Honestly, if the idea of no trials don’t bother you, there are plenty more reminders why YOU shouldn’t preorder.
I think it’s an age thing a lot of times. It’s like telling my kids to brush their teeth because of my experiences with dental, or you can plug any example like that.
I can tell kids not to preorder all I want. They just haven’t had the opportunity to be burned as many times as we have yet.
I think a lot of gamers just don’t care enough too. I know so many people that buy a game on release, play it for a few hours, and then drop it. Even AAA titles that are actually good.
Steam achievements kinda confirm that as well, there is a fair bit of drop-off on even the most popular games.
It made some sense when they came in physical format and there was a real risk of a highly sought game selling out. Nowadays they have put worthless digital incentives on preorders and they can’t possibly run out.
It didn’t make sense to me that people are pre-ordering digital copies at first too, then I remember mtx and streamers which didn’t exist back then.
It’s the boiling frog syndrome. Gradual implementation of predatory monetization practices like mtx and gachas have made us grown numb to being treated like cash cows for unfinished products.
The latest generation of gamers probably see this as a norm. It’s up to us oldies to remind them about the good ol’ days when you only pay once for finished products.
I mean, I usually buy physical and sometimes they do run out. Metroid prime remastered for instance was a pain to get. Granted it’s probably not the norm but it happens.
This right here. There will always be a steady supply of new gamers who don’t know better.
This isn’t a kids thing, we’ve been pre-ordering games since before today’s kids were born
yeah, when we were kids ourselves. But after getting burned we stopped.
But did you really? Do you have the stats on which demographic pre-orders the most?
I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything that breaks down by age sadly. I really hope someone has the stats cause it would be fascinating to see.
I don’t have the figures either but when I think which age group could have the money to actually preorder a game on a whim without knowing if it will be good, then it really isn’t kids but working adults.
Could you share what you’ve found, please? What other category breaks are there?
I think it’s an age thing a lot of times.
I don’t have numbers but I bet that a lot of people who preorder aren’t kids but adults with a proper income. Kids as a group don’t have the income to uphold the current presale figures, that’s done by working adults who can afford to preorder a game and take the not so small risk that it’s utterly shit.
If I want I could preoder a lot of games that come out this year without having to worry about the waste of money to much. I doubt that any regular kid can do that.
I just saw this video the other day, now it’s just all reminders that I’ve aged out.
Hey it’s Lemmy, so I will happily use this opportunity to blame rich people as well. I know people doing very well for themselves, who constantly, say, “yeah it sucks, but I’ve got the money and it doesn’t hurt me so who cares?”
Because they’re so completely unable to to think of ANYONE else in a different situation, or even remember their younger selves, that they will continue to incentivize predatory behavior because “fuck you, I got mine”, and they’re such huge pieces of self involved shit that they won’t delay their gratification for a split second to help out an entire industry’s consumers.
If that sound harsh, it’s been a shit day full of people just like that; decide on your own if it applies here.
It’s funny when you get older how much you realize experience is what drives behavior. You can tell a child 100 times about something, but until they experience it themselves, your warnings more often than not will fall on deaf ears.
I don’t pre-order games nor do I really buy any games new.
I mean why should I when I can buy complete version of the game for like 10-20 bucks 1-3 years later. Honestly I’ve simply discarded the idea of being consumer and shifted to thinking myself as customer instead. Its not my job to support the developers and keep their studios afloat its their job by making good games that are actually worth their price tag.
I already have backlog of games that would take years clear thanks to steam sales, playstation plus and all sorts of bundle offers. I am in no hurry to buy new games and I can easily wait for the developers to actually finish the game and buy the GOTY/Ultimate/Definite edition that includes most if not all the expansions and dlc for a discounted price.
As for free 2 play and live service games I simply don’t have the time and interest to play those. If I ever make an exception to this then I’ll be using only default skins/cosmetics, no gatcha and ignoring the battle pass completely.
I second this. I did stop buying games as soon as possible when I had a child.It was like a 2 years gap in my life. I realised it was like living in a shifted timelapse :)
Now I only play 2 yo games, same for movies and series… It means I only keeps top quality stuff !
Its not my job to support the developers and keep their studios afloat its their job by making good games that are actually worth their price tag.
That’s fine and all, but it goes both ways. If you’re gonna wait years to maybe buy their game, then they’re not going to cater to what you want.
