Karl Stewart, Crystal Dynamic’s global brand director, has announced that there will not be a demo for the new Tomb Raider before the official launch of the game.
This announcement was made via a Tweet yesterday, in which Karl said, “there are no plans to release a demo of the game pre-launch. We don’t want to spoil the story.”
After this, there was another tweet, which read, “”we’ve weaved such a personal story we don’t believe spoiling it by having you wait a week or so to play on, delivers on our promise.”
The reaction to this seems to be one of “Yeah, right” and to be honest I do not blame gamers for feeling this way. It would not be too difficult to choose a section of the game that is not spoilerish, so it seems to be that this is a classic case of Fear of the Press. It’s also quite unfortunate, because a lack of a demo may lead to some people pirating it, just so they can try the game out before they buy. I hope that Crystal Dynamic rethinks this move, but it does not seem likely.