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.
There are too many "ifs" there for something to actually work for a majority.
The facts are that pre-ordering games are one of the (many) reasons that the game industry is shit and customers are fucked. Your ifs don't help the fact. Your pre-ordering does though.
Keep pre-ordering digital games without a real way to know if the product you're paying for is going to be good. Let the industry rot more.
Why are you so mad about the way people spend their money? Pre-ordering games didn't "ruin" the games industry. Sounds like you don't play a lot of video games if we're being honest.
no one is mad Shrek. We are explaining the dynamics to you.
- Companies could allow reviewers early access to games, so that on launch day you know what you are buying.
They don't do that.
On average this hurts the consumer
One reason they don't do that is because a lot of people don't mind prepaying for a game they haven't seen.
In other words, video game publishers have shifted the risk to the consumer and have zero incentives to change.
Feel free to continue spending as you wish; even if it means buying blindly. Meanwhile, we will keep highlighting the flaw in this logic in the hopes of driving real change.
To be clear, there is 0 misinformation here. If reviews are available when you pre-buy a game, then the argument just doesn't apply.
I opted to write the pertinent aspects of the argument to avoid wasting everyone's time.
If a review is available and you like a game, there is (almost) 0 risk in pre-buying -- enjoy your game!
You need nuance though. For example in cyberpunk, reviewers were only given the PC version, not the other versions.
Also reviewers were not allowed to publish their own captured gameplay.
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.
Unless the game you're a massive fan of, know you will enjoy, and have seen gameplay of, still turns out to be a massive turd anyway. Like KSP2.
Nobody wanted that game to succeed more than KSP fans like myself. They even brought in a bunch of youtubers to their studio to play & review the game a few weeks before the early access release. And maybe because they all wanted the game to do well, and it was "only early access", their criticisms were EXTREMELY mild. Some were just little hints, like Scott Manley releasing a review of a different space game the day of KSP2's early access release.
Even tho I wanted to throw my money at this game so badly, I STILL took the general advice of waiting a week. And guess what, it ended up saving me from accidentally funding a scam project.
If you mean the KSP2 studio was brand new with a newly assembled team, that's fair.
But Resident Evil is a loooong running franchise now. The people who created the best games in the series probably aren't even working there anymore, many are likely already dead. It may be the same studio in name only, but with completely different staff and management.
That's the point: past successes are no guarantee that future releases will be any good. There's many other games we could make that comparison with.
Exactly the point... Resident evil has been around long enough we know the baseline standard of what we should expect from it. They had a terrible streak around the RE6 time and sales did dip down and people lost interest.. It took basically RE7, and the RE2 remake to bring some faith back to the customers.
whoever pre ordered KSP2 on the success of one game with a whole different team, that's on them....
Usually long standing studios (and IP's) have a certain baseline quality that usually gives people a precedent.
For example, I know that Square Enix games are amazing games story wise, very good gameplay wise, but PC performance is really not their forte so I should expect bugs and some unoptimization on their games... Whilst ID Software games run amazing on any potato, have great gameplay, but the story can be meh.
we know the baseline standard of what we should expect from it.
It's the exact same shit. KSP is a physics simulator. 2 was supposed to have the exact same features, but with a little extra stuff & less bugs. They literally had a blueprint of what the game was supposed to be, just had to make it better and with "more". (Like the Sims vs. The Sims 2. Same exact thing, but with "more".) It was supposed to be an easy slam dunk. The easiest win in gaming history.
If anything, with each Resident Evil title being so different from each other, with different characters, settings, gameplay mechanics, etc., you should be even more skeptical.
Resident evil and Capcom are like 30+ years old. It's an stablished brand. KSP is ONE game from a very small studio. You can't compare stuff like that.
You absolutely can, if it's the same talented people working on it. Everyone knew Diablo 2 was going to be a banger, because it was brought to you by the same people who made the first Diablo
What you CAN'T do is expect Diablo 3 to be a banger straight out of the gates 12 years later, when all the people who worked on the first two have retired.
You realize that a 30 year history works against your point? It's completely different people working on it, different management, different culture. Basically a completely different studio, only same in name alone.
While I do totally understand you sentiment, you can’t just expect everyone to have low expectations AND opt out throwing some money at the development teams that bring them entertainment. And I mean that genuinely.
I see Resident Evil being throw around, but I’ve got a good example myself. Hellraiser. I knew the gameplay wouldn’t be riveting, but I love the series, and I wanted those skins from the pre order, it also didn’t hurt that Saber has a good history.
