3d ago

Do you pre-order digital games? If so, why?

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?

144 comments

Never preorder any game.

No.
Especially the big studio games.
They almost always go on sale 3-6 months past release, and they’ve been patched at least once.
You get a better, cheaper game.

Never. There's no point, it's not like there are a limited amount of copies that I'll miss out on if I don't reserve mine.

Only indie games, because I like to support indie developers.

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.

I would have pre-ordered Civ7, but then they announced it has Denuvo so now instead of pre-ordering I'm just not going to buy it at all.
Fuck denuvo and fuck corporations who think their customers should just bend over and accept whatever bullshit they offer for the "privilege" of playing their game.
There is so much good indie gaming content these days, we don't need these abusive mega-corp games.
- When starfield released and tried this "early access for extra cash" nonsense, the game was cracked before the regular release was even available.

I can think of 2 legitimate reasons for doing this - either putting the money down now so you don't have to come up with it later, or so you can preload it and have it available right at release.

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.

Never preorder.

I pre-ordered No Man's Sky and that was the first and last time I pre-ordered anything.
Beyond the painful lesson, pre-ordering is just a large risk that you're going to get a crap game - which is doubly unpleasant because you've basically paid good money to buy yourself a feeling of frustration and the experience of having been scammed - and all that you gain from pre-ordering a digital game is at best being able to play the exact same game a few minutes or maybe hours earlier than if you bought it on day 1, which is a "gain" not worth taking on that risk.
This is even more so in this day and age of totally overhyped bullshit and industry reviews being either pretty much paid for or done against beta versions hence not mentioning software problems such as bugs and slowness.
In fact I would even advise against buying a game on the first week or month for similar reasons - you want to reduce the risk of wasting your money and of frustration, by waiting for others to have played it and user reviews to come out and by buying later you'll probably going to end up with a better version of the game because the worst post-release bugs will have started being patched.
You could say that from the point of view of the buyer, it doesn't make business sense to pre-ordered a digital good for which there is no scarcity.

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
- https://xkcd.com/606/

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

As a rule, no, but I'll make some rare exceptions.
It has to be a small studio, I have to be pretty sure I'll like their next game, and I have to have enjoyed their past game enough that it's worth throwing them a few extra bucks.
For instance, I'm going to pre-order Slay the Spire 2.
Mega Crit is an indie studio.
I thought StS1 was exquisite, so I'm optimistic about a sequel from the same people.
I playes StS1 for hundreds of hours, so even if the sequel is a whiff, I'd have got my money's worth from them.
Similar goes for The Haunted Chocolatier, since I played the heck out of Stardew Valley.

Not anymore. Mostly for 3 main reasons.
The only reason I'd ever preorder something now is if there's a significant risk of stock running out quickly. That's not a thing with digital games, ask there's no need to consider it.
I've been burned far too many times by getting shitty games on day one, after having fallen for all the fake hype, deceptive marketing, sophisticated astroturfing, and paid-for reviews. Now, as a rule, I'll wait for about 2-4 weeks at least to see what the community sentiment is before I buy something.
And finally, games are fuck all expensive now. 70 dollars is already a bridge too far for many of the bug-riddled, unfinished slop big corpos push out these days. And then there's "speculation" that RockStar will price GTA6 at a 100 dollars, giving all the publishers out there the precedent to do the same with their own titles. I'll just take my time and wait for them to go on sale for at least 50% off before I consider getting something. (P.S. I say speculation, but I'm almost entirely convinced that it's a deliberate industry psyop to get people primed for this insane price tag and reduce the sticker shock-induced backlash)

These days? No.
I used to when I had very crappy internet speeds, but these days I have a gigabit connection - and I swear the decryption process takes longer than it is to just download the game right after release in an unencrypted state.
And even back then I was very picky on pre-orders. I honestly couldn't even tell you what was the last one I pre-ordered.
- oh man I forgot about this. preload used to be such a big selling point but now it only takes a few minutes to download most games.

Never. I only rarely buy a game within a year of release. Too fucking many good cheap or free games to justify paying msrp before it even gets reviews.

Only Capcom games. Their demos give you a pretty good idea of what the fully game is going to be and are usually even improved upon. So preordering is mostly a safe bet. Plus you get some early access goodies (which you can also get after release for some extra shmeckles).
Capcom feels like one of the only multiplatform devs that are actually still making games for gamers not for shareholders.
- I agree with this take. MH Wilds will be my first prepurchase since RE4. The RE4 demo blew my mind and the Wilds beta had me hooked.

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.

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.

Never. Apart from the pre-order bonuses that I refuse to accept there's really no reason to. The game's still there after I have seen the reviews. I have fast internet and a fast SSD, so even if I could pre-download that would realistically only save me an hour or something even for the largest games.

