Image alt text: An image of Steam’s top 10 best-selling games at the time of posting, three of which are marked as “prepurchase”
I checked the Steam stats and noticed that in the top 10 best selling games by revenue, there’s three games that aren’t even out yet. If we ignore the Steam Deck and f2p games, it’s three out of four games. They have also been in the top 100 for 4, 6, and 8 weeks respectively, so people just keep on buying them. I would love to know why people keep doing this, as the idea of pre-ordering is that there is a physical copy of a game available for you on release, but this is not a concern with digital items. So after so many games lately being utterly broken on release, why do people not wait until launch reviews to buy the game? If you touch a hot stove and get burned multiple times, when does one learn?
Steamdeck top 4. Yeah right Valve.
It’s ordered by revenue.
Do I pay full price for games before they are available to play and are most likely not going to be finished upon release? No.
Preordering anything with no real or artificial scarcity doesn’t really make financial sense. It’s a predatory sales tactic to get people to part with their money sooner, in this case before customers have a chance to use software that is pretty much unreturnable. Gaming publishers love digital preorders because some customers end up paying full price for games they don’t even like and can’t even resell.
Sadly, for at least the last ten years or more, most non-online games are best played a few years after release date when they’ve had their bugs fixed or their ‘complete edition’ released.
Used to be I could preload games I prepurchase and would absolutely be doing that still, but that’s pretty much never on offer anymore so I don’t prepurchase even games I’m 100% certain I’ll be getting.
I can think of 2 legitimate reasons for doing this - either putting the money down now so you don’t have to come up with it later, or so you can preload it and have it available right at release.
These days? No.
I used to when I had very crappy internet speeds, but these days I have a gigabit connection - and I swear the decryption process takes longer than it is to just download the game right after release in an unencrypted state.
And even back then I was very picky on pre-orders. I honestly couldn’t even tell you what was the last one I pre-ordered.
oh man I forgot about this. preload used to be such a big selling point but now it only takes a few minutes to download most games.
The reason people do it is poor impulse control for the dopamine hit from buying something they want. I’m pretty sure anyone claiming another reason isn’t being honest with themselves or others.
Only indie games, because I like to support indie developers.
Never. There’s no point, it’s not like there are a limited amount of copies that I’ll miss out on if I don’t reserve mine.
Once, Diablo 3. I figured it could not miss. It missed.
For me it really depends on the game, the studio, and the publisher. I preordered Firmament because Cyan has a good history. I might also pre-order a digital game if I think a game is particularly novel, or if I think I’m going to like it pretty much regardless of the reviews (e.g. I like the franchise it’s from/ties into), the last reason is if there’s some kind of in-game incentive to do so (e.g. pre-order and you get some in game minor boost/cosmetic/whatever) but that’s really only a minor consideration.
You haven’t been burned then?
Not yet or at least not badly. I have respect for people who have been burned to make their decisions but I also target games/publishers that I already trust. A game from a company I’ve never heard of will probably not get pre-ordered.
Never preorder any game.
Only twice and felt foolish after release. Stalker 2 was selling below pre order price on a trustworthy key site. And cyberpunk, not sure why I did that one.
I’m going to preorder monster hunter wilds, I’ll be it the day before and pre-download it. Does that count?
Last game i pre-ordered was fallout 4 hahahaha. So no i don’t pre-order anymore. I even waited for a discount on baldur’s gate 3 before buying it, that was a feat of it’s own.
There are very few reason why I might choose to pre-order a game:
- I know for sure I want to play the game on launch day and dont want to deal with downloading the game all day
- the pre-order comes with physical goods that I want
- the game is made by FromSoftware or Yoko Taro, I know I am basically guaranteed to like anything from either of these
- the game is part of an intellectual property that I like and I want that property to be successful, and I would have purchased the game anyways
Thats really it. Generally niche instances, I don’t find myself pre-ordering games all that often anymore. I pre-ordered the Collectors Edition of Elden Ring, the White Snow edition of NieR Replicant 1.22 (still waiting on that Gestalt 1.22 DLC). But other than those two, I haven’t felt compelled to pre-order anything else. I learned about Dino Crisis on GOG too late if it even had a pre-order period, but I did buy it on release day.