There’s a middle ground imo. If I love a certain type of game, I’m gonna buy it relatively new to show my support. If you don’t do that, then you’re essentially a bottom of the barrel afterthought that the market simply won’t cater to.
I don’t view myself as some sort of unique snowflake that has somehow developer some sort of unique and refined taste in video games. I also belong to the most catered majority in video game industry which is white heterosexual men in their 30’s. Honestly it would probably be better if the industry would cater less to my interests as I feel beyond spoiled with choice already.
If you want to support some independent gaming studio with handful of passionate developers making niche games of great quality without relying on dark patterns then please do so. But don’t lie to yourself about these bigger corporations as all they really care about generating profits for their shareholders.
All that literally every business that has ever existed cares about is profits. Businesses aren’t charities. People don’t work for free.
All that literally every business that has ever existed cares about is profits. Businesses aren’t charities. People don’t work for free.
Well one thing related to profits that businesses care about above all else is cost effiency. In market economy if a produt or service can be made more cheaply and more efficiently without employing any people then there’s no incentive to keep people employed.
There’s also quite a difference in some small business with handful of employees that is content with just making some money to keep roof over their heads, food on the table and cover the cost of other necessities compared to some huge multinational corporation where most money goes pretty much everywhere but the developers like to fund the already lavish lifestyles of the filthy rich, tax havens and developing the next get set of dark patterns to leech even more money from customers.
There is no small business on this planet that would not accept higher profits with no costs to them or disruption in their customer base.
Sure and almost all large corporations where small businesses at first until the grew to their current size. The problems usually arise when they hit a wall with their growth and have to start looking for more ways to grow. Often this happens by buying off the competition and eventually enshittification or something like it.
This is not always the chase and there are quite a few independent developers that just spend those profits to make new better games or just keep improving their one successful title.
when I can buy complete version of the game for like 10-20 bucks 1-3 years later
…or, for like 1-3 bucks 10-20 years later.
Life is short, but not that short.
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I miss the days of game demos
Steam’s Next fest has brought back some demos on PC. You might not get a demo for a big IP, but you can try lots of smaller dev games without having to buy first.
I saw the rise of more demos in the store but didn’t know it’s a thing steam promoted or started. Nice.
I’ve noticed that! A lot of smaller games/indie titles offer demos or some kind of limited time trial. It’s almost like the people making those games get me 🥹
I remember playing Destiny’s Alpha version when I was invited to it. It was a fun experience but sucked when the game was mostly a let down for the first year or so.
I made a flow chart for this ages ago…
Will it be legitimately hard to find? (Think Steel Battalion on Xbox.) No? Do not pre-order.
Do you get anything for pre-ordering? No? Do not pre-order.
Cosmetics only? Yes? Do not pre-order.
Is it from a developer with an established track record? No? Do not pre-order.
Is that established track record full of buggy launches (Bethesda)? Yes? Do not pre-order.
Online only? Yes? Do not pre-order.
So… Do not preorder?
Not sure how you got that from that message, there’s some games that would definitely qualify under this flow chart.
FFXVI would pass, Spider-Man 2
FF16 was the first game I preordered in over a decade, and even then I only preordered it after I played the free demo and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Don’t encourage devs to gate content behind pre order exclusives. Day 1 DLC used to be seen for what it was: content that should be in the base game.
FF16 wasn’t preordered as much as they wanted. Then when the game turned out to be okay, people bought it (and it had a demo). It was a hit.
Yeah, I love Final Fantasy. But I wasn’t very hyped for it. I bought it after I played the demo.
I bought it after the demo, and while it definitely hit those highs again, the demo didn’t show just how low some of those lows would be. I made it about 60% though the game before abandoning it out boredom. While a demo is great, it is important to remember you’re likely getting a vertical slice of some of the best bits.
Developer here - currently indie but was in the machine at one point. Cold hard fact is that demos hurt sales for AAA games, and pre-orders get cash in the door today to keep the lights on. With millions and years invested, they must hedge and limit risk as hard and as quickly as possible.
If demos hurt sales, that means that game devs depend on gamers buying games they don’t actually end up liking right? I understand making games has become pricier and pricier, but if the whole business model is dependent on “We want to trick people into getting stuff they don’t want”, then we have a problem.
The reality is probably closer to the flightily nature of us as gamers - We mostly just want to try the game because some part of it seems fun, if that can be tried for free with a demo, why buy it now that we got our fix? Why would a big AAA take that risk?
