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Deus Ex: They do listen!


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Good, that was one of the most sadistic anti-consumer schemes I've ever seen. There's still no point in pre-ordering a video game anymore, but I'm glad this type of nonsense got nuked. At the very least other publishers will see the deserved backlash and won't ever attempt something like this again.

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Good, that was one of the most sadistic anti-consumer schemes I've ever seen. There's still no point in pre-ordering a video game anymore, but I'm glad this type of nonsense got nuked. At the very least other publishers will see the deserved backlash and won't ever attempt something like this again.

While the split was very annoying, they did something similar with Human Revolution where some editions would only have additional weapons and others an extra mission, but all of that content could be bought on the store for like 2€ after some time.

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I've really never understood the disdain people have for pre-order incentives.

 

Steam used to have pre-orders like this where the more pre-orders a game got, the more rewards people would get.  I'm not sure why they stopped, probably because of people like you guys... but I liked it.  I would've bought Resident Evil 6 day one anyways (and loved every second of it), but on top of the game, I got all the multiplayer DLC for free and a copy of Resident Evil 5 that I wanted but really didn't feel like paying for.

 

Though, come to think of it, maybe I actually was emotionally traumatized by how sadistic and anti-consumer it was.  -_-

 

Edited by PleaseHoldOn
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I actually love pre-order incentives, and think it's a great idea for the industry moving forward. I don't know why they haven't done more of this, and I don't get why people disliked this idea so much. Is it because they can't get the other bonus content in any other way? I mean, it's just extra stuff, right? I liked the original post, because I love consumer activism, and really love when Square backs down, but in general, I'm all for pre-order incentives. In fact, I don't understand the point of a pre-order otherwise.

 

However, I DON'T like this:

 

Steam used to have pre-orders like this where the more pre-orders a game got, the more rewards people would get.

 

Why should my incentives depend on the fact that lots of other people pre-ordered the game?

Edited by starcrunch061
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I've really never understood the disdain people have for pre-order incentives.

 

Steam used to have pre-orders like this where the more pre-orders a game got, the more rewards people would get.  I'm not sure why they stopped, probably because of people like you guys... but I liked it.  I would've bought Resident Evil 6 day one anyways (and loved every second of it), but on top of the game, I got all the multiplayer DLC for free and a copy of Resident Evil 5 that I wanted but really didn't feel like paying for.

 

Though, come to think of it, maybe I actually was emotionally traumatized by how sadistic and anti-consumer it was.  -_-

 

 

I respectfully disagree. To me, the incentives aren't really true incentives, but rather a psychological battle that publishers are presenting on gamers who are excited for an upcoming game. It's putting trust into publishers that don't really deserve it. 2014 was really bad about this with all the games that were broken on release day, knowing that they can just get money up front and just patch it later while providing preorder bonuses for buying a game before it's finished. I personally see this as blatant disrespect to the consumer. There are times when preorders make sense, like limited runs and the like. For AAA games though, I'll wait for reviews, let's plays, and maybe a patch to smooth out some bumps. It just gives me more confidence in a product before I throw down $60. It doesn't really matter to me if I miss out on a skin pack or an extra weapon, I just want to play a video game.

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I respectfully disagree. To me, the incentives aren't really true incentives, but rather a psychological battle that publishers are presenting on gamers who are excited for an upcoming game. It's putting trust into publishers that don't really deserve it. 2014 was really bad about this with all the games that were broken on release day, knowing that they can just get money up front and just patch it later while providing preorder bonuses for buying a game before it's finished. I personally see this as blatant disrespect to the consumer. There are times when preorders make sense, like limited runs and the like. For AAA games though, I'll wait for reviews, let's plays, and maybe a patch to smooth out some bumps. It just gives me more confidence in a product before I throw down $60. It doesn't really matter to me if I miss out on a skin pack or an extra weapon, I just want to play a video game.

 

That's certainly true, but that's not the fault of the pre-order incentive, but rather, shady companies. I certainly wait as well, but if a reputable company started offering (e.g.) DLC vouchers simply to have me purchase the game early, I might re-consider.

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I've really never understood the disdain people have for pre-order incentives.

 

I'm not adverse to pre-orders, per-se. It's what they have become that irks me. 

 

At first, preorders were great and were born out of necessity due to inadequate printing runs of some games. You'd get some extra physical loot, like a poster or some small in-game exclusive armour, and knew that your copy of the game was going to be reserved for you in-store, guaranteeing you could play on day one.

 

Then, publishers started to get involved, signing clandestine deals with retailers which meant that you had to choose which retailer you went to in order to get the pre-order bonus you wanted. This is where things started to become anti-consumer.

