Watched a YouTuber just BLAST pre-ordering as a concept, bringing up all the usual talking points…
And then he said “the only thing I can actually kind of understand people pre-ordering for is the early download, which I will be pre-ordering for…”
As if the company gives any fuck whatsoever WHY you preorder? To be clear, I have very little issues with people pre-ordering games for whatever reasons they deem worthwhile, but for someone to do the whole “give me social points” speech, only to turn around and be like “but I want the early download, and I guess I’ll take the bonus content, too,” was just absolutely ridiculous.
NakeyJakey talking about GTA6, potentially on his Ball Creative channel. He defended it in the comments by saying he would “only pre-order like a week away from release,” as if that means anything.
I don’t care if Jakey wants to pre-order a game, but don’t make the whole argument if you’re planning on doing it anyway. “My reasons are better than yours,” type of argument.
Exclusive pre-order bonuses annoy the hell out of me. Back when it was console only, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth had two exclusive Digimon and a set of exclusive Digivolutions that you could only get by pre-ordering.
If you missed out, you had to hope you could find a code years later on eBay and not get scammed.
Luckily they got included in the eventual PC release, but it was a bad time to be a Digimon RPG fan before it released if you hadn’t heard the game was coming out beforehand, because losing out on two entire lines of Digimon sucks.
Ace Combat 8 pre-order came with a pc port of ACZ which they aren't releasing separately due to "licensing issues". Both games are bangers so no regrets from me there. But I'm never going to pre order a multiplayer game or just for cosmetics.
The only pre-order bonus for Forza Horizon 6 was a tuned version of the Ferrari J50. That's not even a car I give a shit about and if it were I could find a better tune than theirs in about 10 seconds.
Try Ace Combat, where due to licensing you can never get Ace Combat 5,6 or 0 ever again legally unless they sell another game with it as bonus content again.
No point when I can just play it the old fashioned way. Emulators still work, and I still have my PS2 copy and bios files, so there’s no legal problems there.
No, they mean the pre-load. Basically, preordering let's you download an encrypted version of the game early and it sits on your hard drive until release day. On release day (launch hour), the game files are decrypted, it installs, and you're ready to play.
It's a "premium" because Sony and Xbox are notorious for their download and authentication servers eating shit on big releases. So if you get the pre-load, you don't have to worry about the download servers being down on launch day from millions trying to download all at once.
They mean their internet is so slow they may not be able to play on the afternoon/evening of release, so being able to download it a day or 2 beforehand so they can instantly play is enough for them to justify paying before it's even known if it's a good game at all.
I've got standard internet in my country and it'd take around 1h30m to download a 60GB game but I'm an adult and can delay my gratification for a whole 2 hours so I can't relate, but that's the reason...
The time between a digital "launch" and being able to play the game is completely arbitrary. There's no inherent meaning to an "early" download. Without a pre-order system in place, you'd still be able to play the game as soon as possible if you bought it right at launch.
It only feels different with a pre-order because of some very intentional psychological effects created by marketing.
And it's wild anyone would want to play any of these massive games at launch since they're almost always short a major patch to make them fully playable. Yeah most of them aren't Cyberpunk levels of jank but you're still probably falling through the floor or running into a bugged quest or "oops we forgot to remove the AI placeholders."
So yeah it's a little ridiculous to make a video going off on the subject except for the reason of early downloads.
I occasionally do early access purchases to support indie devs who are making something I really vibe with, but I literally don't care about getting to play early or bonus content or even if the game actually comes out. I just want more of them in the market to balance out the increasingly uninteresting "AAA" shareholder investment vehicles. Don't really see that as the same thing as preordering GTA6 or whatever though. It's less a purchase and more a charitable donation.
u/T0biasCZE PC MasterRace | dumbass that bought Sonic motherboard8h ago
Without a pre-order system in place, you'd still be able to play the game as soon as possible if you bought it right at launch.
The point is if you have slow internet you can predownload it and play immediately when it goes out.
