So there are a lot of games that offer a preorder that I am interested in that I pass on. I have always passed on a lot of preorders. But I had always had my exception list of games and developers that I would pass on even though I liked them. But after Cyberpunk came out I decided I needed to pass on the exception list all together and never preorder anything again. That has not been hard up to the point when the preorder for Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous was announced. This is exactly my kind of game and they offered preorder bonuses. It was extremely difficult to pass on.

I do understand that when Kingmaker came out that it was extremely buggy, and I think they did a good job of fixing it. I did preorder that one. And I started playing it, but I had to set it aside for a while to give them time to fix the bugs. So I did expect some of that with this game. But it was still hard to say no when they were dangling a carrot in front of my face.

In the end I decided that I would not change my mind. As I read the reviews now, I feel like I made the right choice, even though it was extremely hard at the time. I don't know how everyone else has been feeling about this who recently changed their minds as well. I now intend to wait until this game goes on a significant sale and play some of my significant library of games until then. But I definitely intend to come back to this one at some point.

I know some people have always had this conviction to not preorder, but some people have recently made this choice. For those who do not preorder, is there a genre of games that you find it difficult to pass on a preorder? How long has it been since you preordered a game? For me it was whenever the preorder was announced for Cyberpunk. So that was well before Dec. 2020. I did wait for that one to release. But I had no intention of preordering anything else. In fact, I had a different preorder that I made that I cancelled for Vampire Bloodlines 2. Just curious on other peoples experiences as well

There is never any good reason to preorder video games. That practice is inherently stupid, and never worth doing.

Especially with digital goods.

None. Years. Reserving a copy of a game in advance made sense 25 years when on release day you had to be in school before the shops opened and by the time school closed they would have sold out of limited copies. For digital goods that can be replicated to infinity, there is no real reason. Today's pre-orders are primarily all about habituating gamers into making an endless stream of uninformed purchase decisions (pre-ordering) on the back of some weak "exclusive pre-order bonus" trinket, and away from making informed ones (waiting for reviews).

There's a very good reason why pre-orders go hand in hand with review embargoes (where journalists given advance pre-release copies are expected to behave like unpaid junior PR interns in generating only hype and not comment on observed bugs). And the more it becomes normalized, the more it essentially rewards releasing games in a very buggy state and only finishing afterwards with 30x patches. Once you look beyond the "trinket" (pre-order bonus), it generally hasn't been a good thing for the industry at all.

I think it is a good point to bring up the historical tie to the physical. There were times when without a preorder you may not be able to get a physical copy of the game at all. I had many games I wanted when I was younger and I did not get them at the time and I thought I missed out on them forever. There were no second hand stores and there were no marketplaces like ebay to get it even at higher prices than I would have paid. That may be part of this for sure. But yes, I agree now. Looking at the few little items and looking at the reviews. I would rather get my digital copy half off and pass on those things lol.
I am still excited for this game. But I am excited for it in its final form, not the buggy mess it is right now. There are also complaints about the characters being dull and boring. They may or may not doing things to fix that. Time will tell. But I really enjoyed Kingmaker. So we will see. I can say that it would be much less disappointing to pay half the price and not like it than the full price.

If we're talking about digital releases: I've never pre-ordered in my life.
I don't see the advantage (for me). Pre-order bonusses? They're usually just cosmetic/loot stuff. (and on GOG, they can be bought separately at any later time)
There are many great 'old' games that I still haven't played - I am in no hurry to play/buy games at or before release. I assume that you (the OP) don't care much about 'older' games?

In the past, I've pre-ordered a few physical collector's editions - back in the day when they were more than just "toy boxes".

Cyberpunk was my last pre order as well, not just because of the dreadful game it was, but for the galaxy only pre load - something which has happened to pathfinder too, and the online gated content, and admitted push for microtransaction multiplayer market. To be fair though, that also contributed to me not post ordering also, along with the myriad of other issues not even acknowledged to this date.

You what now? What's wrong with a gamer complaining that the inherently wasteful, non-value creating activity of processing calculations for no appreciable value is a waste of energy? Gaming actually provides a social good - leisure activity is an economic driver. Crypto mining... just feeds in to a speculative bubble and wastes an inordinate amount of energy.

I don't preorder games, but I did back a few games during the kickstarter craze, and you could probably consider those as preorders. It's been a few years since I backed anything, though.

I used to regularly pre-order video games years ago as I played a lot of games by the developer Atlus, which used to have low print runs where pre-ordering was the only way to guarantee getting a copy.

I don't see a point of pre-ordering a digital copy regardless of what cosmetic goods are being offered. It's not like they're going to decide to sell 1000 copies of a game, then have the game pulled from every digital platform and not sell any more copies... and if a developer did do that, they wouldn't stay in business for long.

100% agree

I rarely pre-order, but it happens from time to time. My last pre-order was Diablo 2 Resurrected. Previous one Cyberpunk 2077 and I didn't regret doing so. I've spent almost 70 hours in game right after the release and it provided me tons of fun. When pre-ordering games I'm prepared for potential bugs, so they often don't discourage me. There's something tempting in the fact that you're playing the game as one of the first from the regular gamers group.

I'm also planning to pre-order Baldur's Gate 3 at some point and get early access to the game which I probably won't try until it's released. :) I don't have hesitations in pre-ordering some games, but I have them in playing early access versions. It's not because of bugs, but because of missing content.

Basically pre-ordering games is a risky business these days. Games have a tendency to get on sale very fast (with some exceptions like Blizzard games for example), not to mention that we get a more patched versions not long after the release date. I would advice to pre-order only if you know what you're doing and if you value the occasion to play the games that you love as one of the first gamers. In any other situation waiting is the best option.

I always pre-order food in restaurants, it's just so hard to resist.

I last preordered Skyward Sword's special edition on the Wii.

I have since realized that games are games, and they're going to be there.