 

Retailers' natural and commercial response to this was to start to compete with each other for better exclusive pre-order bonuses in the hope that this would lead to them selling more games. Pretty soon we had certain retailers with exclusive loot, in-game items or missions that could only be played if you bought the game from their outlets. Around this time, retailers started requiring a deposit if you pre-ordered with them, in order to recoup the money they had spent in securing a pre-order bonus and guarantee that you would, in fact, come back to them on launch day.

 

This tipped the publishers off to the fact that gamers were willing to pay in advance for their games.

 

Then digital distribution took off in a big way, and retailers had to start competing with platform-holders and publishers directly. Eager to cut out the middle men (the retailers), publishers started to reserve the best in-game items or mission bonuses for themselves, and the retailers started competing even more eagerly for bonus content. Gamestop even announced at one point that it was going to start to work with publishers at a development stage of the game to ensure that it had the best pre-order bonuses (although I don't think anything ever came from it because consumers hated that idea). 

 

Another advantage of digital distribution, from the publisher's perspective, was that the platform holders would often lock the player in to their pre-order. It was not possible to cancel. 

 

This is all understandable and rational behaviour from the retailers and publishers. We can't fault them for it, but it doesn't mean we have to like it.

 

The effect of all of this was that bigger and bigger chunks of games were cordoned off and spread amongst various possible places you could buy a game. If you were a big fan of the game who wanted to play 100% of the game on day one, you literally had to buy multiple copies from all the various outlets in order to have all the redeemable codes you'd need to download all the content. 

 

Alongside this, digital media took off. Whereas 15 years ago, you'd buy a physical magazine to read a review and know whether a game was any good or not - and consequentially the would send out review copies to reviewers a month or two in advance of launch - now the publishers are incentivised to embargo reviews of their games until launch day. Often now, if you pre-order a game that reviews badly, you are too late to cancel.

 

Now, pre-order numbers mean just as much to publishers as actual sales do. They know that, psychologically, asking someone to commit to something means that they will be less inclined to back out come launch day. They're taking advantage of consumer naivete and trust. Again, pre-ordering is often tied to exclusive pre-order bonus content. Typically, these days, it will be another fighter in a fighting game (e.g. Goro), or a mission (e.g. The Haley-Quinn mission in Arkham Knight).  

 

Taking things a step further, publishers now also produce collector's editions of games, with physical loot for die-hard fans who are happy to spend hundreds of £. In order to sell these editions, and generate even more profit, they will often link exclusive in-game content to these editions of the game in order to entice gamers who might only be interested in the actual game itself, but who want to play 100% of the experience. 

 

In response, a number of us feel that we'd rather not be part of this system at all. Hence, we argue against pre-ordering. 

 

So, whereas pre-ordering used to be a benign thing run by retailers in order to help consumers guarantee their copy of a game they were excited about, it has morphed into this thing which breaks games up into little pieces to be sold to the highest bidder.

 

That's a brief history anyway. 

 

Personally, I do pre-order games, but only the basic edition and only from Amazon because they have a "price guarantee" which means that I only pay the lowest price the game is listed at between my order and launch day, and they let me cancel at any time. This usually saves me £10-£15 per AAA release. I view saving money as a legitimate incentive to pre-order something based on trust. I review my pre-orders regularly, and if a publisher is doing some stupid shit with their game and it's DLC or pre-order bonuses, like was the case with Arkham Knight, I cancel.

 

Does that help you understand why some people are disdainful of pre-orders?

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I actually love pre-order incentives, and think it's a great idea for the industry moving forward. I don't know why they haven't done more of this, and I don't get why people disliked this idea so much. Is it because they can't get the other bonus content in any other way? I mean, it's just extra stuff, right? I liked the original post, because I love consumer activism, and really love when Square backs down, but in general, I'm all for pre-order incentives. In fact, I don't understand the point of a pre-order otherwise.

 

However, I DON'T like this:

 

Steam used to have pre-orders like this where the more pre-orders a game got, the more rewards people would get.

 

Why should my incentives depend on the fact that lots of other people pre-ordered the game?

 

 

I respectfully disagree. To me, the incentives aren't really true incentives, but rather a psychological battle that publishers are presenting on gamers who are excited for an upcoming game. It's putting trust into publishers that don't really deserve it. 2014 was really bad about this with all the games that were broken on release day, knowing that they can just get money up front and just patch it later while providing preorder bonuses for buying a game before it's finished. I personally see this as blatant disrespect to the consumer. There are times when preorders make sense, like limited runs and the like. For AAA games though, I'll wait for reviews, let's plays, and maybe a patch to smooth out some bumps. It just gives me more confidence in a product before I throw down $60. It doesn't really matter to me if I miss out on a skin pack or an extra weapon, I just want to play a video game.

