1. Watch_Dogs (2014)

2. No Man’s Sky (2016)

3. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

Nah I’m good …for like. Ever

I pre-ordered a game twice now. The first one was Stalker 2 and the second Death Stranding 2. I am unhappy with Stalker 2 (I’m still waiting on the preorder physical) but I have the Death Stranding one. If you care about the bonuses I’d say it’s a gamble.

The only franchises I will pre-order are:

• World of Warcraft Collector’s Editions : even though I stopped playing a few years ago now, I still buy the physical copy collector’s editions to add to my collection - I have every one going all the way back to vanilla.

• Grand Theft Auto 6 : I have both the PS3 Collector’s Editions for IV and V, feels like getting the same for 6 to finish off that ‘trilogy’ would be apropos.

Me personally, I’ll never pre-order a game. Pre ordering is different from early access because i actually get the game even in a unfinished state.

All that said, it depends on the game. Timberborn has been the only early access game I felt has been worth it. The Devs are still putting out regular updates and have vastly improved the game since i bought it. Its been very fun to play from the beginning and has only gotten better.

Compare that to something like cyberpunk, yea I’m good. Couldn’t imagine how that must of felt to preorder that and get that mess on release. I think the main difference is the studio. AAA games I rarely buy anymore. Indie games though? Thats where I’m at.

no, I’ve never done that. I’ve never seen much of a discount so I’ve never had any incentive to

Last game I pre-ordered was Pokemon Soul Silver.

Since then, no.

I used to a lot as a kid. It was pretty much the only way to get some more obscure games.

I pretty much stopped in the mid 2000s except for some collectors editions of games that I was 99% sure were going to be great Halo3, Fallout3, New Vegas etc. I still do the same thing now with the odd switch collectors edition xenoblade chronicles, the final fantasy pixel remasters, unicorn overlord but those were games I was 99% sure would be finished at launch.

The rest of the time I wait a year or so until the game is half priced and finished.

no i wait until they’re at least 50% off. no exceptions. unless someone buys it for me.

Why would anyone still be preordering? It’s a complete gamble with no payoff. Preordering made sense when games were on physical media, but there isn’t any stock limit on digital goods.

Pre-ordering existed for the customer’s benefit back when all games were physical and you wanted to guarantee you’d have a copy available for you at launch. At some point, companies realized that they could use it to forecast success or, more nefariously, entice you to buy a stinker of a game before you’ve had time to hear that it sucks. I haven’t bought physical games in a while now, but when I did, the last time I had a hard time acquiring one at launch was more than 20 years ago (I remember Halo 2 being the mile marker for when companies got to be pretty good at meeting demand). In the digital space, it makes even less sense. They still do pre-order incentives sometimes, for the same reason as above, even when the game is good, but the bonuses are so throwaway anyway that it usually doesn’t matter. Digital storefronts on PC have a pretty good refund policy, so if you’re diligent enough, you can pre-order the day before it comes out, get the bonus, let the dust settle on review scores, and decide if you want to keep the game with the pre-order bonus or just refund it. There’s very little risk in that. Without a pre-order bonus, there’s absolutely no reason to bother, and quite frankly, I don’t feel good about supporting those bonuses in the first place.

I have no issue with early access games, especially if the game lends itself to the model, which would be anything sufficiently sandboxy that can be heavily modified by changing some variables or adding a single mechanic. Larian’s RPGs are very freeform in the ways they let you solve problems and can be upended by different powerful abilities and whatnot; roguelikes are perfect for this model, because you’re replaying them a lot anyway; regardless of genre, the ones that would catch my eye are the ones that are looking for gameplay feedback and not outsourcing QA for finding bugs to a bunch of paid customers. The real problem with early access for me now is that there are so many finished games coming out all the time that look interesting that it’s difficult to justify playing one that’s not done.

I “built” my first desktop (that’s a whole story) for Cyberpunk. I preordered the game. Suffice to say I’ve never preordered a game since

We Do Not Preorder

Seriously, don’t reward this kind of anti-consumer bullshit.

The only acceptable justification I can see is if it’s an indie dev who has really, truly earned the trust of their players and proven that they will work tirelessly to deliver the product people want. And even then I’d be very, very unlikely to. I’m crazy excited for both of Owlcats upcoming games and I still haven’t pre-ordered them, for example.

Pre-orders encourage bad, buggy, incomplete or deceptively marketed releases by juicing day one numbers without any need for the dev / publisher to actually release a worthy product.

Never pre-order.

I do early access only in very specific cases where it’s an indie studio and the game already offers a lot of value. E.g. Satisfactory was in early access for a long time when it was basically a finished game you could sink hundreds of hours into. But I read and watch a lot of reviews before I buy into one of those. Can’t do that with a pre-order.

I never pre-order, there is no benefit.

Early access is misleading, there are games which are “released” and would barely count as early access and vice-versa, so I just treat them equally.

The criteria for me is that based on reviews or some gameplay footage it seems like I can get £1/hour worth of enjoyment out of it. I tend to look for how many hours do people have when they leave reviews and how many have they played since, rather than just what they say. If I’m unsure if I’ll like it and there is not enough videos or reviews to give me certainty, i may take a risk on £10 and below games depending on how bored I am at the time.

Definitely no preorder, I’m not buying a cat in a bag for no real benefit. Kickstarter is a bit different because the game might not be made at all if you don’t back, but in that case I’ll definitely research the people involved to get a better picture on how reliable they are and if they really need Kickstarter-style funding in the first place.

For early access, I try to judge whether the current state of the game is already worth the price. Games like Minecraft or 7 Days To Die provided great value even before their 1.0 version.