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.
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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.