The Dumpster Gang demo is free and live now on Steam and through Xbox on PC. It appeared on October 19, 2026, during the Steam event season, and has not been taken down since. There is no time limit and no purchase attached.
It includes the tutorial plus two jobs, set in three areas: a forest training ground, a suburban house and a farm. Four-player online co-op is available in it, so a group can test the full loop rather than a solo slice.
Where to get it
| Store | Platform | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Steam | Windows PC | Free |
| Microsoft Store / Xbox app | Windows PC | Free |
Both are the same build. Steam is the more convenient download if your group already uses Steam friends lists; the Microsoft Store version is the natural choice if you plan to use PC Game Pass later.
The demo is a separate app from the full game, so installing it does not pre-load anything and uninstalling it does not affect the eventual purchase.
What is in it
- The tutorial, set in a forest training ground, which teaches climbing, vents, carrying and throwing.
- A suburban house job, with the loot loop, the noise system and the first real encounter with the Exterminator.
- A farm job, where the chicken and cow interactions live and where most teams first get somebody caged.
- Cosmetics preview, with a small selection of skins and emotes unlocked.
That is a broad slice rather than a deep one. The demo shows every core verb in the game once, and then stops.
What is deliberately locked
The demo limits the shop and most of the reward systems. Progression beyond the three areas is not available, so the demo cannot answer how fast hats unlock, what hideout upgrades cost, or whether later neighbourhoods introduce new mechanics.
It also does not carry progress into the full game as far as anything announced says. Treat the demo as a test drive rather than a head start.
How it has been received
The demo's Steam reviews sit at 97% positive from 365 reviews as of November 4, 2026. That is a strong early signal for a demo with no marketing budget behind it, and it is the only player-facing quality evidence that exists before launch.
Review scores on demos skew high, because the people who download a four-player raccoon sandbox already like the idea. The useful part is the direction: 365 reviews at 97% is not the profile of a broken build.
Installing it and what to expect
Download the demo from Steam or the Microsoft Store, install it like any other game, and launch it. There is no sign-up, no code and no purchase step.
Two things surprise people in the first ten minutes. The controls are simple — sprint, climb, grab, throw — and the camera is closer to the raccoon than a trailer suggests, which makes tight indoor spaces feel tighter than they look. The second surprise is how quickly noise escalates: breaking one window is enough to bring a patrol.
The demo's tutorial exists precisely for that adjustment. It is worth playing once alone before bringing friends, if only so one person in the group knows where the burrow is.
What the demo will not tell you
It will not tell you how the progression feels, because the shop is locked. It will not tell you how long the campaign is, because no area past the farm has been shown. And it will not tell you the price, because there is not one yet.
What it does tell you is whether four raccoons fighting over a sofa is funny to your group. That is the actual purchase question, and it is answerable in an evening.
Why there is no console demo
No PlayStation, Xbox console or Switch 2 demo has been announced. The console versions do not exist publicly yet, and the demo is built and shipped on the PC branch.
Nothing suggests one is coming. If you only own a console, the demo is not available to you, and March 2027 remains the first hands-on moment.
No end date
The demo has been up since October 19 and no closing date has been announced. It is the only free, indefinite look at the game before December 3.
The first three things to test
Climb something you are not supposed to. The training ground is built to be climbed, and the route you find there is the route you will look for in every house afterwards.
Break a window on purpose, then hide. The patrol response is the game's core pressure, and learning how long it takes to arrive is more useful than any tutorial text.
Carry something heavy across a room. The carrying physics are the part that looks funny in trailers and feels awkward in the hands, and whether that awkwardness is charming is a personal answer.
Before you install
The demo runs on the same requirements as the full game: a GTX 1050 or RX 550 at minimum, 8 GB of RAM, DirectX 12. If your machine is borderline, the demo is also the closest benchmark you can run before December.
Play it with the group you intend to play with. Dumpster Gang is a different game with four people than it is alone, and the demo supports both.