We MAY be able to play the demo past Friday, June 26th...
As we know, the demo was extended until Friday June 26, but we may still be able to keep playing it indefinitely.
The trick is to avoid steam to update the game, and to launch it directly from the .exe instead of from Steam.
I've done this with at least other game, The Entropy Centre Demo, which had a timed demo (in another steam next fest event), and after it expires, the game updates itself, and renders it "unplayable" from steam... It only shows an uninstall button.
But you can avoid that, and keep playing anyway! And this should work for ANY demo, not just OotSS!
The steps are:
- Avoid steam to auto update games.
Go to Steam > Settings > Downloads. And be sure that under Game Updates > Game update timing, it is set to "Only update at game launch". iirc you can even set the option to individual games, so you can still auto-update your other games and avoid some of them update, but i just set the global option anyway.
- Launch the game from windows explorer itself.
To easily open the files, just go to the game listing in steam, right click it, select Manage > Browse local files, and it will open windows explorer, where you can simply run the .exe directly, and keep playing!
Note that this should work for any demo.
And also, avoiding updates may not be strictly necessary, and even if the game lock itself (in steam) past the date, you maybe could still launch it with the .exe, BUT since the demo could have an update to patch itself past the date, so it no longer works (even the direct .exe), I prefer to simply avoid updating the demos, so I can play them as long as i want!
Personally, I'd avoid to update OotSS right now, even before friday, in case it gets an update that would patch this before then, although it is unlikely.
I guess we will find out on Friday if this works.