I have just watched Elysium by Sanity and read the scroll text. Thus I learned that Sanity, in the times Elysium was released (1991), had commercial ambitions with their demos. Sanity offered companies to make demos for them for money. I wonder what's the story of commercial demos? How many demos have actually been sold and when was this type of demo abandoned, as nowadays all demos are considered free of charge?

a few were commercial commisioned, africola advert by farbrausch, the beatles flash demos by melon, rome by mrdoob/google. some of those even stir up discussions if those should be archived or not under demoscene databases. and they can also have IP issues for storing them against the paying customers wishes.

other demos can be considered commercial for having been made in exchange of hardware, nvscene invitation comes to mind, but i believe a few of them were made with GUS vendors and the likes aswell, don't have an exhaustive list. might be a tag worth having on demozoo.

don't recall any demo being required to be paid to be watched though, even the commercial ones, someone paid to have them made, no one paid for the privilege of watching them.

there are some visuals made by demosceners with demoscene origin tools created for creative industries (vj'ing, video clips, interactive instalations, etc), but those are not typically considered demoscene releases. unless there was like a recording of the thing released by the creator at some demoparty wildcompo showcasing the project to a demoscene crowd.