If people get enough from a free demo maybe it’s time to make shorter cheaper games, and start churning out 2 hour playtrough 15usd games, but with high quality graphics/acting/voices/etc. Or just abolish capitalism and make fun games no matter if they sell or not 😂
If a demo is enough of a fix for a customer, then that’s got to mean that something wrong with the product overall.
Good games keep you engaged, bad games you leave alone.
Companies 100% have a right to skip demos and sell pre-orders. And people have a right to boycott those.
Absolutely! The numbers show they gain roughly double the sales with trailers/footage and no demo, they won’t budge until boycotts reverses that. Same with microtransactions we all hate; they basically just print money.
I don’t really understand how this is measured? I attempted to look up some research on it, but it seems most articles that say this are referencing one conference by Jesse Schnell who basically just correlated games with demos, sales, and expected sales. What measure is used to figure out if a demo causes someone to not buy the game? I suppose if they measured presales that were cancelled after a demo, but most anticipated games don’t have demos anyway so the data is already skewed in the favor of “no demos.” Does it take into account outliers like FFXVI? Highly anticipated game with a demo that sold very well…
I would venture to guess that the data is skewed because lots of AAA games don’t have demos and lots of indie games that might not have been purchased anyways trying to get a little markershare, but there seems to be such little research on it.
If you have an actual study on the topic, I would be very interested in seeing their method of results.
The study was they tracked sales across multiple games for years, here’s the first example I came across in the wild from ten years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us6OPbYtKBM&t=640s
I miss the age of videogame demos, it feels like nothing but a distant memory now. And the only reason companies let people play their broken betas now is to gauge excitement for their games and fix any serious game breaking bugs.
Eh.
On the flip side, back in the day, a lot of people bought a lot of crappy games based on nothing more than what the cover art on the box showed. The only source of info was video game magazines, and that applied only to new releases and only certain games.
Now upon release you can look up dozens of detailed reviews, even video reviews. You can watch full play through a on YouTube. You can ask for opinions in social media.
The amount of information you have to figure out if this game is for you is insane compared to before.
Depends really. Nowadays publishers push out fake CGI marketing trailers and paid reviews to premptively muddy those information sources long before release. Same goes for social media (not that they were ever reliably accurate or objective anyway). There are even promises of DLC roadmaps that never materialise such as the OW2 story mode.
By the time actual independent reviewers have their embargoes lifted, the preorder sales window has closed and it wouldn’t make much difference to those who already sunk money into the game. Those waiting in vain for DLC and patches are merely sacrificing their refund window.
That’s true. I understand.
I’m also not a fan of the DLC and change to video game design based on such payouts.
But even then, even with fake reviews, young gamers are completely spoiled with information compared to the black hole that existed in the 80s and 90s. I’m not sure how people argue otherwise.
The fact that I can go on my phone, jump on YouTube, and watch a play through is incredible. When I was young, I had to make decisions based on what the box art looked like ffs.
I miss the age of videogame demos
Fuck the corps. That’s what piracy is for.
Pirating big games is probably morally fine. Pirating indie games is shitty, like stealing from a local business.
He is not talking about actual piracy though. Piracy for try-before-you-buy’s sake is even more morally fine.
We may just have very different tastes in gaming, but there’s really no shortage of solid game demos out there, they’re just usually for the indie stuff.
Yeah, I mentioned that to another person, Steam Next Fest was great this year, I got to try out a bunch of awesome games. But like if we’re talking triple A, or even just games on consoles demos are just a resource sink for a lot of these companies and don’t exist. When there’s a demo there’s usually a lot of marketing push behind it.
Honestly it’s been more incentive for me to move away from the AAA stuff and lean way more indie. They have demos, deep sales, and they make an effort to engage with the community. It is a bummer the lack of demos available on consoles though.
I miss the age of videogame demos, it feels like nothing but a distant memory now.
No it isn’t! With Steam you can try most (if not every) game for 2h and return it if you didn’t like it.
My local currency is devaluating by the second, the price I see today may not be the price tomorrow.
Most games are actually most expensive at launch. A year after release their prices tend to be half. If not, discounts and other promotionals will surely come your way.
Seriously depends on the game. Black Ops 2 for example, a game that came out over a decade ago, still costs $100 on steam (assuming you want the DLC). At best you’ll get it for $50 during sales. The fact that, even during a sale, a game with a completely dead playerbase costs as much as a modern title is absolutely nuts.
