What is demoown?
A marketplace for unfinished games. Creators upload a short playable demo, and buyers who like it can buy the project outright and finish it as their own game. The demo is the product, not an advert for something else.
Questions
How demoown works
Short answers to the things worth knowing before you buy or sell.
The basics
What am I actually buying?
A working demo, everything it is built from, and the right to finish and release it. You are not buying a pile of art assets, and you are not buying a finished game. You are buying a proven idea somebody already made playable, and you take it from there.
How long is a demo?
Short. Usually five to ten minutes of real gameplay. That is the point: enough to prove the idea works and is fun, and nowhere near a finished game. Expect to do most of the work yourself.
For sellers
What is a playable build, and how do I make one?
Your project files are not playable on their own. A build is your game exported into something a person can actually run. Every engine has a button for it.
- Unity — File → Build Settings. Choose WebGL so it plays in a browser, or Windows for a download.
- Godot — Project → Export. Add a Web preset for browser play, or Windows Desktop for a download.
- Unreal — Platforms → Windows → Package Project.
- GameMaker — Build → Create Executable, then pick HTML5 or Windows.
A browser build is far better for you. Buyers can try it in one click instead of downloading a zip from a stranger, and far more people will actually play it.
Right now you paste a link to your build, so it has to be hosted somewhere first. Uploading directly to demoown is coming.
- A browser build needs somewhere that actually serves web pages: itch.io, GitHub Pages or Netlify. Google Drive and Dropbox will not work for this. They hand out the file instead of running it, so players get a download prompt or a blank screen.
- A downloadable zip can go on Drive or Dropbox, as long as sharing is set so anyone with the link can open it.
Godot 4 web builds: the default export needs a browser feature called SharedArrayBuffer, which only works if the host sends particular headers. On itch.io tick the SharedArrayBuffer box in your project settings. On hosts that cannot set headers, turn off threads in the export preset instead, or the game loads to a blank screen.
What about assets I did not make myself?
Check you are allowed to sell them on. Free and public domain assets are usually fine. Asset store packs and most fonts are often tied to your account and cannot be handed to someone else. If something cannot transfer, say so on the listing. Selling work that was not yours to sell can get your account removed.
Can I sell a game made from asset packs?
No. Every listing is looked at by a person before it goes live, and projects that are mostly bought assets glued together get rejected. A buyer here is paying for something they can build on, and there is nothing to build on in an asset flip.
Can I keep using my game after I sell it?
No. Once it sells, the buyer owns it. You agree to stop using it and to take down any existing listings of it elsewhere. If you release it anyway, the buyer can have it removed from any store it appears on.
For buyers
What does the size rating mean?
How much project you are taking on: simple, moderate or complex. It is set by a moderator who played the demo, not by the seller, so nobody can talk up their own listing. New listings show no rating until someone has reviewed them.
Can I get a refund?
Only before you open anything. Once you have access to the project files, the sale is final, because at that point you already have everything you paid for. Try the demo carefully before buying, since that is what it is there for.
What if the seller did not own what they sold?
Report the listing. Sellers confirm they have the right to sell everything in their project, and listings are reviewed before going live, but if something slips through we would rather hear about it than not.
Still stuck? Have a look at the store to see how listings are put together. The binding version of all this is in the terms of service.