 

At the end of the day, you don't preorder games from publishers/developers you don't trust... and you preorder for functional reasons, not because OMG EXTRA MISSION!  I preordered Resident Evil 6 because I've loved every main entry in the series since Resident Evil on the PS1, and Resident Evil 6 was a phenomenal coop action game in my humble opinion.  I preorder physical copies of games from stores because a popular game can get sold out and, if I'm in the neighborhood, I may take advantage of a midnight launch and get started early.  I preorder digital copies of games because pre-loading is important to me given how awful servers handle heavy loads of people downloading on release day, and I'm in a household where people are frequently using bandwidth and I need to strategically time when I can use it all to download a 30+ GB game.  I literally haven't gotten burned yet, and I don't intend to.  The closest I've gotten was NHL 16, but I'm warming up to it.

 

Incentives are just bonus to me.  So the fact I get more when people more people pre-order is actually kind of fun.  I would've never expected to get a free copy of Resident Evil 5 out of the deal, but I checked the site every so often to see how close I was to getting it. xD

 

 

 

Does that help you understand why some people are disdainful of pre-orders?

 

Let me restate, I understand why people don't like preorders... I just disagree.  I think the fact the phrase "psychological battle" was used here is enough to convince me that this is just another case of bored gamers looking for a cause to take up.  We won guys!  We did it, we finally did it!  Now we can just enjoy our games again!

 

If this "Augment Your Preorder" is the latest in horrifying preorder scandals, then I think we're doing fine.  They didn't chunk out half the game and put them into selectable preorder tiers.  It's a digital comic, soundtrack, artbook, a bonus mission and some combat packs.  Half of which have nothing to do with your experience in-game, and the other's sound pretty minor to me.  Maybe... MAYBE the mission, but I'd venture it's probably nothing related to the main storyline.

Edited by PleaseHoldOn
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That's certainly true, but that's not the fault of the pre-order incentive, but rather, shady companies. I certainly wait as well, but if a reputable company started offering (e.g.) DLC vouchers simply to have me purchase the game early, I might re-consider.

 

That's fair, I understand. But as Harvey Dent once said, "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Let's just hope our favorites don't fall into the pit. It's really places like gamestop that push these pre-order incentives and publishers agreeing to them. I understand it's a business, but as a consumer I'll just speak with my wallet.

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I'm not adverse to pre-orders, per-se. It's what they have become that irks me. 

 

At first, preorders were great and were born out of necessity due to inadequate printing runs of some games. You'd get some extra physical loot, like a poster or some small in-game exclusive armour, and knew that your copy of the game was going to be reserved for you in-store, guaranteeing you could play on day one.

 

Then, publishers started to get involved, signing clandestine deals with retailers which meant that you had to choose which retailer you went to in order to get the pre-order bonus you wanted. This is where things started to become anti-consumer.

 

Retailers' natural and commercial response to this was to start to compete with each other for better exclusive pre-order bonuses in the hope that this would lead to them selling more games. Pretty soon we had certain retailers with exclusive loot, in-game items or missions that could only be played if you bought the game from their outlets. Around this time, retailers started requiring a deposit if you pre-ordered with them, in order to recoup the money they had spent in securing a pre-order bonus and guarantee that you would, in fact, come back to them on launch day.

 

This tipped the publishers off to the fact that gamers were willing to pay in advance for their games.

 

Then digital distribution took off in a big way, and retailers had to start competing with platform-holders and publishers directly. Eager to cut out the middle men (the retailers), publishers started to reserve the best in-game items or mission bonuses for themselves, and the retailers started competing even more eagerly for bonus content. Gamestop even announced at one point that it was going to start to work with publishers at a development stage of the game to ensure that it had the best pre-order bonuses (although I don't think anything ever came from it because consumers hated that idea). 

 

Another advantage of digital distribution, from the publisher's perspective, was that the platform holders would often lock the player in to their pre-order. It was not possible to cancel. 

 

This is all understandable and rational behaviour from the retailers and publishers. We can't fault them for it, but it doesn't mean we have to like it.

 

The effect of all of this was that bigger and bigger chunks of games were cordoned off and spread amongst various possible places you could buy a game. If you were a big fan of the game who wanted to play 100% of the game on day one, you literally had to buy multiple copies from all the various outlets in order to have all the redeemable codes you'd need to download all the content. 

 

Alongside this, digital media took off. Whereas 15 years ago, you'd buy a physical magazine to read a review and know whether a game was any good or not - and consequentially the would send out review copies to reviewers a month or two in advance of launch - now the publishers are incentivised to embargo reviews of their games until launch day. Often now, if you pre-order a game that reviews badly, you are too late to cancel.

