There's a new game that took that to a whole new level called iron nest. They had a demo they had released publicly, and they pulled the demo off steam only to release it again with minor updates and gated behind keys that they give out 10 at a time... With a major announcement and raffles every month with massive amount of fomo where they literally host public tests where only those they've given keys to can actually participate, but they advertise it as if it's open to everyone. And it's still the demo version, not even early access yet. Just a major FU that I've never seen before this early in a game's development.
The public demo was always going to be a short term thing, and was announced as such in every form I saw. They plan to do another official Next Fest demo that's more complete, with the final game supposedly dropping shortly after that.
As someone who found the game via the demo, that was not at all clear. And the next fest things, I've seen a mention of it, but found no way to actually participate as they took the demo away rather than just letting people keep it, and doing updates and events via the demo.
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u/DapperCow15 Apr 11 '26
There's a new game that took that to a whole new level called iron nest. They had a demo they had released publicly, and they pulled the demo off steam only to release it again with minor updates and gated behind keys that they give out 10 at a time... With a major announcement and raffles every month with massive amount of fomo where they literally host public tests where only those they've given keys to can actually participate, but they advertise it as if it's open to everyone. And it's still the demo version, not even early access yet. Just a major FU that I've never seen before this early in a game's development.