Hissssss 🐍
Don't preorder, what the hell are you people thinking?!

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

Nope, not a single reason to do so.
Preorder bonuses are worthless and are always available as dlc later on.

Rarely. I don't think I ever have two years in a row.
Usually only if I'm very sure it's a game I will get a lot of playtime out of due to past titles. For instance, I did pre-order Civ 7 because prior Civs have been the best hours-enjoyed-per-dollar investments I've ever made. No exaggeration, even accounting for DLCs I bought at full price.

Absolutely no reason to, you pay more for a buggier version. I generally wait until there's a good sale.

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.

Last game I pre-ordered was Cyberpunk 2077. Yeah, it's a fun and really good now but when it released it was basically unplayable until Phantom Liberty was released. I had already said I would never pre-order a game and I made an exception for CDPR and got Cyberpunk, and I was immediately burned. For real-sies this time, no more exceptions. I will never pre-order another game until the day that I die.

I very rarely ever did. And when I did I made sure I trusted the studio and knew enough. But even with this preparation I was burned most of the time preordering.
Nowadays I notice a game I like and I wait for 1-3 years, then pick it up DRM free, with all the extensions and fully patched for oftentimes 15€ or so.

Not counting Kickstarter projects, which I rarely back anymore, no. I'll wait for reviews and probably a sale.

Only if it's a game I'm going to play regardless. I pre ordered FH4 and FH5 and I easily have 2k+ hours in both of those games.

Only games I'm super confident I'll love. Never got screwed over.
- Haven't played the other two, but have been playing monster hunter for almost 20 years now. Capcom is wysiwyg when it comes to monhunbo. And the recent releases have had exclusive pre-release gear (albeit ones with short lived usefulness). And while they and hello games are still releasing new content for free, they can have my money any time they want.
  I trust my credit card more with Sean Murray than my wife.

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.

No, but I have purchased Early Access games on Steam.
- What incentivizes you to pay money for early access games? Wouldn’t you rather wait until it’s done and have a better experience?
  
  Some of them are in a fine state as-is.
  I guess maybe for an adventure game or something, you want to have one playthrough and to get as complete of an experience as possible.
  But for most stuff I play, like roguelikes/roguelites, that's not really an issue. For example, Nova Drift, an action roguelite, is out of Early Access now, but I played it for a long time in EA, and it was a perfectly reasonable game in that state. Same thing for Caves of Qud.
  I do think that buying Early Access is only really a good idea if you're going to be okay with the developer terminating development tomorrow and still feel that you're better off having purchased the game -- incomplete or no -- than not.
- Honestly, I’ve got lots of hours in Early Access games. That said, they were like $20 when I bought them in EA and as content gets added and they get closer to launch, the price goes up.
  I don’t think that’s the same as pre-orders though.
  The only digital game I’ve ever preordered was City Skylines 2. I was on vacation the day it came out and didn’t want to miss out on playtime and waste my PTO. Definitely worth it, and I enjoyed it and the lead up to release. (I’m on the fenced whether I enjoy it more than the first, but that’s mostly because I’ve got so many add ons for the first that the second seems like it’s missing things. But it worked well for me and I got hours and hours of playing in that day.

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

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

You are assuming the reviews have any bearing on whether I want to play the game. This is a risky assumption.
When Cyberpunk was busted and everybody was hating that's what prompted me to jump in. I went and got a PS4 physical version of the 1.0 last-gen release when I could find one on sale, even though I primarily played the game on PC. It's one of my favorite gaming artifacts. I like it more than any collector's edition nonsense.
Also, what reviews? I don't know if I know what "reviews" for videogames even mean anymore.
Anyway, to answer your actual question, if there is a discount at launch (which is increasingly a thing, which is kind of sad) or a decent preorder bonus I can prepurchase. I don't mind. Otherwise I just get things when I get things.
- It's true, I feel like instinctively people think videogame reviews were good at one point because it seems odd a whole industry exists that never did the thing it does reasonably, but even going back to 80's and 90's magazines, slop got 5's while classics in retrospect got 3's in many cases. Videogame reviews have always been marketing propaganda with no relationship to reality.
  