With 50Mbit or even 20Mbit VDSL, it will take 13hours for it to download 100GB game.
I'll just wait a year after launch and pay 10% of the launch price and all the bugs are fixed, and I get to play first time with all the additional content they add to apologize for all the bugs.
Yuuup. I’d go as far as saying a majority of us pre order for that stuff. This meme makes zero sense for modern society, would’ve been funny 15 years ago when physical copies were still the primary purchase method.
I have the same problem. I know very well that the pre-order stuff is unimportant most of the time, but that feeling that I'm getting an incomplete, inferior version of the game always bothers me.
Half of the time I don’t even care about the pre order bonus, I just want the game
In fact the only pre order bonus I’ve gotten recently was for sonic generation x shadow which… I didn’t even pre order 😭 the box copy I got just came with it for some reason
That skin you're gonna wear for a couple hours, then forget about the whole game a couple months later. Yet you could buy the game a year after its release for a third of its price, bug fixes and DLCs included. Life is totally different when you refuse to be manipulated by marketing tactics.
I literally just bought Atomic Heart for 10 bucks, and I can't believe some people paid 70 bucks for it, and they had the exact same experience as me. What's the point in hyping video games, they don't lose quality after time
Yet you could buy the game a year after its release for a third of its price, bug fixes and DLCs included.
You realize that it's only possible because a lot of people bought the game on release, right?
If people all stopped buying games on release, most games would stop being produced altogether. There would be no funds for these bug fixes and DLCs. And if games were only sold for a third of their initial price, most studios would close.
So, it's cool that you can wait and get games for cheap. All the power to you. But if everyone did like you, then nobody could.
Or, and bear with me here, it would incentivize studios to release games when they're complete. They made good games (and lots of them) before pre orders were a thing.
u/Fakjbfi7-4770K (3.8 GHz)|RTX 2060|32GB Ram (1600MHz)|1TB SD5h agoedited 4h ago
For an example you can look at Mass Effect Andromeda. The game got less than six months of support and one major patch then the DLC was cancelled and they even dissolved the Austin studio that had made it. Anyone wanting to wait and get a fixed game plus DLC for cheap was only given the option of a really cheap game with nothing beyond what was available day 1.
I think that for many, playing games when they're current matters because the community surrounding it is also active. It can be really fun engaging with a community when a game comes out because there's a lot of discussion and a lot of people willing to participate o. Those discussions. Or being part of the community as everyone is doing their first playthroughs and discovering parts of the game together and getting excited about these this together.
If you think of the product as just the product, then yes, is the same product, but a product is often that alongside its community. There is, for instance, a certain magic of playing games like Halo 3 when it was first released, and the entire community was super hype about like, this big final chapter of the Halo Saga. This feeling just isn't the same now that Halo 3 has been followed noy just by reach, but what many consider weaker titles, I'm 4,5,and infinite, and playing Halo 3's campaign now just isn't the same as it was when it was first released and it was talk of the town.
No the ape doesn't have a good point because no one is pre-ordering digital games 'as if they're gonna run out'. That's not a thing that exists in the real world. They get pre-ordered because of incentives like early access, in-game items and cosmetics, in-game titles, etc.. You pre-order in exchange for things in the game that you won't get if you don't pre-order. I am not defending this practice, I am only explaining the truth.
Of the like 4 times ive pre-ordered games in thr past 5 years, its all because my friends and I were all going to be gaming together and I wanted to preload it and be ready to go when it releases
Yes being able to play when the game goes live is the main reason for me personally. GTA VI is probably going to be over 150GB in size and I just don't want to spend half a day downloading the game when it launches. Playing when the clock hits midnight is much more fun. The game will cost the same amount of money whether I pre-order it or whether I buy it after release. What's the point in buying it after release if I know I want to buy this game anyway? May as well just buy it now so I'm ready to play once the game goes live.
i honestly kinda hate the fact that i had to pre-order both Ace Combat 7 and 8 to get access to the two ps2 ace combat games the attached as a pre order bonus....
