Thousands of demos fight for players for one week. This is the scoreboard with money on it.
Pick a demo
Any demo in the festival. One coin each: the pad refuses the second.
Launch its coin
Your wallet creates it on pump.fun and locks the split in the same transaction.
People play
Every ten minutes the keeper asks Steam how many are in that demo. The peak is the score.
The pot pays
Three demos take it. Half burns their coin, a third goes to holders, a fifth to the studio.
Where the money goes
The week
A coin launched after the third day still pays its studio, it just does not race for the pot. After the festival the pad keeps running as Demo of the Week: any Steam demo, a week long season, a smaller pot, the same board.
What the score is, exactly
The score of a demo is the largest number of people inside it at one time, measured every ten minutes through Steam's own player count, from the minute the festival opens to the minute it closes. If two demos end on the same peak, the one that got there first wins. Every measurement is published, and the final memo on chain carries the sha256 of the whole table, so the numbers cannot be changed afterwards.
A coin on a demo is launched by a stranger. It is not made by the studio, not endorsed by it and not connected to Valve. The studio can take the money without ever touching the coin, and can ask for the coin's page to come off the board.