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.

THE ONLY REASON TO PREORDER IS TO ENSURE YOU HAVE A COPY ON LAUNCH.

Do you think they will run out of digital copies of you to download? (Just in case someone doesn’t know, that's not how digital downloads work)

It’s that fucking simple. Pre-order bonuses are almost never worth it on their own, and even for those that are, you’re enabling and supporting a predatory/anti-consumer practice.

I pre-ordered ff8, they ran out anyways. Lesson learned.

I preorder Indie games, because even if they turn out to be crap I want them to make another one and get better at it !

I relentlessly fuck over AAA publishers by buying keys on resellers, and I have no remorse about it.

Never preorder. Will do early access, mostly from indie devs.

I used to more when things were more disc based from stores, but it’s rare that I do now.

Occasionally I still may if I have the money and it’s a game I know I want and will highly likely enjoy, if only for the pre-load capability. But it’s far rarer now. Sometimes they throw in some pre-order dlc, and if I know I’m going to buy it at launch anyways I may as well just technically pre-order it. But again, I do it much rarer now than I did a few console gens ago.

Early access is a bit of a different story, and I will sometimes buy an early access game if I like where it’s going and want to support it. But those are also pretty rare for me.

No preorder for me. I almost do the opposite. I buy games after they get cheap in 1 to 5 years, lol

Never. I hate the preorder exclusive bonuses; it's anti-consumer bullshit, especially in an age where every game is available as a digital download, even the physical copies usually require downloads. Publishers are enticing customers to pay while hype is high, before the product is actually available, before quality has been proven and before reviews are published.

I hate gift cards for the same reason, you're giving money to corporations before they've provided anything to you.

Hold on to your money, wait for reviews, then pay them for the finished product if you still want it.

I also think the rising launch prices of AAA games is bullshit, especially for singleplayer games. I'll usually wait for a decent discount.

I very rarely used to, and now I absolutely don't ever since I pre-ordered Anthem...

I often preorder games that I know are sure bets. I won’t preorder games that I’m not sure I’ll like or by a developer with a rocky reputation (Ubisoft, etc).

I love buying early access games. Many of the best games ever made spent a lengthy time in early access, and it was worth every penny. Some I’ve bought 2-3 times in early access on different platforms just to support the developers (Satisfactory, Factorio, Rimworld, Baldurs Gate 3). I just bought Satisfactory for the third time and it was worth it.

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

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.

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

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.

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 stopped after Cyberpunk.

I always wait for release, even if I'm planning it to be a release day buy. Early Access could be an exception if the product they offer is good even in that stage, like how I got Rhythm Doctor when they finished Act 4. (The game has recently came out of Early Access and it's really good). A demo could incentivise me to preorder, a game I could give example for that is Diesel Knights. While it's not available for pre-order yet, I would absolutely do so if it did. But nothing released : no preorder

Strictly against it in AAA titles, anything above 60 is a never buy in the first place for me but a putting a preorder for a game in that price range is something that is straight up NOT happening under any circumstance.

No

I try not to pre-order or get early access. However I am not perfect, I did pre order Dragon Quest 11 when it came out.

I never pre-order nor pay for early access. Examples are plenty, but a couple that spring to mind are New World and Ashes of Creation. (Even excluding the infinite early access of PUBG, and whatever the hell Star Citizen is).

For the former, their "beta test" was "yeah, it runs: ship it" and ZERO feedback was noted or actioned. The release day was The Single Worst game release I've ever seen, and 4 years later when Amazon decided to kill it, ALL of the beta bugs were still there. To be fair, it was a "pay once" game. With MTX, of course.

For the latter, people started by paying $300+ for "alpha access" and more recently $100 for the same thing. And it's clearly 2-4 years away from being remotely ready for release. Those people are paying to do QA. And it will be pay-per-month on release, as if it was 2010.

If your FOMO overrides your other faculties, and you're willing to put up with all of that, then fine. You do you. 👍🏻

Every pre-order bonus I've seen is a skin, title or other tat that doesn't have any value beyond signalling that you pre-ordered the game.

Me? I'm done playing these financial games with video games. Until a game is released/GA, it's vapourware and non-existent. But again: you do you.

No, I wait 3 years usually. All bugs fixed, everything works, mods in great shape and price down 50%. Plenty of games older than 3 years also and much lower hardware requirements.

I made an exception for Elden Ring last time but that's about it.

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.

No. I've pre-ordered a couple in the past though. Diablo 3 is the only one that comes to mind though, also the last one I ever did. I can't think of any company that has a good enough track record for me to even consider it. Not even Paradox.

Also, since you don't have to worry about copies running out anymore there is really no reason to anyway. It was only a concern when everything was physical.

This I don't do. If anything, I'd rather have all the content in one purchase, DLC included, before doing so.

Fwiw zomboid is ea

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.

I only preorder a game if I know I want to play it right when it comes out and want to be able to preload the game, and if it comes from a developer I know will not disappoint me (FromSoftware, Kojima Productions, anything from Yoko Taro, etc.).

In the past I used to preorder to reserve a physical copy as soon as it was released, but there is generally no need for that anymore. This makes me both happy and sad, because for all the hassle it was, I kinda miss some aspects of the simpler times. In some ways, I do wish the world could rewind to the 2000s.

Early Access is different from preordering because you gain access to the product instantly, and generally can influence the direction of the game in a hopefully positive way. Providing feedback on what works and what doesn't is an important part of playing and early access game. A lot of people seem to ignore this.

Never. If it’s something I really want or from developers I respect I may buy it on release. Otherwise we wait for sales.