Exactly. Its also mostly irrelevant to anyone realistically speaking. Im never apending full price on a game, but getting mad or making fun of people preordering a game they are hyped for is really weird.
See and YOU make sense. I get the people who say "don't buy wait 6 months and it will be on sale". That I get. What I dont get is "don't preorder" as in buy on release day which does nothing except make you lose out on whatever preorder thing exists.
Are you just making up a non-existent or super rare scenario to stroke your own ego? Like "haha I don't pre-order like those chuds, I'm so cool cuz I wait for sales lolz"
I learned in the year 2000 with the game, Driver 2. The first Driver was decent, and I wanted to support the developers. The game was so bad, bugs beyond belief, I couldn’t get anywhere in that game. It had bugs where you’d get knocked into the air and you wouldn’t come back down. The car mechanics were just crap. If you look up the reviews, they range from 2/10 to 8/10. Pretty sure the 8/10 were paid reviews. Drove back to GameStop and traded it in the day it was released to get back as much as I could possible before everyone else traded their copy in. Still lost a lot of money buying it. Driver 3 was even worse.
I say this every time this comes up - the problem isn’t pre-ordering. In Canada I can go to ebgames and pre order any game I want with $0 down and no commitment. It just guarantees me a physical copy and gives me whatever gimmick pre order bonus I get. The problem is when you have a retailer or digital sales front that charges upfront.
helps you plan finances easier. can possibly include a pre-load so the servers aren’t smashed on release. and you get bonus stuff usually. no one thinks they’re going to run out. this shit is stupid.
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from noting down that you'll have -$50 in December or whatever. It is the laziest thing ever to suggest it's "hard" to keep track of that over losing $50 today so your monke brain can go "hurr, is 50 less" right away.
The post you were responding to is pure copium by the exact people encouraging the worst tendencies from gaming companies.
Fr how can it help plan to finance ? Can’t you just like predict the same virtual amount but wait for the release which changes nothing ? Feels like impulsive expense justification. Real expense planing would be to wait until it release, wait for the hype to fall a bit and see if the price is justified lol
We are so far into dead internet theory omg. I have seen HUNDREDS of these posts over just a few months. It can’t be real people at this point. If you honestly believe that is why people pre-order digital games then get off the internet and take some classes.
Downvote me into oblivion if you want, but I still prefer to pre order through brick and mortar stores to guarantee a physical copy, mainly for switch 2. Love my Fortunes Weave Dagdan collection.
Anything on PC will be discounted shortly after release.
Physical copies go out of stock, I don't think anyone will question why you pre-order a physical copy. But I too don't get why people pre-order a digital one.
Fortunes Weave and GTA 6 are probably the first games I’ve preordered in a decade or so. I was going to get them anyway, so there was no point in waiting until release day.
The funny thing is the one system i dont want physical copies for is switch/switch 2 because then i have to carry around these carts when my kid wants to play whatever on the plane etc lol.
Either is valid. My wife doesn’t care and gets games she wants digitally, and has Animal Crossing and Mario Kart on her switch which our daughter loves. Meanwhile Im hauling around my big case with like 20 carts in it lol.
There is. On launch day there's a chance you'll hear about thousands of negative reviews so you may change your mind before buying. Small chance since it's launch day, but still it exists.
If you pre-order you just give your money randomly for something that doesn't exist yet nor is going to run out since it's digital.
If you buy the game on Steam, you have the return window.
If the game doesn't launch, runs poorly, or is getting trashed in reviews, you can get a refund.
It is highly unlikely that you would've run the game for 2+ hours at that point, if the game is dogshit. And I'm sure that Steam would be flooded with similar refund requests.
Most people aren’t pre ordering random ass games. The only games I’ve ever even considered pre ordering are the games that I’m a massive fan of, that I know I will enjoy, or the games that I’ve seen gameplay, and know it’s something I’ll enjoy.
Me at least personally I've only preordered games from companies that, for now, have been consistently putting our bangers.
