Why you should not pre-order your games

It started out with getting some skin or costume when you pre-ordered a game. That was frankly alright in my opinion. As long as it's something that doesn't give you something that's a chunk of a game, i am alright with that. The last few years this has not been the case. The worst example i've seen have been with Alien Isolation and Evolve.

Link to my blog

It's not just the pre-order bonus that come with games that are bad, Season Passes are announced before the game is even out. A pre-order of a pre-order is what that is. You don’t know what the game is like, and yet they want you to pay for additional content you don’t know even know the quality of. You also don’t know what the downloadable content is going to include. You base your purchase of a promise from a company or a store that only wants to get your money.

They’ve gone from taking some cosmetics, and included them in pre-orders to taking out chunks of the game itself. There are exclusive DLC missions and parts that now aren’t part of the original game because of pre-order bonuses. Companies have seen that it benefits them instead of the costumer. That is why they are continuing this kind of anti-consumer practices. Tell them that this is not alright. If you really want this to stop, don’t buy games based on a promise. Buy it on merit. Vote with your wallet.

Buying games before you know anything about them isn’t really that smart of a choice. Even if you don’t rely on reviews, you should wait for people to talk about the game and then make a conscious decision if you want it or not. Look to a reviewer you know or trust or just look at regular gameplay and decide from that. Don’t get decieved from all the trailers that are made for the sole purpose of making you buy it. That's what they want from you. To be clear, i am not telling anyone not to buy games. Make an informed decision when you buy a game. There's no longer any shortage when you want to buy games a few days after it has launched. You're no longer restricted because of there are few copies of a certain game. Wait a few days and then get the game. You are sure to get a game you know is good, and know that you have not wasted your money.

Stop rewarding these companies by bad business practices. They don’t care about you, they care about your money. If you really want to send a message don’t buy into the pre-order debacle. Let these companies know that you don’t think it’s alright to take out content to sell it to people. Giving people the additional content just because you get a promise is wrong.

Give me your thoughts and opinions on this matter.

Unless you've seen a Let's Play, and/or tried it at a friends house, buying a game is a risk. It doesn't matter if it's out 6 months from now, or it's been out for 6 years and has tons of reviews and lovers of the game. Then again, my tastes in games go against the grain anyway, and I know that virtually every game selected as a game of the year by Gamespot, I'm not going to want to play anyway because they are not made for older gamers like me. Most of my favorite games to play today are not made by any of the big game companies, but by tiny to small studios.

The games I like to play are NOT going to get made unless I do the whole kickstarter thing, looking for promising projects by developers with a few (albeit small) titles under their belts. Currently, the games I'm finding the most enjoyable to play are in Early Access. I supported them because I WANTED them to get made. And now they are actually in beta. And I'm having the time of my life playing them. Yes, they are full of bugs. Nearly all of what I consider the best games ever -- even considered today as having been true classics, came out filled to the brim with bugs. Master of Magic would crash after 50 turns or so, when it was released (early access games, are actually in better shape in beta, sometimes even in Alpha, then some of the best games ever were on their release date.

That said, I have also backed games that I wish I hadn't. My average is pretty good, with only maybe 2 mistakes out of a dozen or more backed games. But that's actually TONS better than my average with games purchased AFTER seeing reviews. But then again, I'm not a typical gamer. I probably wouldn't like 90% of the games you consider to be good.

I agree with some, and disagree with other points of your post.

What I do agree with is making an informed decision when buying a game. There is way too many games being developed that are sub-par and a big part of that fault falls on the gamers who pre-order these particularly bad games before they have any information on how the game actually plays.

What I do not agree with however, is the notion that pre-ordering all games is bad. Personally I pre-order the vast majority of the games I buy, but in keeping with making informed decisions, I never do so blindly.

Every game I pre-order I have watched numerous gameplay videos, and impressions from critics. If you have played as many games as I have it's easy to spot a game with poor production values from just 10 minutes of gameplay footage.

Another thing I find to be an excellent reason for pre-ordering is the physical bonuses that sometimes come with games. For example, hard-cover art books, figures, or other unique trinkets. I'm not a fan of DLC as a pre-order bonus, that is not one I directly support, and encourage others not to do so either.

That being said, you also won't ever see me spending double the amount of a game for a figurine. That's just lunacy.

