The upcoming The Game Awards Festival 2020 is following last year’s trend of providing fans across the globe the chance to enjoy and try out first-look demos of forthcoming games. Geoff Keighley, the host and the show’s organizer, worked with a few publishers and developers during last year’s festival to offer fans 12 free demos, each of which was made available on the PC through Steam for 2 whole days.
When Keighley introduced the festival during 2019’s celebrations, he discussed that the idea came to mind in an attempt to mirror an experience similar to a trade show like E3. In a press release made at that time, he mentioned that The Game Awards Festival was designed to widen “the benefits of a physical event to the global gaming community that watches The Game Awards.” Eventually, the event was a success, with fans across the world getting the opportunity to try out games such as Spiritfarer, Skatebird, Eastward, Roki, and System Shock.
Geoff Keighley announced the return of The Festival in a recent short Twitter post. However, as of writing, the host and organizer have yet to reveal the exact details in terms of the particular game demos that will be offered during the event.
Next week we're excited to have another #TheGameAwards Festival with playable first-look demos at upcoming games.
We started this last year, pre-pandemic, and are continuing to push forward to bring you more stuff to PLAY around the show. pic.twitter.com/FXXdokkNcN
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) December 1, 2020
Further, there is still no news on whether this year’s demos will once again be offered via an exclusive collab with Steam. Since The Game Awards actual show is just a few days to go, more details about these concerns and others should be provided in the coming days.
As Keighley’s announcement states, The Game Festival debuted before the coronavirus pandemic. Given this year’s situation, the offer of free game demos during a commemoration of games that can now be shown online is ideally suitable. Hopefully, this means the demos won’t be limited to Steam users this time around, allowing other consoles to take an equal part in the upcoming celebration.
Steam exclusive demos or not, there are still several other ways fans all over the world can take part in this year’s The Game Awards. First and foremost, voting is now open for a wide array of categories. Voting also opened for the Player’s Voice category.
Player’s Voice features 30 games in which fans must pick their top 10 favorites. On Friday, the list will be reduced to 20, opening the opportunity for players to participate in the second round of voting.
