Pre Purchasing Games

Nate75

Nate75

Nate75

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Joined
21 Mar 2005
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With the shockers of The Last of Us and the new Star Wars game.

Is pre purchasing to "blame"?

I figure that they must play test etc right?

Question. Would PC games come out in this state without pre purchasing?
 
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Probably yes? If you pre-ordering on steam you can get a refund any ways. If you do it elsewhere like cdkeys you can just wait for a review and ask for a refund if you did not collect the key.

I pre-order purely because it works out cheaper than buying day 1 or even first few weeks on cdkeys. But I only do it on games I either want to support or really want to play day 1 which ain't that often.
 
Why pre order to save £5 on an inflated release price when I can get it for half price when it's eventually been fixed. Or even save the entire purchase price when it becomes obvious that it'll never be the game that the per order trailer claimed it would be.

The pre order option was relevant when physical supplies where limited and you wanted it in the post asap after release. How this is still a thing is beyond me.
 
Only ever pre-ordered the Witcher 2.

Keep myself a few years behind the curve so games are cheaper and 'cheaper' GPUs (not so much now) can run them.
 
Pre-ordering is just one of many signs that the gaming industry has been taken over by marketing departments - because they can make kids feel FOMO to part them with their money. The correct response is to hate them for trying to manipulate people.

Same applies for "skins", "battle passes", "drops", multiple "currencies", etc.

The earning potential / greed makes the publisher constantly pressure the developer to release as early as possible.

I believe in voting with my wallet, but the whole reason advertising is everywhere is because it works. Advertising hacks your brain to make you buy stuff you wouldn't otherwise buy. Pre-ordering FOMO does the same thing. My protest vote isn't going to put a dent in it because brains work the way they work and that's that.

One day we will wake up and ban all forms of psychological manipulation - advertising, gambling, addictive cigs/sugar/booze/coffee - but it's going to take some sort of crisis or revolution to make political leaders willing to take on business in that way.
 
I'm confident if the paying public didn't pre-order en masse, we wouldn't be in this situation of nearly every major PC release being buggy as hell. I'm guilty of occasionally pre-ordering, but only for titles/developers that I trust ( which at this point in time is very few, admittedly ). And, I nearly always buy via Steam so I've always got the option to refund.

The real issue here is FOMO : good marketing means many people can't resist temptation to jump in and get something new. And publishers know this. Most people can't exercise adequate discipline, unless other factors come into play eg. lacking funds to buy any game even at discounted prices.
 
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throwaway4372 said:
One day we will wake up and ban all forms of psychological manipulation - advertising, gambling, addictive cigs/sugar/booze/coffee - but it's going to take some sort of crisis or revolution to make political leaders willing to take on business in that way.
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Doubt we will ever get rid of all forms of psychological manipulation. I mean probably the largest form of psychological manipulation on the planet is religion and thats been going almost as long as mankind itself.
 
Many of the issues reported are overblown. I have a couple of pc gaming friends that preorder games and they buy, complete and move on before the majority even reach their peak outrage.

When ask them about any issues the usual reply is "didn't notice anything, it was a pretty good game". While I seat waiting for months wondering if all the "issues" that every youtuber is screeching about have been fixed.

Sometimes I wonder whose approach is better.
 
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Truly can't get my head around the rationale of pre ordering anything that doesn't exist in physical form. Definitely ranks up there in terms of stupid things people do with their money.

Encourages publishers to push out more money grabbing strategies at the expense of nailing the basics.
 
Haven't pre-purchased any games in quite a number of years after getting burned by a few in the past.

Frankly there's nothing I'm that desperate to play in order to purchase before release. There's also the fact that pricing has gotten ridiculous. Me and a mate have been a fan of the dead Island series. So have been quite looking forward to DI2 - but there's absolutely no way we're paying £55 for the game.
 
I took a break from gaming for a while so i have a huge backlog of games to play. The beauty of this is that by the time i get to play the newer games they are fully patched, cheaper to buy and i can afford to buy the hardware to run them (hopefully)
some people have addictive personalities and have to have things asap, most kids are like this these days probably due to today's throwaway society and the likes of tiktok.
I would never pay full price for a aaa game these days even if it did work on release and don't get me started on the release half a game at full price and pay for dlc we get these days too.
 
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I've hardly ever pre-purchased a game, maybe 3 in total. The most recent one was Return to Monkey Island - well I knew I wanted it before it released, and any game that releases Horse Armor just for the LOL's had to be OK!
 
Dirk Diggler said:
Why pre order to save £5 on an inflated release price when I can get it for half price when it's eventually been fixed. Or even save the entire purchase price when it becomes obvious that it'll never be the game that the per order trailer claimed it would be.

The pre order option was relevant when physical supplies where limited and you wanted it in the post asap after release. How this is still a thing is beyond me.
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As I explained, I pre-order if it is a must play title and want to support the devs. Otherwise I just wait until sub £20. By then all beta testing is done too :cry:

If you don't care to support a dev or feel the need to play a game as soon as it is out then one can also wait a few years and get it on humble bundle or something. You can even stay a gen or two behind on graphics cards and save even more money. Horses for courses. But I will keep pre-ordering and saving my £5 and supporting devs I want :D

Semple said:
Haven't pre-purchased any games in quite a number of years after getting burned by a few in the past.
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How did you manage that? Pre-ordering is no different than buying day 1 or day 7 as far as I am concerned. You still get to see reviews and reception before deciding to keep it or get a refund. The upside is you get the game cheaper.
 
I think I'd only be tempted to preorder now if it was some sort of special edition of a game I was really into. Even then, very unlikely.

Like I say, TW2 was the only one I ever did and although the boxed game is nice and has a few bits and bobs it still just lives in a box not seeing the light of day.

I would be tempted with Starfield but it's Bethesda. It'll definitely be a while before mods get that to work I imagine.
 
TNA said:
How did you manage that? Pre-ordering is no different than buying day 1 or day 7 as far as I am concerned. You still get to see reviews and reception before deciding to keep it or get a refund. The upside is you get the game cheaper.
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By buying it several months after release once it's a good 50% off. It's never cheaper to buy on day 1. I've never seen a game where the price has gone up several months after release date.
 
The companies 100% know that their games are broken. EA blamed the issues on modern hardware...so what were they testing with? A Raspberry PI?

Pre-ordering is pointless these days and I don't get how people can actually enjoy a buggy game - why pay full price when you can wait a month where it's 60% of the original price and probably semi-playable. I think a lot of people on this forum love running benchmarks and tweaking settings more than actually playing the game.

Redfall seems to be the worst so far.
 
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