Following a delay and a month-long demo period, looter-shooter Outriders is out today for basically every platform but the Switch. If you played the demo, you can carry your progress over to the main game if on the same platform, something developer People Can Fly made clear from the jump. But it’s astonishing how seamless the transfer process is. It just...happens.
Really. It’s that easy.
Once you download the full game and log in, you’ll see all of the characters (up to six) you created during the demo. You’ll retain all of your gear and in-game currency. You’ll be exactly where you were, story-wise. On PlayStation 5, I was even able to use the snazzy activity card function to jump directly into the “Talk to Jakub to go to the First City” story beat, which is where the demo ends.
There is a limitation on PC, however. You won’t be able to carry your progress from a demo on Steam to a full game on the Epic Games Store. And it’s worth making clear progress is tied to your platform, rather than your account—you can’t continue progress from a PS5 demo if you’re grabbing the game via Xbox’s Game Pass.
That People Can Fly has allowed for a simple data transfer is refreshing. Such ease isn’t always the case. You expect beta progress to get wiped for the full game (see: Avengers), but that needn’t mean the same principle applies to a solid demo. Smooth continuation like this is a pretty good selling point, and should make more players more likely to want to pay to pick up the game where the demo leaves off.
As far as demos go, the Outriders one offers a fairly decent chunk of the game, including the cutscene-heavy prologue and the entire first chapter, complete with all the side-quests and one laborious social hub. The prologue is admittedly banal, but once you get your powers at the start of chapter one, the gameplay opens up, and Outriders becomes one of those can’t-put-down games—save for that fact that, y’know, you have to, because it’s a demo. (After you complete the prologue the first time, you’ll be able to create a new character at the start of chapter one.)
Outriders is currently available on Game Pass for Xbox consoles. It is not included in the Game Pass PC library. We’ll have more thoughts on the full game in the coming days.