I'm not exactly on the ball with all the latest trends, obviously. There are only a few things I keep an avid interest in. But didn't demos or shareware only have "trial periods" if they were the full versions? Like, a 30-day period to use the full version of a video editing suite, after which it shut off a bunch of widgets and features, or a full game that you could play for 60 minutes before it locked itself (and didn't let you save and left a keybit to prevent you from downloading and installing it again to try to reset the timer).

Imagine my surprise when I launched the Sonic Generations "Green Hill" demo, and it not only told me it would only function within a certain period of time (June 21 - July 23 or something, I didn't bother looking at it a second time), but that it would only let me play it for five days after the first time I played it (it might have been more, originally; I launched it initially once right after installing it to my XMB just to see if it worked correctly, and then came back to it a couple days later).

The only conceivable reason I can think of for this insane limitation is that the demo is in some kind of "unfinished" state, and Sega is going to release a "complete/polished" demo after the final game is released. I still don't know why that would entail placing a trial period on a single stage (not even a complete Green Hill Zone, just one level) demo, unless they really think people are stupid and won't uninstall the "beta" themselves (which is often the case; That companies think people are stupid, not that people are actually stupid; Though both are equally likely nowadays).

i've noticed this happening, the rock band 3 demo had an expration date too

i dont quite understand it, its not as if people will play a single level over and over and say "screw buying the full game this 3 minute thing is enough for me"