Its a tough predicament for consumers. On one hand they want to get the most out of their purchases but on the other they dont want to buy a potentially awful or mediocre game. For example Im reasonably sure I want to buy evolve (after playing open beta myself) but would like to wait for reviews to get a better picture of the full game. I'd be quite happy to wait if it were not for the preorder bonus. I want the fourth monster but if I don't preorder then its $15 for that one extra monster. I feel like my hand is being forced by the publisher and actually have a mind to boycott the game altogether because of this.

All in all I feel the whole dlc and season pass thing is way out of hand and publishers need to reel it back in before they turn away too many of their consumers for good.

And I think that's all that needs to be said. It doesn't matter if a game's yet to be released or has been, it's still a risk nonetheless. I preorder only games I know I'll enjoy. Have I been burned a few times? Yea, but so life goes. Mostly I preorder to get the CEs, like the Batmobile for Arkham Knight, and most of the time I'm not left disappointed.

I don't pre-order games simply because I'm not willing to spend full price on most games. While I hate seeing all of these ridiculous pre-order bonuses, I think those are here to stay sadly. I'm not really for the idea of telling people when they should buy their games. Personally, I don't see much benefit in pre-ordering a game. But if someone wants to have a game day one, then I say go for it.

I will preorder if it's cheaper (and it often is). This blog reminds me why I wrote this post.

Buying a game is always a risk, but you can determine if a game is good or bad by info. If you can look at the entire game, wouldn't you be more informed than if you were relying on trailers alone? You can get more of an impression when the game has been out a while compared to release.

Kickstarter is a whole other conversation tbh.

That's the issue. Don't reward these companies when they do that crap. You should purchase a game because it's good, not because of extra DLC. Season Passes are total bs

I only pre-order and get season passes for games and developers that I am very familiar with and so far I have been satisfied with all that I've done to date.

The reason that the companies does that is because people voted with their wallets and said yes to it.

I am still not convince about the conspiracy ideal that the content would have been in the game if DLC did not exist.

Lastly blame gamers as the biggest reason why companies act the way they act. Many gamers expect more from AA or AAA games which is the main reason that cause games to become more costly to make, but those same gamer refuse to pay more. Also they have not been a huge jump in game sales. This mean the companies need to come up with way to maintain their profits.

Any other anita feminist viewpoint you want to talk about?

I personally pre order games mainly on price, like i pre ordered dying light £39.99 , now i cant find it that cheap anywhere.

That's something i am trying to get across

I've never been a fan of pre-ordering games from last-gen and I have the same mind-set for the current! The only real incentive for me personally would be a discount and we all know that hasn't been the case for the current systems.

''NOW', if it's a game I really want like Arkham Knight, I would be seriously tempted but it would be the standard copy...the only incentive for me there would be to have it preloaded on my system on day1.

But for those people who do like pre-ordering, to each his own!

If you want to play you have to pay, it´s like rolling the dice, sometimes you´ll score and sometimes you´ll be burned, so far the only pre-order I regret getting was Destiny, aside from extra digital content ( sometimes ) all the preorders I make from the gamestore I purchase from ( Gamers, something similar to GameStop ) come with bonuses the company makes for it´s preorder customers, small things like for example, when preordering TLoUR I got a TLoU T-shirt or when pre-ordering Dying Light I got a coffee cup with a stamped zombie image, for COD AW I got a cap and so.

I don't have the money to buy new games let alone roll the dice on a pre-order, but I'm not against others doing so. There has been a clear shift from the pre-dlc days of developers trying to pack as much as they can in to each game before release, but I don't think we necessarily have a right to demand they do that. If they choose to split content up and sell or give away the parts separately then that's their decision. If you think it's worth it then buy it, if you don't then don't.

Of course the main problem with pre-orders is that you don't know if it's worth it, but that doesn't mean you're making a blind purchase. If you keep getting burned pre-ordering games from the same companies then frankly you're an idiot (or smart enough to have earned the money not to care. :P). You don't lose the opportunity to vote with your wallet, because publishers know it will effect future sales if they deliver a subpar product. That's why Ubisoft's response to the Assassin's Creed Unity debacle was "Sorry, have some free dlc" and not "LOL!! GET PWND NUBZ!!!!!!"

Most DLC bonuses are a joke and are completely useless and also possible to buy ... so yeah ridiculous. In the past I never bought a DLC unless it was a game of the year edition. I did break that rule with Mario Kart 8 as the price was ok and the tracks are really fun. I never bought a season pass as there is always some stupid DLC or like in the case of Borderland they release a lot more DLC outside of that season pass that felt very very stupid.