A lot of games are like this, unfortunately. Not everyone takes advantage of sales because many people are going to end up buying the game regardless.
which country do you live in?
Argentina
Oof. How are you managing? I’m in Canada and I’m finding inflation/wages to be incredibly stressful. 10 consecutive interest rates raises. Groceries up 20-40%. Cost of housing has doubled. Electricity + water is still dirt cheap though. Video games are way too expensive for me, library or bust.
I pre-ordered baldurs gate 3 after playing the developers previous game divinity original sin 2 and hearing a rather large amount of praise for the content available in the early access.
It’s something I wouldn’t regularly do but in their short line of recent games Larian studios have left a very good impression on me and I trust them individually.
DOS2 is such an insanely good game. BG3 is shaping up to be just as awesome.
Did you pre order or buy early access? Buying a game in early access when you believe what is currently in the game is a good deal for the price is the same thing as buying a released game in my opinion.
Behave yourself, you just want to have gay sex with a bear
I’ve never understood the concept of pre ordering digital content, it’s not going to run out of stock. And why pay extra for a few graphical items that don’t change the way the game plays?
Also, surely digital games would be cheaper because there’s no physical product to send to the customer? But there you go. Base copy of Diablo 4 is £70!! Wow!
I agree about the content never running out. I disagree that the content isn’t worth more though. The quality is definitely getting up there and the design teams are grilled while getting ripped off. The corruption of Capitalism has rotted your brain. it is your choice to take the DLC. It shouldn’t be your choice to piss on slave driven developers. not ok.
I’m not pissing on DLC, that content can be fantastic additions to already great games. What I find pointless are the pre order bonuses when it’s just a fancy red coat when the base game comes with a blue one.
You literally bagged on a game for being $70 for full cost. But now you’re saying it’s how it’s marketed? Nope.
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Having something tangible can have perks. Steam bans you. Thousands lost. Online service shuts down. Games lost. I can still fire up this here super Nintendo… And nobody can tell me when it’s going to shut down and stop working.
One of the reasons I prefer to buy on gog. I can just save all my purchases to an external hard drive
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Initially pre orders made sense back when physical media was the only way to get games. Nowadays though, you are absolutely right. Digital games have no right to cost around the price as a physical product (especially when even that physical product doesn’t even have a cool manual and its just an empty plastic box with a disc in it).
I know right. What’s the point of these new games coming with beautiful steel books but no discs.
I can see why because the games are so big, there’s no point sticking a bit of it on a disc. That’s why physical media is becoming redundant. All these games require patches to run and they won’t be around for ever. Not even Switch games are complete on cartridge these days.
The fact that you can “pre-buy” a digital game is insane to me!
Like what’s the point! You still can’t play it until it comes out!
And games these days are digital copies. It’s not like the supply is limited.
Last time I pre-ordered a game was Diablo 3. I could choose a hard copy for RSP or a digital copy for an extra “convenience fee”. As if that wasn’t ridiculous enogh, I ordered the hard copy and on release day, they told me that I was on a queue since so many people pre-ordered and they ran out of copies.
I tried to cancel my pre-order and these actual scumbags told me, I couldn’t cancel until I received my copy. Pristine customer support, I really felt they did everything to accomodate my needs. So, I contacted Actiblizz to let them know about the practices of their “official reseller” and the next day, my pre-order was canceled and my money was being wired back.
Also the game was trash, but that’s besides the point.
Diablo 3 was also the last game I pre-ordered. I took the day off work on release day, had the game downloaded, and spent the next 14 hours on an error screen because there servers were overloaded for an always online SINGLE PLAYER GAME!
Fucking bullshit.
I may be mistaken but isn’t Diablo 4 also force online?
It is tragically.
You definitely dodged a bullet, albeit you have to jump through hoops and headaches. Your scenario is one of many why preordering isn’t a good thing, especially with an infinite digital product.
Furthermore, it parallels the recent talk around lemmy how some companies are making it hard to cancel subscriptions.
All of it treads a soft “lock-in” policy that may turn into a hard “lock-in” to some who are not as assertive as you. I know some people would just “let it go” in the spirit of “avoiding confrontation”.
Worst is, “buying” digital games off a store/launcher doesn’t mean you own it.
You can move your games to a different folder, the storefront won’t be able to remove them. But that requires you to download all your games and keep them stored somewhere.
