Wouldn't Steam advertise it first though? As a Weekend free thing?
Your post made me think that you'd want it. Oh there I go again looking like a buffoon.

Well you are dressed like a southern gentleman, so I'd never, ever call you a buffoon! Ever...

Okay. I just poked through Steam a bit. It's just a clever time-demo.

"Open Beta Now Available

Join the Open Beta Now! Plus, if you purchase you can continue your progression and maintain your unlocks from the Open Beta to the full game!"

I was referring to this;

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/to_steamthanks/post1

Why thank you. You look like a... ummm.... wide mouthed stick person? LOL. Here, have a KFC!

Yup. GIVE US ALL YOUR MONEY...

Sent. :)

Yup, just a tidbit of the actual game, just remember, the first one's free.

Well, I'll be damned. It's Steam and their clever slip of Beta passes to get players hooked at the game and then take it away from them when the game finally launches.
Then, this is the same deal as the Arma 3 Lite stuff.

Clever marketing tactic but a bit underhanded if you ask me.

Personally it makes me less likely to play the game in the first place. Seeing that it has a time limit makes me think "What do I do when that time limit is up?" and the answer is....buy the game. And I am a cheap person so I probably won't buy it. If I did play it, then I'd have sunk time into a game that I probably won't ever play again. Time that could be spent on other games...

Yeah, it is bound to backfire for many users but I bet it makes them a lot of dough.

It feels a bit like those freemium MMOs... dangling the carrot in front of you and then asking you to pay up.

It is somewhat intrusive to my already crowded library :-(

They should at least have a smart algorithm or something that calculates the users' genre preferences before forcing a demo on us.

I suspect they are giving away these open betas to steam users who own Company of Heroes 1. Just a hunch.