Yeah it's like telling the devs and publishers you'll buy anything blindly.

When it comes to pre-orders, as long as you can get your money back from the retails, then I don't see the big issues with pre-ordering a game. For me, I do pre-order games little though just so as I long do a thorough research on a game that I'm interested. The Order: 1886 is a good example, I did a lot of background check on that game just to see if this is the game I want to pre-order. I pre-order it at Target for only $1 and when I go to pick it up at launch, I will get a $5 gift card just for pre-ordering it. Now if I hear that Order: 1886 has gotten bad reviews and such, I didn't loss anything cause I only pre-order for only a $1 so nothing of value was lost. Pre-ordering a game shouldn't be that of a big deal and if you pay full price at Gamestop, you can always get your money back, no matter what so it's a win, win if the game turns out bad and just go get your cash back.

I think pre-ordering games is a good idea in some scenarios. I just pre-ordered Kingdom Hearts III for $40, and I don't pay a dime until it ships. I don't really under stand the stigma behind it especially because there's no obligation to buy the pre-ordered item (you can always return it unopened or just get store credit for your pre-order). Pre-ordering especially useful in cases where you know there will be a limited supply. I don't pre-order for an Assassin's Creed game every year because I'm capable of waiting until the game is $15, but you can bet your ass that I will be pre-ordering Xenoblade Chronicles X.

A lot of people pre-order games because they want to play them day one by having it shipped to them. That will keep happening.

i agree with this sentiment

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with pre-ordering. Instead, the problems mainly lie with consumers making terrible decisions about what to purchase.

Also, I don't even think there is anything wrong with buying games based on a concept alone, without even seeing gameplay. For example, when Telltale announces a Game of Thrones game, you can know right away what you'll be getting and whether or not you are interested (same with Obsidian announcing a return to isometric RPGs, or whatever). You don't need to see the game in action to pre-order it, since you already have a safe idea of what it will be - even if the game doesn't exist yet, like with Kickstarter!

Other games are more complex, true...but if you're not certain you want to buy the game on concept alone, then you can work through the other proof-of-concept stuff: trailers, gameplay footage, demos, etc.

If you're still not 100% after that, wait for reviews or player feedback. Unsure after that? Wait for sales, and find the right price for the game.

If you stick to that plan and remain skeptical/cynical about game hype, you can safely pre-order games without getting burned too often.

I don't mind pre-ordering, it's preorder only DLC that I have a problem with as I may want the game later on so I would miss out on them and I tend to not approve of that practice either.

If you like getting a toy with your happy meal, then you should pre-order. If you don't, they don't pre-order. That is my philosophy.

I used to be very black and white about this subject but over time I've realized that people want to pay for what they want to pay for. Do I agree with some business practices? No. But just because I don't like them, doesn't mean it should bother everyone else. We live in an age where people don't mind spending money on content that could probably be in the game. It's sad but it's true. I hope it disappears but I'm not going to define someone else's value to make it disappear. That's never going to work.

Or... you could still pre-order and not redeem the bonuses. If you want to buy games when they first come out because you legitimately are excited to play them, you by all means should pre-order them. Ever once in a while, I'll pre-order a game just because I don't want to be arsed to look for it when the game comes out knowing my Best Buy and Wal-Marts are shit, and GameStop usually doesn't always pack extra copies. I did that with Batman Arkham City. I got the Catwoman DLC code, and didn't redeem it. Just threw it away. I really wanted to play the game, but didn't want to be a statistic for saying that it's okay to withdraw content and save it for a pre-order bonus.

I am not the only one questioning this

I think the only thing I've ever pre-ordered was the PSP when it launched, back when I was 12 or 13 and wanted to get the shiny new console before everyone else (I didn't; they ran out and I got one on the next supply a week after launch). I really don't see the point of pre-ordering games except in exceptional circumstances. It used to be that big releases would sell out very quickly on launch and it would take a while for stock to reach sufficient levels that you could just buy a copy any time, so queueing at midnight for the store to open or pre-ordering were the only way you could get hold of a copy without waiting a few weeks when everyone else was playing it and talking about it (same with other media, like when the harry potter books launched). Nowadays they seem to be better at providing stock and stores seem to be better at supplying it to customers. When GTA V launched stores sold out at midnight launches but I remember seeing copies in the shops in the days following in plain view for people to buy. So pre-ordering that didn't serve much of a purpose.

