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?
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.
Yes, why? That’s the stupidest thing to do.
Steamdeck top 4. Yeah right Valve.
It’s ordered by revenue.
like steam controllers back in the day when they were always top 10 in those ”top seller” lists.
No, it just doesn’t make sense to me to do so. I mostly play single player games, so special skins to show you preordered are pretty pointless, and the most you tend to get is a discount on some DLC that I can just buy later, once I know I’ve enjoyed the game enough to warrant it, or items to give you a stat boost.
It’s not like preordering a physical game, where at least I get an art book or something in exchange for handing my money over.
If there is a game that i’ll definitely buy on launch and there is some real benefit for pre ordering, i might do it. But even then i’ll wait for the last few hours and “pre-order” then. If there is no benefit for me, why should i tell the company “i dont care about quality of your game, i’ll pay anyway”. Because that is how the ones making decisions will see pre order.
Last game i pre-ordered was fallout 4 hahahaha. So no i don’t pre-order anymore. I even waited for a discount on baldur’s gate 3 before buying it, that was a feat of it’s own.
I mean, Civ is a pretty established line of games. If you are into those things you probably know you’re going to get the new one. Same for Monster Hunter, especially with this one returning to world’s formula, which was hugely popular, and having multiple betas people could have tried to before prepurchasing. I assume kingdom come deliverance is the same.
No issue preordering a game I know I’m going to get either way.
But with new games, or AAA shit, or titles I may enjoy but are not a guaranteed buy, then preordering is stupid as hell.
I stopped pre-ordering games long ago. THhe last 3 I ever pre-ordered were Shenmue 3, No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077. The all had a disastrous launch to some degree, and I said never again. I also pre-ordered Vampire: The Masquerade 2, but I cancelled it years ago. The last physical game I bought was Metal Gear Solid V, and it was a DVD with a fucking Steam installer inside.
Never again.
I don’t think digital pre-orders even include banking functionality. I wouldn’t know because I lack the nerd cred of ever pre-ordering a game
no i have fast internet so if i do buy a massive bloated game i can wait 20 minutes before playing it, or buy it the day of then remote download with the steam mobile app
Not digital. I used to preorder popular games way back before digital was a thing as supply could be tight, but it makes zero sense in a digital world where they can’t run out of supply.
Especially with how the trend today is release and drop hotfixes (or in some cases just laugh to the bank) I won’t drop $$$ until its in a good state
The reason people do it is poor impulse control for the dopamine hit from buying something they want. I’m pretty sure anyone claiming another reason isn’t being honest with themselves or others.
theres no difference between preorder and buying on release date
so if youre buying it anyway, may as well preorder and cancel it if reviews are sketchy
And you can even return it, if it’s released and you haven’t installed it… Or if it’s on Steam, and you played it less than 2 hours.
There really isn’t a lot of reason to strenuously avoid pre-ordering if you’re pretty sure you’ll buy it at release.
And even better, a lot of games have pre-installs that can save you time at release. You could be playing the game instead of being mad that it isn’t downloaded yet.
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… 🙃
Sounds like you should join us over on !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
Can’t wait to play PS5 games in 5 years…
All six of them.
I’m going to preorder monster hunter wilds, I’ll do it the day before and pre-download it. Does that count?
