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?
Nope. I used to pre-order ESO expansions because you got some cool mounts or whatever, but I haven’t played that in years.
Also try not to give into early access either.
No, I was thinking about civ7 but was unsure because, while firaxis is very talented, I do not trust 2k, once they added denuvo I decided to not even buy it at launch even if the reviews are positive (and £120 for the founders edition is stupid, especially since, if the game is updated like all previous civs, it will be necessary).
I will be waiting for denuvo to be removed (because it always is) and for a sale.
I almost never preorder any game I’m not 100% sure I’ll play no matter what. Sometimes I’ll do it with online games in 90% sure on bc my internet is horrible and I like being able to get started on the download asap
For example I’m gonna preorder the new Fatal Fury game even though I’m not super confident in SNK to put out a functional game, but I know it’ll have fun gameplay and worst case scenario it’ll get fixed in a while. Being able to download early is worth for me even if I won’t download in time to play early, and worst case scenario it’s completely nonfunctional and I just refund it until it works
Almost never. The last one I digitally pre-ordered was Borderlands 3, and given how that turned out, I think I might buy BL4 on release day, if not a few weeks later
What’s the difference between doing your way and maybe wait a day or 2 until gameplay is published?
Well I mean my way is waiting until gameplay is published, as well as making sure the story isn’t ass. I’m gonna let my coplayer decide if he wants to get it day one, but I imagine he’ll hold out for a bit
Wrt BL3, we were gonna buy that on release anyway because we’d done the same for every other entry and DLC since the day BL2 came out. If we’d waited a few weeks, the only difference would be that we’re prepared for the story to be ass
Makes sense.
Though I wouldnt pre-order anyway just to not count against the pre-order metric.
I do preorder digital games but not just anything I’m excited about. It has to come from a single dev or small dev team that I specifically want to support, and help fund their progress. In this example, I’d preorder Haunted Chocolatier by ConceredApe (dev behind Stardew Valley).
OR, if the game is made by studio with a stellar track record or an absolutely phenomenal game. These more rare but their are a few. These also need to treat their dev team and customers well. No crunch. No shady micro-transactions.
For example, Hades 2 is something I would consider preordering. The next game by Larian Studios might also be on that list.
Spot on. Larian, fromsoftware, supergiant and concerned ape are some of the few where i would preorder.
Does steam let you pre install? Only reason I can think of and I have never done it
never
Only games I’m super confident I’ll love. Never got screwed over.
Never because I’m cheap and also I don’t want to pay a premium for a buggy unoptimized experience. Even when I had the game pass trial I didn’t play games day 1, since games needed several patches to be acceptable.
No. I’m doing the opposite.
I’m currently playing PS4 games I have never played before.
You get them on ebay for like $10.
Can’t wait to play PS5 games in 5 years… 🙃
Can’t wait to play PS5 games in 5 years…
All six of them.
Sounds like you should join us over on !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
No.
My backlog is so big and my interested in gaming became so little I prefer watching YT or stuff on my Jellyfin server.
I wanted to play Helldivers 2 but decided against it because I had nobody else and now it’s kinda in late-progress I won’t even bother.As far as I remember, I’ve never bought anything in my life that I couldn’t enjoy immediately after payment (not counting delivery time if it had to be ordered and shipped). I did buy early access games, or games at full price on release day (twice only, Overwatch and Baldur’s Gate 3), though.
I’ve pre-ordered games due to hype a few times and every time I do I get shafted and dev runs with my money. Now I stick to promising EAs. If I pay 20-30 bucks for EA, get some fun out of it and then dev runs at least I got some fun out of it.
No. Any game I might possibly consider pre-ordering isn’t going to magically disappear. I was gonna make a comment about how there’s probably no guarantee about return policy on Steam for pre-order games, but I looked it up and can’t make the argument I was gonna.
Either way, I would much prefer to wait for a game to be on sale on a much later date because at that point any major game ruining glitches/bugs should hopefully be patched and price will be cheaper. Generally, I don’t tend to buy games over a certain price anymore. Price varies, but right now it’s over $20USD since I’m on a college financial aid budget. And no, I don’t include $19.99 as under the budget because that’s absolutely marketing bullshit that I think should die.
Also, I don’t like pre-ordering games since you usually don’t get any real world bonus items anymore (at least from triple AAA titles anymore). Granted, I’ve only ever done 2 IRL pre-orders in my life, but I was extremely disappointed about not getting anything besides access to free DLC for the Borderlands Pre-Sequel game compared to how I got a full guide book for BioShock Infinite, which was more than enough to make me thrilled (even if I’ve never actually used it once).
Plus, at this point, pretty much every single pre-order game I see (unsurprisingly all triple AAA) is a game I know I’m not gonna like, so it’s pointless for me.
There’s no point because you do not know how the games are.
