Should We Pre-Order Games?

For the last few years pre-orders and pre-order bonuses have become an ever more present reality of the modern games industry. This largely has been due to the brick and mortar stores wanting to claw back a bit of the money they have been losing to online retailers however increasingly online retailers are adopting the practice. Usually this will mean that a store or site will get some exclusive in-game content for those who pre-order the game with a certain retailer.

The idea is that the customer gets something cool and the retailer gets a little bit/all of the money up front, as well as some general ideas about how a product will sell and how many to stock. This however creates a disparity within the customers of the game meaning that those who do pre-order will get more for their money than those who don’t. I would seem that the logical thing to do would be to pre-order a game you want to get the extra content. However it is not as simple as that. There is also the issue that with post launch passes becoming common, can you really ever trust a day one product?

We have seen in the past with games like Aliens Colonial Marines that a company can abuse the review embargo system to stop early reviews of a game that might be condemning to make sure it still gets those day one sales. In the case of Colonial Marines people who bought the game on the first day were left with what is almost universally considered a horrible game. This is especially alarming when you see that Sega has made the original cast of Alien a pre-order bonus in the upcoming Alien: Isolation. As a huge fan of the Alien franchise this is a big deal, and it is very worrying. It seems to me like either they are very keen to get in the pre-orders as they are not confident in the quality of the game and if it can maintain sales, or they have chopped off what sounds like a significant part of their game to placate retailers.

Many companies which do this justify this by saying that much of the content that they use for the bonuses is content created post finishing the game in the time before it is published. However I think there is a greater issue here past whether or not the developer has removed something from the finished product. In a world where games are quite regularly released in a not completely working state and then patched later, it’s whether you are going to get a full product even if you do pre-order. There are many horror stories of games almost completely non-functional on day one lest we forget Diablo III’s infamous Error 37. So if a company cannot guarantee a complete product, I don't think it is ethical to encourage people to adopt it early.

There are certain cases when it can be acceptable to pre-order a game, for example if the game is going to be scarce on release and you want a physical copy. Although from my experience working in game retail and the GTA V release, it is uncommon for there to be a scarcity of a game. Stores will usually have a good idea of how many of a product they will sell. In our store we never actually ran out of copies of GTA to sell even if you did not have a pre-order. Yes it is largely due to the huge amount of pre orders they got that they knew how many copies they needed. But the point is that
you did not suffer if you did not have your own pre-order. Saying this I am sure that more niche games there might be more of a need to pre order something, especially if you are looking for a collector’s edition of a game.

I would also add that Game does operate a fairly ethical pre-order system despite how heavily they encourage them. You are charged £5 for a pre order but you are given two days post launch to pick up your game, and at any point you can decide not to get the game and transfer your £5 to another pre-order or another product in store. In most cases you will have reviews in the couple of days following the launch. However the main issue here is when the games are pre-purchased on a digital distribution service, where you put all your money up front and can only get the product you originally went in for. The issue here is if a customer does not investigate the quality of a product before he purchases it, is it his fault if it is of poor quality or does not work? In most of the western world caveat emptor (using latin makes me feel clever) or let the buyer beware is not an accepted precedent. The idea is that customers should be protected from deception and in some cases, such as Aliens Colonial Marines, deception is exactly what has happened.

While I do not believe the customer is responsible for the purchase of a poor product, I think a lot can be done to avoid it. I would say that holding off on purchasing a game is just one step in making sure you get the product you want. Although I know it can be tempting to want to get your games as soon as possible, I myself have been guilty of this on many occasions, but as Jim Sterling of the Escapist dubbed it we are beginning to see a pre-order culture emerge. All I can do is encourage people to be savvy when buying a product and not to support a company when their practices are unethical.