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.

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.

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.

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.

Never. I won’t buy a game until I’ve tried it. If no demo is available, I’ll pirate it first, and then buy it later if its good.

1. Watch_Dogs (2014)

2. No Man’s Sky (2016)

3. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

Nah I’m good …for like. Ever

I don’t think anyone should preorder. It’s a predatory way to suck a full price of the game or even higher than normal price out of customers by using often laughably cheap benefits to drum up FOMO.

For me personally, I rarely have interest in brand new AAA games, which are the most guilty of pre-order sales tactics, so the problem more or less solves itself.

Early Access games can be a different story. I’m more willing to throw money at a small studio or solo project that appears to have some passion behind it. Even so I only spend with the mindset that whatever state the game is in might be all I ever get, so match the price to that expectation. I recently played through Deathtrash. It’s unfinished and is historically slow to get updates, however for the $11 I got it for on sale, it had a lot of content and I felt happy with what I got.

Project Zomboid is another example of a “permanently Early Access” game. It might never get out of Early Access but it has so much content now that $20 is a perfectly acceptable price. The history of devs supporting it and the community around it means support for it is unlikely to simply disappear.

No

Never. Why would I pay early for a digital copy of a video game? I can just buy it when it comes out, or better yet, when it goes on sale.

I never pre-order. I broke that rule exactly once and pre-ordered No Man’s Sky, boy did they make a fool out of me. Never again.

There are plenty of games I play that are on early access, the qualifier is whether the game is in a playable state and is fun to play (by account of online reviews or friend’s recommendations).

Nope. Trust has been broken too many times. I don’t even buy anything anywhere near release anymore. I won’t buy anything anymore unless it’s either an indie game or its on sale and even then I deep dive the reviews and make sure I’m not wasting my money.