And nowadays many people buy their games through digital distribution, meaning pre-ordering or pre-buying serves no purpose whatsoever. Pre-ordering a physical copy isn't so bad though provided you can cancel your pre-order and get your money back. You're pretty much paying a deposit to have the game set aside for you to buy, if you can wait a couple of days for reviews to come out and cancel the pre-order if you've changed your mind then no harm done; if you do still want it then you can buy it when it might still be unavailable to buy without a reservation.

A side note - I mentioned that I think publishers and stores have gotten better at predicting demand such that there's sufficient stock, making pre-ordering unnecessary. It occurs to me though that this might be a result of people pre-ordering the game. One thing that businesses really love is certainty, and the number of pre-orders they receive helps them gauge how many people are going to buy their game; they just need to use past data that compares number of pre-orders vs number of total sales and use current pre-orders to make a prediction. This in turn helps them get a better idea of how many copies to produce, so they don't waste money by producing too many or lose sales by producing too few. If that's the case then it's in their interests to keep encouraging us to pre-order, and in our own interests that some people keep doing it. They'd do a better job though if they didn't swindle us with shitty products and day one patches.

I really don't think this achieves anything. They got their money so why would the care if you actually download the dlc? You're just denying yourself what you paid for.

They'd have got their money if I bought it after release anyway. And it's not denying me anything if I CHOOSE to get rid of it.

The only reason you shouldn't preorder is because you have no idea whether the game will be crap or not.

The only time i pre-ordered something because of stock was the PS4 and i try my best not to pre-order.

THe digital market makes the pre-order market irrelevant

that's a good point

Ya stopped doing this years ago. Just makes zero sense to do so when companies like Ubisoft and EA don't even allow their development companies to finish their games in a workable state before release. Even when they started showing up they made zero sense to preorder. Here some cash in advanced for a game your going to have on the shelf when I come in anyway..

I've gone digital on pc anyway so not like this is really ever an issue anymore. Just wait a year for the actual finished game to be $5-$25 and not the base shell of what they wanted it to be for triple or more of the price.

well said

Pre ordering is like blind buying completely placing your trust in the developer or based on the demo. Of you are rich you could care less even if game turns out to be terrible because $60 is nothing for you but I'd rather wait and see how the game turns out to be before i fork over my cash. I have never pre ordered a single game ever because its much cheaper to wait a bit. I couldn't care less about pre order bonuses.

That's a good philosophy

In general I don't pre-order games for the extras it gives you, I pre-order it because I want the game day one.

That being said I rarely do pre-order because the extras are generally crap and I don't really care about getting it day one. The only games where that would matter are ones with an online community but in general I don't tend to play those types of games much any more. I'm much more of a solo gamer these days.

Plus if you wait for the game, you can see the reviews to make sure it isn't broken, can make sure it doesn't suck, can make sure it is fixed if it was broken, and wait for the price to drop considerably.

I mean right now on Amazon I can get Alien: Isolation Nostromo Edition for £22 new or £20 second hand. The game is exactly the same right now as it was when it first came out and it is nearly half the price as at release. I mean it isn't like there is a load of stuff out to play right now so if someone was inclined they could be filling this empty space with some older games.

I am always a good many months behind in gaming. For this exact reason. I have pre-ordered Witcher 3 though. Just because I feel a developers such as CDProjekt Red earns and deserves full price for their game and frankly I will definitely be wanting that game day one.

You didn't even mention the extent to which building hype (including preorders) has lead to developers lying and generally over-promising in the graphics department. When something like Assassin's Creed Unity is making so much money from preorders, it really pays them to make it appear as good as possible, at the expense of actual gameplay and framerate.

Fortunately, you're wrong about how pre-ordering works. There seems to be this misconception that pre-ordering a game is a contractual agreement that binds you to paying or pre-paying for the game at release. I don't think I've ever pre-ordered something that I couldn't back out of at a later date (I've pre-ordered sporadically in the past from target, toys r us, gamestop, and amazon) . If I didn't want to pick up my pre-order the money spent on the pre-order was credited back to me. If I'm buying from amazon, they don't even charge me for the pre-order until the game ships. In either case if I did pick up the game, I have the ability to return it before opening the product.