  It did the thing reasonably for the time and the context, I can tell you that first hand.
  The set of values was just different early on and so was the purpose of reviews.
  It's weirder to me that the audience consensus ended up being that game reviews are meant to be consumer advocacy, like they're crash test reports for cars or something. I find that depressing. I've always gotten mad when reviewers tell you whether a game is "worth your time" or "worth your money". What do you know of my time and how I want to use it? Or what value I put in money?
  Ideally art criticism is about finding a view on a piece of work, an intellectual framing for it, and sharing it with the audience, and there was a brief time of sheer hubris where a few critics thought that was more or less what they were doing.
  And then influencers happened and streamers became a thing and now it's something else. A bit of community curation, maybe.
  In the 80s and 90s? It was targeted marketing for a thing that nobody knew about. You didn't read a review to know if a game was good, you read it to know that it existed, whether it did anything technical that was exciting and perhaps if it did the thing that the arcade game you already knew was doing. A four star review was often on the basis of "sprites big", and we were all fine with that.

Used to be I could preload games I prepurchase and would absolutely be doing that still, but that's pretty much never on offer anymore so I don't prepurchase even games I'm 100% certain I'll be getting.

Yeah I’ll pre order any game that I plan on buying. There’s no practical reason not to.
- This is the first comment I see that actually answers the question. Why on earth are people down voting is beyond me..
  Now though, I'd love to get more details about the thought process as I myself never preorder anything ?
  Edit : I've seen your answers to other comments, I guess it makes sense, all good reasons
  
  Yeah people avoid pre ordering because they don’t want to signal to the publishers support for a game before they know it’ll be good. And that’s a perfectly valid reason not to pre order. But it’s also the only reason not to pre order, and it’s more political than practical.
- Interesting. I can’t see any practical reason TO preorder. Are they going to run out of digital copies? Am I going to forget to buy it? I’d rather wait for reviews and a couple patches.
  
  You get content only available if you pre order
  You get early access to the game
  You get some amount of later expansion content for free
  you can preload the game so when it releases, you can just begin playing it.
  There are lots of practical reasons TO preorder something, thought it’s not always all of those things. And you can both preorder something and “Wait for reviews” because the vast majority of the time, reviews release before a game releases.
  For example, Civ 7 comes out on the 11th, if you pre order you get the benefit of getting to play it on the 6th, and the reviews for it all released today, the 3rd. That means I’ll know today if the game sucks and I can just… cancel my preorder if I wanted to. Then in a couple days I get to play the game early, so in case the reviews were all paid for I get to see for myself if I don’t like the game, and if I don’t like it, I can cancel my pre order.
  In case I don’t cancel my pre order, I also save $10 on Civ packs I would otherwise be paying for. If I waited for release day to buy it, I’d lose out on the benefits of pre ordering, but gain nothing.
- What if the game launches and you find out everyone is saying it is incomplete, doesn't run properly, and is crashing their consoles over and over?
  That would be the practical reason I would think of for not just outright purchasing something that hasn't come out
  
  That kind of thing would likely be made known through reviews that come out a few days to a week before release in which case you could just cancel your preorder. And even if they didn’t, Steam’s refund policy doesn’t care if you preordered or not, you can get a refund either way.
  If it’s a console game and the problem is bad enough that it’s crashing consoles, even with refund policies as restrictive as Sony’s, they will issue refunds in cases like that, as we’ve seen a lot of in the past couple years.
  The only actual negative scenario that’s left is you play it and you just don’t like it, and you’re not on PC so you can’t get a refund. But not preordering a game doesn’t really solve that problem. If you buy a game on the PS store two weeks after release and it turns out you don’t like the game you’re no better off than if you pre ordered it and didn’t like it. Generally people don’t pre order games that they’re not sure they’re even going to like.

I pre-order games. Steams refund policy makes it pretty much risk-free. Usually it's shortly before launch, if I want to play the game immediately anyway. For big games, reviews pretty much always come out before launch or on the day of, so I can still always cancel, if it looks bad. I don't remember regretting any of these purchases, even if I didn't like all the games.
- So why not just buy it on the day of the launch? See the reviews, or even better yet wait a few days before seeing actual reviews and not reviews against free/early access copies?
  
  Reviews almost always come out several days to a week before release so by the release day I’ve seen them all. In addition to that, lots of the genres I like have well known players in the community who often get a chance to play early builds for marketing purposes so you’ll get an idea of whether the game’s at least worthwhile WELL before release. And if the game ends up being terrible, well Steam doesn’t care if you pre ordered or bought the game at launch, they’ll refund you just the same.
  And when games I like come out I usually want to play them at release so if I waited for the game to release to buy it I’d have to sit there and download it first. You’d also lose out on any pre order bonuses which are often like free access to paid content which saves you a little money in the long run, or maybe you get to play the game early.
  I guess the idea behind not preordering is you don’t want to get bamboozled into buying a bad game? But the thing is once you’ve been playing games for awhile and you know what you like, it’s actually REALLY hard to be tricked into buying a game you won’t like. It is very easy to tell when a game is going to release with issues or be something you don’t like. In 20 years of preordering games I think the only time I ever got duped by a game was No Mans Sky, but to be fair they put a lot of effort into lying about that one, to the point that I was able to get a refund on it outside of the refund window. So it still worked out.
  
