A virtual Steam Game Festival will let you play a load of demos today

With basically every games event cancelled or postponed by coronavirus concerns, Valve are launching a virtual showcase of games that would have been on show. The Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition will start tonight with over forty games on show and free demos for folks at home to play until Monday. That's nice, that. I'd be nice if this sort of thing became a permanent fixture of the gaming scene.

Valve held their first Steam Game Festival in December alongside The Game Awards. It was the highlight of that charade and a good idea to revisit - especially now.

With so many public and industry events cancelled, people are trying to come up with alternatives. The Game Developers Conference is broadcasting on Twitch a selection of talks that were due to happen at the industry event this week in San Francisco until it was postponed. Microsoft are livestreaming theirs separately too. It sounds like this latest Steam Game Festival is also focused on substituting for GDC.

Valve say that "the Spring Edition highlights an even larger selection of games from studios who missed out on the chance to demo their games at showcases like Indie Megabooth, Day Of The Devs, and The Mix during this year's GDC."

They haven't confirmed which games will be playable but you can see some of the possibilities in those events' lineups. I really hope Dead Static Drive from Day Of The Devs is one that'll get a demo - I've been keen to have a go on that for years.

The Steam Game Festival: Spring Edition will start tonight at 10am Pacific (5pm in the UK) then run until 10am PDT on Monday, March 23rd. It will be over here (the page will go up when the event starts).