Valve will be bringing back the Steam Game Festival this summer to make up for this year’s canceled E3. The current coronavirus pandemic has affected nearly every industry and gathering in the world, and the video games industry is no exception. The Electronics Entertainment Expo, commonly known as E3, is typically one of the largest gaming conventions of the year with several presentations, game reveals, and playable demos. The 2020 edition has been completely canceled with no online replacement, and although companies like Microsoft have announced plans to host digital events, E3’s cancellation still has reverberations felt around the gaming industry, particularly for smaller studios that were relying on the large exposure an E3 reveal brings.
Before E3 was cancelled, another important game convention was affected by COVID-19: GDC, the Game Developers Conference, which was at first postponed, then had some of its presentations streamed online, until a replacement show was finally rescheduled for this August. GDC’s cancellation was a blow to indie developers who wanted to show off their projects to prospective fans and employers. Valve did their part to help these lesser known developers through the Steam Game Festival. The Steam Game Festival was first held last December, and included fourteen demos of games; the Spring edition included 40 games that were meant for GDC for users to check out and wishlist.
According to a page on the Steam store, the Steam Game Festival will be returning in the summer, from June 9th to 14th. The Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition will celebrate “upcoming games through demos and live developer events”, focusing on games set to be released within the next year. As before, users will be able to play demos or “short playable experiences” and be able to wishlist them for a release-day reminder.
No information about the types of games shown has been provided, but an option for developers to register signals that it will likely follow the previous two Steam Game Festivals by highlighting indie games. However, since the Festival begins on the same day E3 was meant to start, it’s not impossible that some bigger studios will “attend”. The number of games featured has also not been disclosed, although since this is being announced two months in advance, it’s likely that it will at least match the 40 games shown off in the Spring edition.
Valve’s established digital platform has been an outlet for those bored and stuck in quarantine. Concurrent user numbers have seen record-breaking highs, and Valve had to get innovative to limit bandwidth to deal with the influx of gamers in the midst of a pandemic. Providing demos and free trials of popular games benefits both players and developers alike in these uncertain weeks, and also could point to how things will work in the future. The success (or lack thereof) of these digital events could prove the end of AAA gaming conventions like E3–at least as we know it. Check out Steam’s attempt to fix the E3-sized hole in the gaming calendar when the Steam Game Festival launches on June 9th.