 

Now, pre-order numbers mean just as much to publishers as actual sales do. They know that, psychologically, asking someone to commit to something means that they will be less inclined to back out come launch day. They're taking advantage of consumer naivete and trust. Again, pre-ordering is often tied to exclusive pre-order bonus content. Typically, these days, it will be another fighter in a fighting game (e.g. Goro), or a mission (e.g. The Haley-Quinn mission in Arkham Knight).  

 

Taking things a step further, publishers now also produce collector's editions of games, with physical loot for die-hard fans who are happy to spend hundreds of £. In order to sell these editions, and generate even more profit, they will often link exclusive in-game content to these editions of the game in order to entice gamers who might only be interested in the actual game itself, but who want to play 100% of the experience. 

 

In response, a number of us feel that we'd rather not be part of this system at all. Hence, we argue against pre-ordering. 

 

So, whereas pre-ordering used to be a benign thing run by retailers in order to help consumers guarantee their copy of a game they were excited about, it has morphed into this thing which breaks games up into little pieces to be sold to the highest bidder.

 

That's a brief history anyway. 

 

Personally, I do pre-order games, but only the basic edition and only from Amazon because they have a "price guarantee" which means that I only pay the lowest price the game is listed at between my order and launch day, and they let me cancel at any time. This usually saves me £10-£15 per AAA release. I view saving money as a legitimate incentive to pre-order something based on trust. I review my pre-orders regularly, and if a publisher is doing some stupid shit with their game and it's DLC or pre-order bonuses, like was the case with Arkham Knight, I cancel.

 

Does that help you understand why some people are disdainful of pre-orders?

 

Very well put.

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At the end of the day, you don't preorder games from publishers/developers you don't trust... and you preorder for functional reasons, not because OMG EXTRA MISSION!  

 

Neither of these are true for me. I pre-order to save £, which I view as being reasonable. 

 

And I don't trust a single publisher. Some are better than others, but ultimately all they want is your money because they have shareholders, etc. Don't give them you're trust too, because at that point they won't have to earn your money anymore - you'll just hand it over. 

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Don't give them you're trust too, because at that point they won't have to earn your money anymore - you'll just hand it over. 

 

A good lesson for any consumer. Like you, I don't trust publishers either,which is why I will never pre-order without some strong incentive to make me do so. 

 

I get the objections, BTW. I was commenting from a lalaland of free market enterprise, where the producers seek to make a quality product for the consumers. Of course, we live in the world where the producers seek to obtain as much short-term money for shareholders as possible, so as to justify their outrageous executive pay.

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I suspect they didn't get enough pre-orders to warrant the incentives rather than just listing to us. If they did listen to us, why are they using a pseudo free to play method on Hitman, surely the negative feedback for the DE:HR incentives would have changed their mind? 

Edited by FlareXV
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Neither of these are true for me. I pre-order to save £, which I view as being reasonable. 

 

And I don't trust a single publisher. Some are better than others, but ultimately all they want is your money because they have shareholders, etc. Don't give them you're trust too, because at that point they won't have to earn your money anymore - you'll just hand it over. 

 

Does everything have to be coated as a life lesson?  You're being almost insultingly presumptuous.

 

Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about the rest of what I said.  Do you view my lax criticism of the system and willing participation as flawed?  As I've said, I've never been burned by a preorder yet.

Edited by PleaseHoldOn
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I wanted to be excited for this game as I love Human Revoultion, but this whole "Augment Your Preorder" put a sour taste in my mouth. Now that they have removed it, I can actually look forward to this game again.  :)

 

Just goes to show that if we as consumers call out the BS and don't stand for it, they will listen. Vote with your wallet people!  :D

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I suspect they didn't get enough pre-orders to warrant the incentives rather than just listing to us. If they did listen to us, why are they using a pseudo free to play method on Hitman, surely the negative feedback for the DE:HR incentives would have changed their mind? 

 

I'm not convinced they even know what they're doing with Hitman. How anyone could think it's a good idea to buy half a game now and have to wait for the stuff you've already paid for to arrive later is insanity to me. They should just launch the game for half the price of a AAA game, and make the other half a season pass. At least then they wouldn't need a blog post and a PR team just to explain it. 

 

But the market will decide. 

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How anyone could think it's a good idea to buy half a game now and have to wait for the stuff you've already paid for to arrive later is insanity to me.

 

Probably not a point anyone should make with a Telltale game on their profile. Or supported Telltale Games by giving them money. :P

 

You'll probably be seeing games getting released in an episodic format or cut up and sold piecemeal more often, since Telltale made it their entire business model and is making money from it.

Edited by damon8r351
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