digital distribution thing [for launch titles] is that because casual/average gamers are not aware of this method of purchasing games (Steam more specifically), they feel that it is way too risky to spend big $$$ on something so infamous.

Hopefully this strategy will spread like a virus; Letting the little people in on our secret.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

In such a case we can all jump out from behind the bushes and proclaim "WE LIKED THIS BEFORE IT WAS COOL!"

 

[Trooper]

In such a case we can all jump out from behind the bushes and proclaim "WE LIKED THIS BEFORE IT WAS COOL!"

But of course, that goes without saying. :cheers:

 

[bigburpco]

Saw this already, but still darn cool. Can't wait.

 

[Hypnosos]

It sounds interesting.

 

[ríomhaire]

Steam is one of the best marketing tools ever.