Capcom's latest Resident Evil Village demo only gives players one hour to enjoy it. Once the hour ends, the demo will make itself inaccessible, preventing players from accessing Resident Evil Village again until Capcom releases the full game to the world. It's unclear exactly why the developer decided to implement such a time limit, but it likely exists to suppress spoilers, as the demo allows players to freely roam around the castle and village areas.
Regardless, Village's demo exists on PC, so it took less than a few hours after launch for the PC community to nullify its timer completely, allowing them to access the demo whenever and however long they want — at least until May 9, two days after Resident Evil Village's release date. Capcom originally only planned to have this demo available for 24 hours, but changed its mind after receiving player feedback on the previous demo's lack of playtime.
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A Steam user going by the name of Leaves provided detailed instructions for anyone that wants to bypass the timer themselves. They are as follows:
1. Disable Steam Cloud for RE8 Demo
2. Download Steam SAM (Steam Achievement Manager)
3. Delete Local Save Files(Located: D:\Steam\userdata\
4. Start Steam SAM
5. Select RE8 Demo
6. Remove Achievements and Stats.
7. Click confirm.
Leaves also left instructions for how to make this change permanent, meaning players don't have to constantly make these changes every time they access the Resident Evil Village demo.
Maybe Capcom should avoid placing timers on its demos in the future, as these limitations mean practically nothing to the PC community, which has repeatedly proven it can mod games into doing pretty much whatever it wants them to do. While such limitations work on consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, whatever PC players learn from their time exploring the game will inevitably end up on the Internet for all to see.
Luckily, there are only five days left before Resident Evil Village arrives on shelves, so PlayStation and Xbox fans don't have to wait much longer before they can fully enjoy the game. They won't have to put up with any time limits and can just play the game to learn its secrets instead of scrutinizing a limited experience. Fans generally had positive reviews about Resident Evil Village's demo, so the full game should be something to behold.
Resident Evil Village launches on May 7 for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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Source: Steam