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u/T0biasCZE PC MasterRace | dumbass that bought Sonic motherboard9h ago
Tbf KSP2 WAS early access. Point of early access is its not finished. When KSP1 came out in early access, it was 10 times buggier and less polished.
I don't wish to dig into the nitty gritty of the whole story again, but to put it simply, there's a lot more to it that you're leaving out.
When KSP started development, Squad wasn't even a game studio. It was a marketing company or something, I think like a call center maybe. Apparently the company was doing so poorly that they asked employees to come up with ideas for the company, and it didn't even have to be related to what they were currently doing. And one guy had always wanted to make a space game, so they said, "sure, why not." There was like 12 people max, and most of them didn't know the first thing about game development.
The guys making KSP2 started off with millions in funding, massive offices actually set up to be a game studio, and around 75 employees. And they said they had many industry veterans on staff who knew what they were doing.
This is literally comparing an indie studio that releases 'whatever they have ready' as early access, because they're still figuring it out, and they don't know if they'll even be open next month; Vs. A professional mid-size game studio that had funding and 5 years of runway and a blueprint that is the first game to follow & copy from. KSP2 was never supposed to be an early access game. It only got released as such because they were taking too long and ran out of money.
And when it eventually got released (in early access) after 5 years of development, not only was it missing significant features from the first game, it even had bugs that the first game had fixed ages ago. They had every advantage in their favor that the first game didn't have, and still couldn't even match it after 5 years with a much bigger team.
All while promising us in these highly-produced dev log videos that "the game is so polished now, staff are spending more time playing it than working on it." Or, "we've killed the Kraken!" (Nickname for physics bugs)
Then updates slowed to a trickle and eventually stopped. The studio was then shut down less than a year after that their "release".
It doesn't make sense to compare it to the first game. I kinda hate this over-simplified cop-out, "the first game was in a similar situation when it released as early access!" They started from completely different places. And even still, the first game was an indie project that accomplished more with less resources.
There's a lot more to it that I'm leaving out, but we could talk about this all day. The main point is they lied to us several times throughout development, so I think the word "scam" is at least somewhat justified. (At least KSA is sizing up to become what KSP2 was always supposed to be.)
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.
Elden Ring maybe not the best example as it's widely considered one of the best games of all time. What monetization? I've never heard this being a possibility.
My memory is fuzzy but from what I remember. Higher ups above Miyazaki tried to push him out or do a restructure because he didn't want to make more content for the game. Or at the very least not like how they wanted. I think Miyazaki may have said that content for elden ring is likely done but the higher ups wanted more to sell. At least that's how it appears in my memory, it may have been twisted cause I legit can't remember the exact situation. Was about a year ago or so
A large portion of the US lives paycheck to paycheck, and most other countries make less. So yeah preordering is potentially a tough thing for many gamers, and they do it anyway, so my argument was simply that "it's not nothing." You don't have to be "broke" for the hastle and $80 coming out of your account at an inopportune time to not "be nothing."
Cancel your pre-order on launch day? That's when your pre-order becomes a real order. Sometimes, because of disgusting FOMO tactics, your order is finalised before actual launch day.
How about being patient for just 24 hours more instead of overcomplicating things AND adding to the rotting of the industry? It's just 24 hours. Scroll your day away if your brain can't handle 24 hours. Jesus
FH6 pre-order made sense because it gave you gameplay access a weekend before actual release, plus you got plenty useful extras & DLC packs which were more expensive if bought separately. Plus if you were a FH fan, you'd kind of knew even if they were to dissapoint, it would still be a great game given the track record from previois FH series...
For any other game, only Early Access makes sense.
I preorder games that I know I will buy regardless of the reviews. There are games that I am interested in and I have seen gameplay from them that I would like to play even if it isn't that great. For example, I knew wolverine wouldn't be that great, but I wanted to play a game as the character and rip people apart.
u/Anthraxiousi7 3770K, 16GB DDR3, Crossfire 7870HD Radeon. PEAK PC MASTERRACE9h 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.
I still install early even though the biggest of games would take me like 30 minutes. Just want to be able to sit down and click play on day 1
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u/Anthraxiousi7 3770K, 16GB DDR3, Crossfire 7870HD Radeon. PEAK PC MASTERRACE9h ago
I mean yeah, regardless you install it early if you know you'll play it. Like for example God of War Laufey. The reviews could come in with 5/10 and I'd still play it as I liked the previous two very much. Same with Intergalactic. Some games are just instant buys.
Saying that I'm going for a physical copy of GoW cause fuck Sony, but the sentiment is there at least.
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?