Last thing I believe I preordered was elden ring. Which unfortunately with the issues of ceos trying to force more monetization on elden ring but being told no. As well as night reign being very underwhelming from what I've seen (never bought it myself). Will likely be the last fromsoft title i will preorder.
Sandfall has earned a spot though and as long as the concept for their next game looks interesting it'll also be a preorder.
Oh and then Mobius digital I'm preordering the moment their next game is available.
So only 2 companies at the moment id bother preordering from these days.
u/Anthraxiousi7 3770K, 16GB DDR3, Crossfire 7870HD Radeon. PEAK PC MASTERRACE8h ago
Some people have shitty internet and given how pre-orders pre-download your game (and that games today are fucking huge, especially with all these patches) that can really be a nice time saver. Being ready to play on the launch date (midnight even) and having to wait all day to install it are different things.
I say this as someone with neither bad internet nor a pre-order fetish but there IS a use for it.
Financially it has made more sense for me to preorder games when:
1- They are games I am going to play regardless of reviews because they are something I want to experience myself no matter what.
And then either a or b is correct:
A- financially the preorder window is a good time for me. I’d rather have the money spent and have the ability to play it when it launches. As opposed to something like having to wait for a paycheque if the actual release is poorly timed.
B- there are rewards for pre-ordering and since I will play the game at launch anyways, I may as well have an extra outfit or two.
A- financially the preorder window is a good time for me. I’d rather have the money spent and have the ability to play it when it launches. As opposed to something like having to wait for a paycheque if the actual release is poorly timed.
are you unable to just put away that money until you need it on release?
If it ever makes more Financial sense to pre-order a game because you might not have money at a different time that just means that you're extremely bad with finances so much so that maybe you shouldn't be playing video games and you should be actually focusing on your life
I've also been reminded that I don't always agree with reviews or the loudest voices in the gaming world.
I pre-ordered Diablo 4 because I got laid off right before the pre order early access. Played it and had a damn blast. Never played the franchise and just really enjoyed it.
Everyone said it was terrible.
Everybody was shitting on Cyberpunk.
Before I saw all that I had already purchased and installed. Played just fine with zero bugs.
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Gamers have a lot of opinions. But opinions aren't facts.
Yep, I pre order games like any mainline Resident Evil because I know I'm buying it day one anyway. If there is a bonus costume or whatever for pre-order that's a plus. Nothing wrong with being excited for a release you're waiting for.
I feel like the few early access games that have any notable following are basically complete, or at least as complete as Skyrim. That's to say they are often buggy messes but the entire story is complete and you'll only have to persona yourself a few times to complete the game. No game is perfect but I'd take an 70-80% game over a 95% game if that last 15-25% takes 6 more years of development.
I buy early access games if the game is currently in a state where I think it’s worth the current cost. That way if it does stop getting updated, I don’t end up feeling fleeced.
Depends of the game\studio. BG3 EA was what made bg3 become a goty because of all the players who gave feedbacks and larian actually added those to the full game release
I'm picky with what early access games I buy but I've never had a bad experience. I view it completely differently than paying for a game you can't download. Early access let's you actually play the game. I also do report bugs and give feedback with early access since that's the entire point of it
Only two EA games I've done were Subnautica and Dead Cells.
Both were bangers as the studios KNEW what we wanted.
But I'll boycott the hell out of Windblown because Dead Cells was STILL printing money via Evil Empire (more or less the exact team from MT that worked on it) because MT was afraid new shiny game wouldn't sell.
Basically Bungie "killing" EoS Destiny 2 to try and get more people to Marathon. But even worse
Baldur’s Gate 3 was an early access game and it turned out incredible. Yes plenty of companies release a game in EA and then abandon it. But plenty of studios use it to get feedback and work with consumers to make the best game possible.
The worst part about fanboys, being a totally irrational behaviour, is you cannot reason with them. It's just an emotional impulse they have (and they themselves might suspect it's wrong, it's why brands invest so much into making them think them they did the right thing by buying their products) and for that reason they will deny anything that goes against it.
