The truth was it was a demo sharing feature. The guy was clearly excited about the feature - probably because he came from the perspective from the start of allowing people to try out a game with the only restriction being amount of time (they hadn't even decided yet if re-demoing would be an option). From that perspective, in a digital-download context, that's a pretty good feature.

But because we all came from the perspective of restriction-free sharing of full games with 10 people, it feels like MS lied, or mis-represented, or intentionally tried to screw us over.

Truth is, we don't know why there was that "miscommunication". Only that there was. And so it's probably very good that this turn of events took place, because if the public found out it was a demoing feature all along, they'd probably feel much more betrayed.

It's shareware in a modern/digital-only context.