Free Weekends?

Depends on what the game is generally, I played the original Death rally back in the day then played the remake during a free weekend up to the final race, no interest in buying it now.

Played xcom eu, civ 5, payday 2 all over free weekends, bought them all.

I bought Enemy Unknown after Free Weekend.

Just check what games have free weekends - usually massive ones, with great replayeability or multiplayer ones. They give you 2 days to find out whether you like them or not, and decide if you want to buy it. For example all games mentioned here - XCOM, Civ 5, Payday 2 all have massive content, you only scratch the surface in the 2 day period :)

Not all games can be finished in 2 days of playing, even if you played for 48 hours straight (and if you tried that you're nuts). But some games can be replayed lots and lots of times. As was mentioned XCOM, Civ5 Payday2 can't really be beat in 48 straight hours and can be played over and over and over again.

I tried out Injustice - Gods Among Us. I beat it on easy in about 4 hours, but it has lots of reply ability so once I have the money for it and its on sale again (or its on sale at GMG where I have lots of credit built up) I will grab it. I mainly wanted to try it because I have heard mixed things about it. But I enjoyed it so I will eventually pick it up.

This is what free weekends are suppose to do, give you a taste of the game to see if you like it. If you do, great pick it up, if you don't just mark it as not interested and find something else. Some games take many hours just to get into the basics of it to figure out if you would like it or not, some you will know within minutes.

Haha, I've never finished any game in less than a week :D I usually take my time to admire the sceneries and explore every little corner before I actually start with the storyline.

As far as Free Weekends go, I like them. Without them, I would've never discovered one of my most favourite game O.o
You see, I've always thought Dishonored was just another war-themed shooter. Don't ask me where did I get that idea, because I honestly don't know :D
But once, it was free for a weekend. I decided to give it a try, just to see what it was really about. And what do you know, it turned out to be a perfect stealth game, a game which I really love <3

Touching, isn't it?

If it has multiplayer, you might decide you like it and then buy it

Contrary to the other posts, i DID finish XCOM in 38 gameplay hours, so i do see your point OP. But if even 1 person in 1000 giving it a try, actually buys it, they've probably earned money on it regardless. I hope they will keep doing it, possibly even ramping up the amounts, to reflect what we saw this weekend.

@Thirteen13: That IS a touching story, and i'm happy to hear i'm not the only person deeply enamored with the dying stealth franchise. If you liked Dishonored, games i recommend you look into would be Thief (4), Thief: Deadly Shadows (3) (1 and 2 as well i guess, though they are very VERY old by todays standards), and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Only bought one game from playing during Free Weekend and that isn't even halfway completed despite me having a hundred and twenty hours on it by now. Granted part of that is multiplayer but still I only bought the game at all because I played it a so they got at least one sale and I can't be the only one who did it.

Normal people doesn't spend the entire weekend pluged to their computer. So it's a taste of the game to convince to purchase it. Better than a demo. Usually after the download, the user can spend 4-6h on that specific game. I'm sure there are statistics out there.

I guess it depends on the game.
I usually don't care about free weekends.
On this one, there is a game that i wanted to try for a long time.
It is not even a multiplayer game (not yet) and i might buy it :)

Unless I found some way of "cracking" the game for permanent use, I would never download a game for 48 hours only, even if I thought I could beat it in that time.

I ended up getting Borderlands 2 because of the free weekend. So yes, it does work.

There are many people out there that can't even download a game in that amount of time, let alone finish it.

A lot of people have other things to do than sit in front of the computer playing games all day.

Don't get me wrong, I used to do that and I wish I still could, but once you're out of school, things change.

got borderlands 2 after free weekend - but didnt play much after i got it