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Wait a year after release for patches, community fixes, mods, then get a crack and, if you like it, buy it
- A (indie, small studio) for full price
- B (A+ studio) on sale for next to nothing
Edit: lettered list is a missing feature in Markdown.
Xbox/PlayStation/Switch pre-ordering is dumb.
Steam has refunds now though, so if I know I’m gonna play it day 1 I’ll pre-order it and pre-download it, but when it turns out it’s dogshit I’m refunding that shit ASAP (sorry stalker 2, hopefully you’ll be good one day!)
Great for single player, not so much for multiplayer games. By the time you decide to play, the servers might be offline
If an online game is offline after 3 days, it’s better not to have preordered it.
I just wanted to play Defiance again 😅
In that case, have peace in knowing you didn’t spend full price on a game with an expiration date.
That’s good wisdom right there.
Buying late also has the advantage that if the game is a technical disaster at first, you can wait some months until most of the bugs have been fixed and then still buy it and enjoy it anyways. Then you don’t have to go through the frustrating experience of trying to play a game that crashes or locks your progress due to bugs every half an hour.
Yeah, basically nobody does actual beta testing anymore, been like that for at least a decade.
They say they do, but they’re either lying or lauguably incompetent at it, my rule of thumb is bare minimum 3 months for ‘day one’ patches, more realistically, 6 months for them to actually finish the last 10 or 20% of the game they initially rushed out the door not including.
The patient thing also sadly/hilariously allows you to avoid the increasingly more common multiplayer game that just fucking sucks actually and more or less tanks 95% of its player count before the 6 month mark, or has some massive controversial (in terms of actual game features or lack thereof) thing going on.
Don’t pay the FOMO tax, kids.
Especially if it’s a console game. If it’s PC I can typically manually edit things to fix them, but consoles are locked down. I still remember Fallout 3 when I finished the Operation Anchorage DLC it also marked some other random quest I never started as complete. Realizing I could fix that bug with a console command on PC (ironic lol) made me not wanna play on consoles unless I really have to.
This applies even when the game isn’t a technical disaster. All games have bugs, and many will not be found until they’re released to the public. And then most games have quirks that you as a player don’t agree are good things, and mostly there will be mods to fix those. So waiting is always a good idea, no matter the state of the game at launch.
Unless you buy from Humble. I’m reading they’re constantly running out of keys.
That is slightly different, and those are usually (heavily) discounted prices and not available at launch of a game.
But muh
3 day early accessguinea pig free QA testing thoughOh man but what if i miss out on: preorder skin that is just the default outfit recolor, and weapon that is 20% better than starter, both made irrelevant by the first vendor outside of tutorial?
And the preorder bonuses are always ugly as hell.
I understand the hesitation on most games but I will absolutely preorder or day one order for a company like Supergiant, Jeppe Carlsen, Subset Games, Kojima. IMO they never make bad games, early games rarely have issues and I know that I’m supporting them to have garenteeed capital for more development, etc.
Anyone else have game developers that you have complete confidence in day one?
I’ll buy Silksong day 1, as long as it’s less than $50
Nothing wrong with buying on day one, but don’t pre order. I get your point, they don’t make bad games, but we’ve seen this pattern often where beloved devs fall from grace. It’s just not worth it. Like they said, they don’t run out of digital copies.
If you really really wanna preorder something physical, maybe I can understand that, but I really only do PC gaming as of now, console gaming for me is pretty rare, so I don’t have much of an opinion on it.
That’s it. Patient gamers usually get the complete, most polished experience of a game for the lowest price.
This is true, at the cost of having to avoid almost all game related discussions until they buy the game or severely risk having the game plot be spoiled.
What avoid? You have to actively look that up, which you don’t usually do if not for deciding if you want to buy the game.
if knowing the plot beforehand ruins the plot, then it wasn’t a good plot. This applies to movies, books, games, everything.
I don’t know about that, I still don’t know what the plot to this game is for instance. Beyond the trailers of course.
It’s the story of an angry man learning to be the dad of his boi
yea, that’s never been an issue for me, and I rarely play new games
True, depending how relevant that is for you. I usually don’t care, except for few games like the Final Fantasy VII remake series.
Didn’t pre order or anything, but I’m pretty bitter that I got excited for Tales of the Shire. I expected Stardew Valley with hobbits.
I won’t be buying BF6 unless they confirm weapons are locked to classes.
Unless it’s a boycott then you make sure you’re playing it day before release
The only game i preordered in my life was TOTK (physical ofc) and that only 1 month before release.
Normaly i don’t only view the reviews, but i play a lengthy demo (legal or illegal) before i purchase something nowadays.
This is the way! Also you pick up the physical copies used from places like Vintage Stock. Don’t even have to pay full price. Best time to buy digital is during a Steam sell.