This is not to say I frolic to the nearest pre-order kiosk everytime something announces, mostly beacause I'm cheap and like cheap things, but pre-ordering isn't this terrible notion that some people believe it to be. Pre-ordering can be useful and at times can be cheaper.

Well that's another topic to be honest, one i will write about. Watch Dogs, Killzone, Aliens, etc

You know what should be given as pre-order bonuses? Install codes. It makes a lot of sense to me, if someone pre-orders a game then the week prior to release they get a code either via email or from the store they placed the order, which allows them to install the game early.

That way, you "reward" them by having everything installed on there system before the game goes live and instead of have to spend, potentially hours on some of the bigger games, waiting for them to install, they can just pop there disc right in and play. People who buy digital already get this, so why not allow it for retail too?

@spike6958: or just an early copy

I disagree. It's all part of the same system of bad incentives. Which is what preordering games create!

I was planning on doing one on that topic of false promises

You're a damn fool if you are still preordering. Smh

Know this is a rebumped (old) thread, and yet it's still a much discussed debate overall.

I pre-order games I'm excited for and have no shame in it.

Have Sonic: Mania/ The Evil Within 2/ and Monster Hunter: World. Along with being a backer for Bloodstained and ToeJam and Earl: Back in the Groove.

The wait is already long in my view for some of these games I'm excited about, and prefer to get them in my hands sooner than later, and with them being ready at my home after a long days work, is very appealing to me and my working lifestyle.

Sure not every game I have pre-ordered was worth it, however not every game I walked in and bought at a later date was worth it either. You take risks regardless when you purchase a game.

I'm not paying full retail for a game if they're going to lock me out of content because of pre order. I've never paid for a season pass and I never will. The last DLC I purchased was for COD Modern Warfare 2.

I rarely buy games new anymore because of shady business practices. I wait until they hit the $20 or less mark. When I pay $20 for a game there's no point in trading them in because it's practically worthless to do so. I have games piling up all over the place given my purchasing habits. By them time I get around to playing games they've dropped substantially in price.

The only time I pay full price is if it's something I can't wait to play. I've only purchased one new game in the last year.

Totally agree, pre-ordering is saying you're okay with whatever the end product happens to be, even if you've seen pre-release footage or feel that the developer has a proven track record. You are still signing off on giving $60, $80, $110 I think it was for Battlefront Ultimate edition a few years back, away to a company in the hopes that the game will be good.

What about the people that thought the pre-release footage of games like Mafia 3 and No Man's Sky were good so they pre-ordered those games? Yeah....not so happy were they? I'll be honest, I pre-ordered 4 games in the past (Skyrim, Borderlands 2, GTA 5, and Fallout 4). And for each one of those games I put in hundreds of hours (except GTA 5, just 70 there). I look back and say that I'm glad those games turned out to be decent games to sink time into, but I regret pre-ordering them because I didn't really know what I was gonna get.

The youtuber Rags goes into a good discussion on the danger of pre-ordering in this video. Good watch and I would tend to agree with his stance.

I'm more surprise my post is 2 years old and I was about to comment on this thread lol. Also, I almost forgot that The-Last-Ride is banned almost 2 years now so yeah, this thread isn't new.

I don't have an issue preordering a game if it's from a series I enjoy, a developer I trust, or I've participated in the beta or played a demo. These are things I feel instill trust or confidence in the product enough to warrant the risk of purchasing the game.

What I don't like is season passes, day one DLC, before the game is released. To me that is, in a word, arrogant. It means the developer just assumes for their game, no matter how good or bad it is, to sell X amount of copies and that's it. It used to be that if a game did well, you made an expansion for it, then a sequel. Now we have Season Passes that cost almost as much (sometimes as much, occasionally more) than the actual game, and it is kind of ridiculous imo.

Ghost Recon Wildlands is a good example; when was the last time anyone talked about that game, played that game? I feel like publishers are banking on the fact you won't play the DLC, it's sort of like gift cards when you buy stuff. "But 100 dollars of crap and get a 20 dollar gift card" they say; allegedly this is a common tactic, and upwards of 90% of people don't used the gift card. There are BILLIONS of dollars out there in "incentive gift-purchases" that are more or less unused and wasted by customers, and it's really their fault.

Just stop buying DLC, folks.

aww crap, I done posted in a necro thread.

I neeeeeeeeeeeeed druggggggggggggggs