Pre-orders are one of the most weird aspects of the modern videogames marketplace and one of the biggest ways for developers and publishers to extract money from players, regardless of the value that they actually deliver.
Both major and minor titles are listed on a variety of marketplaces, with Steam the dominating one, sometimes without a clear launch date other than a simple “available soon” or “[insert year here]” and gamers, driven by allegiance to companies, intense marketing, personal loyalties or all of the above, part with their hard earned currency. A portion of them are invariably disappointed on launch by the quality of the experience that they receive, to say nothing about those projects that entirely fail.
Crowdfunding sites at least indicate that there’s no promise of delivery for those who pledge to projects (although those warning should be clearer and more prominent) but pre-orders come with almost no protections for those who pay early. And it seems that governments are taking notice and that change might be coming.
According to Heise Online, quoted by GreenManGaming, new regulations in Germany will make it impossible to simply list products, including videogames, with the “available soon” date. Such a law would be welcomed but it does not go far enough.
It’s true that videogame development is hard and that launch dates change depending on a variety of factors but those who market upcoming titles should be forced to specify a month and year when players will get their hands on a game. Those can and will probably change but the pressure of offering that information to those who pre-order will make the entire transaction more equitable.
Ideally we should, as consumers, aim for a world where pre-orders simply do not happen (or come with significant price cuts for those willing to pay early), where demos are plentiful and show off what a game has to offer, where no money is used by publishers to create organic marketing via streamers or reviewers. At the moment we are clearly far away from that lofty destination but placing some limitations, however limited is a good start. It remains to be seen whether the European Union puts its bureaucratic and legislative muscle behind this German idea and uses its size to impose change in the online marketplace space.