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Do you pre-order digital games? If so, why?

Image alt text: An image of Steam's top 10 best-selling games at the time of posting, three of which are marked as "prepurchase"

I checked the Steam stats and noticed that in the top 10 best selling games by revenue, there's three games that aren't even out yet. If we ignore the Steam Deck and f2p games, it's three out of four games. They have also been in the top 100 for 4, 6, and 8 weeks respectively, so people just keep on buying them. I would love to know why people keep doing this, as the idea of pre-ordering is that there is a physical copy of a game available for you on release, but this is not a concern with digital items. So after so many games lately being utterly broken on release, why do people not wait until launch reviews to buy the game? If you touch a hot stove and get burned multiple times, when does one learn?

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  • You are assuming the reviews have any bearing on whether I want to play the game. This is a risky assumption.

    When Cyberpunk was busted and everybody was hating that's what prompted me to jump in. I went and got a PS4 physical version of the 1.0 last-gen release when I could find one on sale, even though I primarily played the game on PC. It's one of my favorite gaming artifacts. I like it more than any collector's edition nonsense.

    Also, what reviews? I don't know if I know what "reviews" for videogames even mean anymore.

    Anyway, to answer your actual question, if there is a discount at launch (which is increasingly a thing, which is kind of sad) or a decent preorder bonus I can prepurchase. I don't mind. Otherwise I just get things when I get things.

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