I am but from an accounting standpoint it’s easier to spend the money than mentally subtract it from my savings every time. Especially if it’s far out and I want to use something like birthday money to treat myself.
I also sometimes lose track of small things. I may accidentally spend money for a game on dinner out. If I have money in my savings account, remembering that $60 for like 8 months is a tedious thing for something fun. Pre-ordering makes it easier to allocate.
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.
someone has to be the first one to buy it, i dont preorder alot of games but like lets say persona 4 revival im preordering just so i dont have to worry about buying it later, some games which is from devs who i trust to deliver good games would also be something i preorder from, like if supergiant games came out with a preorder i would preorder instantly. If cassette beasts 2002 could be preordered i would as well. Im not gonna preorder everygame but games from a series i know i enjoy and proven by the devs who make it.
yeah thats a fair point, however i also wouldn't say most reviewers are helpful, we have ones who have preference for different genres that the consumer the game is made for.
Reviewers are useful when the game aims towards a large net of people
"so I don't have to worry about buying it later", what? so you don't have to click like 5 buttons on a screen then vs now? also, "devs who I trust" is an odd statement when we're talking about one of the least consistent industries of our time. The team that makes one game will almost 99% of the time not be the same dev team making the sequel, and production companies can always step in and force devs in a different direction. ya'll just dont wanna admit that the FOMO is manufactured, and you're falling for it.
"So I dont have to worry about buying it later" i wasnt speaking of difficulty, I was speaking of when I have spare money. If i have spare money now I would rather just get the game i know I will play.
I spoke of supergiant games (who has been consistent quality for a long time) and an indie development team of cassette beasts. Im sure its FOMO that i just want to play games that i know I enjoy yeah sure
Because reviews are notoriously bullshit more often than not and just because some random gaming journalist likes something doesn’t mean I’m going to.
Look at Alien:Isolation. Got a 5.9 from IGN but is revered as one of the best survival horror games ever made by the people who actually played it.
Cuphead is another one that will go down in infamy. Guy gave it a bad review because he couldn’t get past a tutorial step as simple as mid air dashing.
Mad Max, Days Gone, Prey, and the list goes on. So many games that got shit reviews to later have die hard fanbases because they turned out to be amazing because some people chose to form their own opinions.
Or because reviews don't dictate if I like a game or not? I play the game and make up my mind. Now you're right for triple aaa that come out every year. But something like gra for example, I don't care what the reviews are. I'm playing it to see if I like it. The position you describe puts too much emphasis on what others think to dictate your life.
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 still see the difference when it comes to e.g. GTA which started pre-orders when they only released two cinematic videos. The game was literally black box.
People cry how different was Watch Dogs compared to trailers and they still keep pre-ordering.
Yes. Money loses value due to inflation. The ealier you buy, the more you pay. Also it negates the necessity for the games being any good at release. If publishers get money before release, they mitigate risks and you bear them instead.
If there is no difference - why do they offer it? 😉
Its not about singular transactions. But how the markets change based on what we consumers do with new ideas. Locking content behind "pre oder bonuses", locking "early play", cosmetics, micro transactions, battle passes, dlc jungles etc. etc. is all business practice which only gets worse for consumers if we act like "its just one transaction that doesnt really matter by itself".
That's fine usually if there isn't a financial stake in it. Maybe it's just me but I like to look at reviews before I buy something on Amazon or watch youtube reviews as research before buying a car.
But if you don't mind possibly wasting your money and letting devs know money is always guaranteed regardless of how shit their release is, you do you booboo
Big difference between buying a car and a video game champ. Reviews are a decent tool to get a feel for if you will enjoy something sure, but they are ultimately opinion pieces and you should take them with a large pinch of salt.
Also many people like to go into some games blind because it enhances the experience of actually playing the game. Some of the best games I've played or movies I've watched were blind experiences. Back in the early 2000s the only place to get reviews was in gaming mags and they were always better constructed than 75% of reviews now. But even then not every game got page space.
I know the instant gratification era we find ourselves in directs you to ruin all chance of being disappointed or pleasantly surprised, but it's good for you to waste money from time to time. It helps you develop an actual sense of what you like and don't like. I didn't like Starfield and now I know why I enjoy the Fallout and Eldar Scroll games.
I tried out the most recent black ops game on game pass and realized that while I do enjoy a bit of junk food shooter gaming, I don't like the way COD does it. Ext.
No but I like to do research before buying things. Like if I'm getting something on Amazon, I like to look at reviews. If I'm buying a car I'll watch YouTube reviews of cars before I test drive them.
"Researching and making informed decisions" and "needing other to make decisions for you" are the same thing I guess?
