Pre-ordering has been in practice by retailers since the early 2000s. Originally, pre-ordering was used to gauge the interest in certain video games so that a) publishers would know about how many copies of their games to produce in order to have the highest possible profit and b) publishers could avoid consumer dissatisfaction when game stores eventually ran out. These days this doesn’t matter nearly as much due to the massive increase (and availability) of digital game downloads. So, why is pre-ordering still in practice? Why do publishers feel the need to push this practice into the inevitable era of digital-only gaming? Money. Publishers use pre-orders to guarantee purchases of games. But how does this benefit the consumer? What is the point of buying a game early if I can just download a copy? This is where “pre-order bonuses” come into play. They incentivise buying the game early by giving early buyers exclusive content–or non exclusive content–early. Many times, however, pre-ordering is incentivised by nothing but the developer’s promises of absolutely AMAZING features that will BLOW YOUR MIND!

So, why is pre-ordering so bad? To find the answer we will need to look back at some of the games that have been released in the past few years. Let’s begin with a game released last year, Batman: Arkham Knight developed by Rocksteady Studios. This was a game that a lot of people were excited for. The Batman: Arkham series had attracted many fans throughout its three previous games, and many people were very excited to play this installment. It turned out that the game was released in an absolutely horrible state; it was unable to run at a decent speed on any system (referring to PCs) and constantly crashing. It was so bad that it got removed from Steam. Even after multiple patches and hotfixes, the game still runs at an absolutely abysmal framerate to this day. This is just one of the ways that developers abuse consumer trust and abuse the practice of pre-ordering today. This happens way too often. Other games that have released in an unfinished or unplayable include Resident Evil 7, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, Dishonored 2, and No Man’s Sky.

This brings me to my second point: broken promises. An example of this, still fresh in some people’s minds, is No Man’s Sky, a game developed by Hello Games. Throughout the development of this game, the creator, Sean Murray, had a series of interviews. In these interviews, Murray told of all of the amazing features that the game would have. These features included amazing procedural generation of worlds/creatures that look almost real, a huge multiplayer, and different types of ships and tools for different playstyles. What we got were bland and uninteresting worlds, insignificant differences in ships, absolutely no multiplayer, and creatures that can only be described as virtual vomit. This blatant lying done my the developers earned No Man’s Sky the nickname “No Man’s Lie.” Another game infamous for its lying developers is Watch Dogs, whose E3 presentation showed significantly better graphics than what was delivered upon the game’s release. There are many other games that also lied to sell pre-order copies, such as Mighty No.9, Duke Nukem Forever, and Alien: Colonial Marines.

My third and final point is simple: you can just never know if a game will be good or not until it comes out. One game that stands out to me for this is Battleborn. It’s not a broken game, and the developers didn’t lie. It’s just not that good, as it’s outshined by Overwatch in every way.

To conclude, please stop pre-ordering games. Pre-ordering is just a way for game developers to abuse consumers’ trust and to release broken, unfinished, messes of games. In the end, it’s not good for you or your wallet.