I have a few games I do that with.
Technically you didn’t own the games you bought on physical media, either.
But you own the physical media it’s on, meaning the “license” to own it can be traded, sold, etc.
If it allows you to pre-download it so you can play as soon as it’s available it makes some sense.
That’s what I thought. But after pre-ordering a game recently, when I went to launch, the process of unpacking/unencrypting took at least as long as downloading the thing from scratch.
So if you’ve a good internet connection and a mid cpu like me, pre-downloading is not an advantage.
The only situation I can think of where it makes sense is where you have the money now, and don’t think you’ll have the will power to not waste it before release day.
…which, if you’re a teen/young person, I could totally see that being a legitimate concern.
Don’t they often not charge you until the game is delivered (or in the case of digital, unlocked)?
Beta’s used to be free and would actually have an impact on the game getting fixed before shipping out
Financially, preorders without a “preorder bonus” are a zero interest loan to the developer. Preorders with the “preorder bonus” are a loan with the bonus as interest. Even if the game were guaranteed to be good, you could most likely be doing something better with the money until it comes out. Since the game is not guaranteed to be good, it is a risky loan as well. Without any of the protections you get when you make an actual loan.
Without any of the protections you get when you make an actual loan.
I’d say a 100% refund when requested with less than two hours of use within the first two weeks is a pretty good protection, and it’s pretty much the standard policy on PC.
That’s certainly true. I’d still say that for the online stores, for which that policy applies, there isn’t a lot of upside to preordering. Because the purchase is digital, you will always be able to get a copy on release day (unless the publisher artificially limits how many games it will sell, but I’ve never heard of a publisher doing this).
I used to keep my Galactic Edition copy of Spore on my shelf as a reminder to not preorder games.
My Copy of Alien: Colonial Marines would like to have a word with your copy of Spore.
Didn’t you like spore? I thought it was awesome! Maybe because I was I kid when I played it though
So, full disclosure, I do look back on it nostalgically now. I was in high school when it came out. I was incredibly invested in the hype. I would watch the tech demos of it multiple times a week I think. It wasn’t so much that it was bad, more that it heavily under delivered on what was shown in demos.
I’ve been hearing this since 2010. Nothing is going to change.
EA Sports 2024 is going to come out, it’s going to have 40,000 mixed reviews.
I also stopped trying. It’s impossible to have a conversation with absolutely everyone that plays games to get them to stop pre-ordering.
Gamers are also some of the worst type of people (sorry, just being honest here). They generally have very little self control and it’s almost impossible to get them to change their minds or change their habits.
I can only change my own behaviors and stop getting fucked by these AAA publishers. Once you realize that it’s ok to wait a week or so to see if the game is good, life gets much better.
Yeah, the whole no pre-ordering thing is simply just a personal moral thing. Any amount of people who pledge not to are massively outnumbered by the vast majority of gamers who simply do not care. This simply doesn’t matter anymore.
It’s not a moral thing at all. Do you know why publishers want people to pre-order games? It’s not like people didn’t buy games before pre-ordering, but now it’s just to create a marketing funnel and to sell your personal data. Worried that you won’t be able to pick up a copy of Starfield? Don’t be. There will be millions of copies.
No, its because of economics. Cash now is always worth more than cash later. It is better to be able to take any money and invest it now so you can get a return. Its the same reason companies want you to put money on your account or buy giftcards.
Usually games don’t go up in price between when preorders open and the final sale price. So taking inflation into account, games are technically cheaper at point of sale than when you preordered. Games aren’t an investment vehicle, nor do they guarantee any monetary value for the consumer. They aren’t investments.
You misunderstood my point completely. Someone selling anything has an incentive to be paid as soon as possible, not only because of inflation but because they can reinvest it. Someone buying a product likewise has the inverse where they have an incentive to pay as late as possible. But the volumes are obviously different, a game developer may gain millions in early liquidity because of preorders but the individual customer only loses $60-$70. This is why the developers push for pre-orders. Money now is worth more than money later.
Okay. And how is that good for consumers at all?
It’s not, I was just explaining the developers motivation
Jedi Survivor was amazing on launch. I play on PS5 and could not give less shits about frames per second. No regrets per-ordering. Diablo 4 was also great on launch and I per-ordered that. I’ll continue to pre-order whatever I want.
Why did you pre-order it? There are tons of copies available.