  Sometimes I want the freebies you get with the pre-order, sometimes it's about pre-loading.
  before seeing actual reviews and not reviews against free/early access copies?
  "Actual reviews", because you can only have an opinion on something, if you paid for it.

No, one time there was a highly anticipated game that I really wanted.
Walked into the store after checking a couple reviews and bought it full price.
Ask the clerk, he confirmed there is never shortages or anything like that for physical disks.
Imo, there is even less of a reasons to preorder digital copies, what are they gonna do, run out of bandwidth?
- I think there's only been one game that I've pre-ordered digitally, and it was Cyberpunk 2077 on GoG the day it was supposed to release early for pre-orders.
- Ask the clerk, he confirmed there is never shortages or anything like that for physical disks.
  Small town?
  When stuff only released on disc stores can only get so many copies. Even if it’s a 100 or so, there’s no guarantee they’ll have enough on launch day to even satisfy demand. People would line up the night before as well.
  So if you wanted to make sure you got a copy of a good game to play day 1 with your buddies, you HAD to preorder and hope they weren’t out, since they also held stock to sell day of.
  
  No, there is a finite amount, agreed. However, the cost of making and shipping is minimal in the overall production cost. If no they need 100, shipping 120 is easy. Any excess can be used for following weeks and months sales. The gamer doesn’t want to miss out, but the company is much more likely to take active steps to ensure they don’t miss out on a sale. In the age of digital, even if they did sell out, it can still be pirchaesed online. So, it is high risk, low reward to preorder.
  So, while missing out on day one is possible, it’s extremely unlikely and so preordering is basically a free loan and handing over money before there is a chance to assess quality.

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.

Once, Diablo 3. I figured it could not miss. It missed.

never

No because it's stupid to preorder digital goods. I'll happily join early access to help fund projects I find interesting lile enshrouded.

No. Heck, I don't even play Early Access games (with rare exceptions, like Satisfactory). I'm not paying to be a beta tester.

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.

Only twice and felt foolish after release. Stalker 2 was selling below pre order price on a trustworthy key site. And cyberpunk, not sure why I did that one.

All they have to do is add a skin or some shit as a pre-order bonus and people will deposit money. It's absolutely crazy, especially with the state almost every launch is in these days.
Big games are like 50% off after a few months anyway, no point buying those at all until then.

I did pre-order KC:D II, but it's the first full price big title I've purchased in a long while. I was hoping to have a new GPU at release, but it looks like I'll have to wait a little longer. At least they'll have ironed out the major bugs at that point.
The reason I preordered the game was that there's a bonus quest, the game was 10% off and I can theoretically still cancel my preorder from Gamesplanet in case the reviews suck. It's not like pre-orders are irreversible.
- I would make a very rare exception and pre-order only certain titles, like if there was a new Civ Game, cause I knew I was going to get it immediately anyway and sometimes they'd let you pre-load.
  But with the new Civ being nearly $170 CAD for the full version, I'm not even doing that anymore. I look forward to the real Civ VII release date of sometime in the 2027 Steam Christmas sale lol.
  
  The last game I preordered was CP 2077. Wasn't even mad because I got a decent price for a physical copy and it was worth it for the memes alone.

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.

Do I pay full price for games before they are available to play and are most likely not going to be finished upon release? No.
Preordering anything with no real or artificial scarcity doesn’t really make financial sense. It’s a predatory sales tactic to get people to part with their money sooner, in this case before customers have a chance to use software that is pretty much unreturnable. Gaming publishers love digital preorders because some customers end up paying full price for games they don’t even like and can’t even resell.
Sadly, for at least the last ten years or more, most non-online games are best played a few years after release date when they’ve had their bugs fixed or their ‘complete edition’ released.

No reason to. A while back, some publishers gave 10% off pre orders, I bought maybe one or two like that. Some do digital goodies which doesn't entice me at all (I'm DLC proof). I can download anything fast enough. So why would I pre order?

I bought a pre-purchase once, and it was for Bloodstained.
Not only was I excited to play a new Metroidvania from the guy who made the best Metroidvania, but the price in my local currency was 1:1 to the dollar. I knew that this price was wrong and that it might go up after release. And I was right, the price increased.
Totally worth it and the game was amazing at launch.

With 14 days after release and 2 hours of playtime you can still refund. Maybe some just see it as the current day demo? Quite easy to see if it runs well and what the playability and average response is within that time frame. Like a wishlist that reserves the cash in advance.

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