Never preorder.

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... 🙃

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

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

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.

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.

Hissssss 🐍

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Never preorder any game.

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

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.

never

Yeah I’ll pre order any game that I plan on buying. There’s no practical reason not to.

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.

Yes. After clocking up 10,000 hours on Civ VI. Civ VII can take my money!

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 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'll do it to support indie devs. Though I haven't ever done it through Steam -- just Kickstarter

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.

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.

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.

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

There’s no point because you do not know how the games are.

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.

No, I was thinking about civ7 but was unsure because, while firaxis is very talented, I do not trust 2k, once they added denuvo I decided to not even buy it at launch even if the reviews are positive (and £120 for the founders edition is stupid, especially since, if the game is updated like all previous civs, it will be necessary).

I will be waiting for denuvo to be removed (because it always is) and for a sale.