I could be open to kickstarter or something, that’s how Divinity Original Sins 2 got funded, but there’s a level of transparency and trust there that isn’t quite the same as preordering. Perhaps this is a silly distinction to make, I havnt really thought about it very hard, but preordering feels like being scammed nowadays and supporting something on kickstarter simply doesn’t.

I don’t really care for early access because i already don’t have enough time to play all the games I want to play so…there’s no extra room for me here. I will simply go play something else until your game is ready 🤷‍♀️

I buy mainly physical games.

Will I preorder a AAA game that will have 18,000,000 copies sitting around after 6 months? Hell no.

Will I preorder a physical title from a small-medium dev/publisher that I will never see again? If they have a track record of making stuff I like.

The only game I've ever pre-ordered was FF3/6 but that was because you needed a physical cartridge in limited supply to play it back then.

Preordering a game you can download digitally is the height of stupidity unless you specifically want to give an interest free loan to a creator you really want to support

Never: did it ounce or twice with physical games that may sell out at the local store but that is no longer relevant.

There are currently 2 developers where I've pre-ordered before and would do so again but only because there was an additional upside to the pre-order (I don't care about 3 cosmetic skins as pre-order bonus).

• Larian Studios I've bought Baldurs gate 3 early in early acces because I've loved DoS2 and the early previews of BG3 blew me away. My main purchase motivations were showing interest in the product and I've considered playing EA to give feedback. However it got clear pretty early that the game will be awesome and I wanted to play it completely blind, so I've never really played the early acces.

-Fromsoftware They track record was so stellar that I've bought the collectors edition of Elden Ring, which IMO also counts as a pre-order. Don't regret it till this day.

I guess both of my cases are prime examples since both of them became incredible games and won the GotY in their release year. I would consider pre-ordering smother in the future.

Situationally. I carefully consider the developer in question to try and judge the risk of failure, while also considering the chances that my contribution will actually make any meaningful difference to the likely outcome.

Basically, if it's a passionate and seemingly competent indie dev working on something that I personally want to see become a reality in the world, I might throw some early money their way despite the obvious risk. If it's a tentative and inexperienced indie dev with goals too big I'll probably wait and see. If it's some AAA publisher who don't actually NEED the money and have a high chance of fucking everything up anyway, they can shove their preorder and preorder bonuses right up their own ass where they belong.

If there are reviews out and I've looked at some raw gameplay from a streamer getting early access or something then I might pre-order mere hours away from release if there's some benefit in doing so.

Otherwise absolutely not in the digital only age. Can't run out of copies.

I don't consider Early Access a pre-order. If I buy an unfinished game it's because there's enough content from my point of view at that asking price that even if the game never gets finished I'll still be satisfied with my time/money spent.

I can't play a pre-order.

I don't even order games 😂 Deep sale or no buy.

I pre-order some games, especially table top, through crowdfunding and do enjoy interacting with developers and their early player base during beta testing / early access especially if I'm able to contribute in some way.

I don't pre-order but I do buy early access games. Unless it's something genuinely limited edition and unique there is not reason to risk buying before release.

There's isn't anything particularly wrong about preordering something you're most certainly going to get day-one, although those are few and far between these days. After all, even fan favorites often come with bugs and glitches day one and you can still encourage producers (and raise kpis) by wishlisting a game instead so they know demand exists. Same for downloading a pre-release demo - they track that.

Early access is usually indie with a few exceptions, so supporting them is good too except when you're a big fan and would rather see the finished work without spoilers. None the less, support can still exist in other forms.

I personally do neither, but this is more because of financial reasons and my already stupidly huge backlog. The only game I might have preordered this year would have been Silksong and only didn't because they didn't permit it. I knew it wouldn't be released with... ahem, bugs... and that I would certainly play and enjoy it.

Every other 2025 gem was a surprise after release, though.

do you preorder games?

Nowadays? Not a chance. Preorders nowadays seem to be more of a incentive to allow a studio to just not have a decent final product because people have already bought in.

What about Early Access Games?

If I really like the concept, yes.

Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?

Early access is not pre-ordering, and as such is treated extremely differently. Preordering tells me that the product will be finished on release, EA means that it's going to need a lot of work for a finished product.

If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?

I am extremly open to EA as it helps studios develop a product that otherwise may not be able to be created. Actual preordering is a strict closed door, there is very little reason in the digital world we live in to preorder a game.

How do you decide if a game qualifies?

I more likely will buy an early access game if I can open the page and not see:

• Major blockers:
  • Lack of Linux support or compatibility
  • Reviews talking about the game being dead
  • Reviews talking about how the developer ignores the community
  • Update history either showing no changes or minor changes stretching back for a few months(the longer the gap the less likely I am to support the studio)
  • Opening the developer page and seeing they are actively working on a different game. (this is an instant deal breaker)
• Minor Blockers
  • Developer responses in community pages saying "for support go to external site" usually discord. If you don't want to support your game on the storefront, don't use the storefront.
  • Update logs saying that they are actively working on DLC for their early access game. (free DLC gets a partial pass... but paid DLC for an Early Access game is a huge red flag for me)
  • No developer interactions in the community forums or an un-moderated community forum.
  • Toxic community in discussion forums or support channels (I understand this is out of the devs control at times but it still dissuades me from wanting to spend money on the games)

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.

Physical copies, yes. If it's a game I absolutely know I'm definitely buying and I want it badly enough to spend full price and I want to play it on day 1, I'll preorder to ensure it ships on day 1. Because if I actually ordered it on release day, it'd take a few more days to ship. Last game I preordered was Kirby Air Riders, and I'm very happy with that purchase.

As for Early Access, my criteria is to just evaluate the game in its current state - if it offers enough to be worth buying now, I'll buy it now.