This. Last EA game I bought was Subnautica 2 and I regret buying and playing before it's finished. They've got a good 3 years ahead of them to complete the game, and now I have to wait that long wondering if it's going to take a turn for the worst. They have our money already. What's to stop them from tossing it down the shitter? It shouldn't be like that
iT's ThEiR mOnEy ThEy CaN sPeNd It HoW tHeY wAnT! iT dOeSn'T aFfEcT yOu!
It's like you guys think you live on a different planet where capitalism and cause and effect don't exist. Companies are simple things. They do what makes money, and they don't do what doesn't make money. That's it. So if a company has decided to sell pre-orders for a half-finished, broken piece of trash that they may or may not ever fix, and it works, guess what they're going to keep doing? If they decide to put out totally unnecessary pre-order bonuses that could have been included in the base game, and it works, guess what they're going to keep doing?
Yes, it affects me. I have to live in the fallout of your bad, impulsive, impatient, instant-gratification, impressed-by-key-jingling decisions.
This depends on a few things. Sometimes people spend money on things that affect industry decisions or on companies that are known to influence policies.
Whoosh. Did you forget actions have consequences? How do you think blizzard got the idea to have beta tester PAY THEM? Consumers spending money recklessly and not making sure their purchase is worth the money. The more you spend on stupid bs and the more money a company gets before the game releases, the more they can rake you over the coals for content that should have been included in the first place.
So yes, I do feel the right to get annoyed by other people preordering digital games. People spending their money like this will influence gaming negatively, just like any other part of the economy.
It’s pretty simple. In gaming specifically, the more people continue to buy into a greedy practice a company employs, that’ll make the company want to employ more greedy practices. And this has snowballed over the years to the point that making money takes priority over actually making a good game anymore. After all, why make an amazing game when the majority of gamers will buy a trash or mid game anyway and pay for micro transactions, dlcs, pre-orders, etc anyway. And it’s people like you who are feeding the problem. Just eating it all up like slop
Well no buying on release day or preordering the company still makes money. You would need to skip the game completely or wait until its on discount for it to matter.
How is it being mad? It's a joke that makes an observation of gamer behavior, but then focuses on just one tiny part of it to make it look ridiculous along with the funny imagery of an ape explaining something to a human. Sorry if you've had an animal explain something to you before and your response is trauma related.
I pre-order games when I know I'm going to buy them anyway because I want to form my own opinion. Plus you usually get a pre-order bonus like early access. I'll still return it if I don't like it. I'm also one of those weirdos who will keep buggy games when I know the developers are active and will eventually fix things.
People pre-order usually for bonus content or early access or access to pre-release betas or the such. If you're doing it on a a platform like Steam you still have the ability to return the product if for some reason its a disaster on release.
Neither position is stupid, there's valid reasons for both.
Even if it’s not a bandwidth issue preloading lets you play as soon as possible. I’ve done it before but nowadays a new game will sit unplayed for weeks because I just don’t have the time so there’s no point anymore.
If a publisher knows people will buy the game because of the quality of the marketing regardless of the quality of the actual game, they are incentivized to spend more time and effort on the marketing than releasing a quality, or sometimes even functional, game.
Big publishers (who are usually the only ones offering pre-orders) have a record of releasing unpolished, unfinished, and often broken games that may or may not ever get better, depending on if the publishers think they can continue to make money off of it.
If the market decided not to pay for garbage, we would stop getting garbage. So when you decide "I'm okay paying for garbage", they start selling me garbage. I am not okay with that.
I usually agree but I am so fucking excited for the new Metro game and I want the devs to have all the money so they can focus on making a great knowing it is already a success.
Sometimes you just like a franchise and the dev team enough to want to support it early.
I only pre order if there are benefits. Usually it’s early access, additional and/or exclusive DLC. Some people also pre-order a digital game simply to show support to the developer or the franchise.
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u/AlaskanHamr 7800x3D | 7900XTX | 32GB DDR5 9h ago
Nah, I preorder for the stupid bonus stuff lol