Trailers are a pretty weak way of judging whether a game is worth buying or not. But if a company is confident enough to let independent reviewers get their hands on the game early and they are overwhelmingly positive? Hell yeah then pre order your heart out. They deserve your money in that case
the fact that you're so willing to just throw your money at something that doesn't exist yet is exactly the issue that the "dont preorder" crowd has with all this. blind consumerism. just admit that the preorder bonuses they offer you give you a preorder boner.
You make it seem like people preorder a game without seeing anything. They just hear the title and close their eyes as they preorder on the game page to avoid any information
bro why does giving a damn = crying all the damn time. I genuinely believe that we all have a little something to work on with our consumer purchasing habits, and that includes not giving in to the bs marketing surrounding preorders.
You do know it DOES exist, yeah? Preorders generally only open up once the game is gold. It’s not like they pull it out of a magic hat in their ass on release day.
beauty of having different opinions. we dont have to argue! i just dont think we should give in so easily to the avenues presented to us wherein we can throw money at large companies. i hope to make others reflect on this, and maybe you will to. if not, all good. 👍
that's wonderful, and completely unrelated to what im talking about. you were given something real, physical, tangible, and scarce. that's not what preordering is today.
My point is that preordering games has been a thing for fucking decades. And you’re trying to make it seem like getting something for literally nothing is stupidity just because we ourselves haven’t gotten to play a game. Personally I don’t subscribe to game delivery services or rent games so if I’m going to spend my money I’m going to do so for something I really want to play. Yeah it sucks when a game doesn’t live up to expectations or worse it’s broken and needs to be patched but that’s the fucking world we live in and you don’t always get a W but it’s not like people can’t refunds.
You can live your life and spend money on things you want but I promise you I can think way dumber things to spend $77 on that will sizzle out than a game I can play whenever I want for years to come
If a certain creator, company or series puts out a game, movie or book then I'm going to buy it and support their track record. If the quality drops then I'm going to find that out for myself and adjust my future purchasing decisions. That's not blindness, that's how reputation works.
only logical response ive seen so far. this does make some sense, and seems like a valid way to approach preorders. i just wont be the one to do it cause there are reviewers that i trust, and i wont touch a game til im certain it checks the right boxes.
i think my original comment is mainly trying to take a stab at the blind preorders people make time and time again. COD is a great example, wherein swaths of the fanbase will flock to the preorder year after year regardless of quality decline.
I preorder once every year or two, and haven't found a game reviewer I haven't disagreed with at least some of the time and even loved some games which general community sentiment is negative on, so I judge for myself. The only reviews that matter to me are technical ones, but I've always managed to get a refund in those rare cases - like I won't ask for a refund if I didn't like a movie but I will if there were technical issues with the showing.
Also Call of Duty sales and preorders are massively down, so I think people who are disappointed are making informed purchasing decisions. If some are disappointed year on year and still preordering then I 100% agree that's an issue.
Two games that were fine if you weren't overhyping yourself? One of which being released years after Steam established a no-questions-asked refund policy?
It's not 2010 anymore, grandpa. It literally doesn't matter. Two button presses away from getting your money back at any point.
nah man they were not fine lmao cyberpunk's launch is known as the buggiest launch in gaming history and watch dogs straight up lied about what their game would have, the trailer was years ahead of the actuall game.
You uh.. realize that's the only game Sony has given free refunds to everyone if they wanted it.. right? They pulled it from their digital store. I know because I bought it for my wife for her birthday and had everything downloaded and setup for when she got off work. Every 45 minutes the game crashed and you're lucky if you made it that long.
Cyberpunk launch was the biggest fucking letdown in gaming.
dont give money to companies that dont deserve it in the first place? let the corpo's earn your money dont just give it to them hoping they will keep their word lol
no i wont im poor as a mf lol, the point is: value your money more, invest it or something you never know when you might need it, the game will be there 4 u when u want to buy it, be sure the game deserves your money before giving it to them is my view.
While I understand the view, my point was that if you're going to 100% buy it and play it there's no benefit to waiting for the release countdown to hit 0 before buying it. I only pre-order like 1-2 games annually. Everything else can wait for sales or until buddies want to play it
yeah i get what you mean i just dont agree, people were 100% sure they were gonna buy cyberpunk and pre-ordered it, but they were greeted with an unplayable build of the game, they could have spent that money on something else, even duplicated it instead of having to wait to test the game and refund it.
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u/Baxxtabb 10h ago
There's no difference between pre-ordering and waiting for launch day when you know you're going to buy it lmao.