There are currently 2 developers where I’ve pre-ordered before and would do so again but only because there was an additional upside to the pre-order (I don’t care about 3 cosmetic skins as pre-order bonus).
Larian Studios I’ve bought Baldurs gate 3 early in early acces because I’ve loved DoS2 and the early previews of BG3 blew me away. My main purchase motivations were showing interest in the product and I’ve considered playing EA to give feedback. However it got clear pretty early that the game will be awesome and I wanted to play it completely blind, so I’ve never really played the early acces.
-Fromsoftware They track record was so stellar that I’ve bought the collectors edition of Elden Ring, which IMO also counts as a pre-order. Don’t regret it till this day.
I guess both of my cases are prime examples since both of them became incredible games and won the GotY in their release year. I would consider pre-ordering smother in the future.
Generally I wait for release, or more likely years after release before picking up a game to wait for thr cost to drop. There isn’t a need to preorder in a digital store, like steam, so there is zero rush.
Early access if someone I know and trust will vouch for it and play too. Valheim is the best example of this for me.
I have purchased the ‘higher tier’ for a few games over the last few decades to get specific bonus stuff if they are continuing a series and I know for a fact I will play it a lot. But I don’t do the ones where that must be done as a pre-order. It is possible I did those as preorders to download prior to the release date, but only if I could jave made the same purchase a week after release.
I very very rarely pre-order but if reviews are out and you’re already planning on buying it, it could be worth it. Some stores provide a discount for pre-ordering games, I got Elden Ring for 15% off before it even released which is nice.
If there are reviews out and I’ve looked at some raw gameplay from a streamer getting early access or something then I might pre-order mere hours away from release if there’s some benefit in doing so.
Otherwise absolutely not in the digital only age. Can’t run out of copies.
I don’t consider Early Access a pre-order. If I buy an unfinished game it’s because there’s enough content from my point of view at that asking price that even if the game never gets finished I’ll still be satisfied with my time/money spent.
Nowadays? Not a chance. Preorders nowadays seem to be more of a incentive to allow a studio to just not have a decent final product because people have already bought in.
What about Early Access Games?
If I really like the concept, yes.
Do you feel differently about Early Access vs traditional preordering?
Early access is not pre-ordering, and as such is treated extremely differently. Preordering tells me that the product will be finished on release, EA means that it’s going to need a lot of work for a finished product.
If you are open to the idea in specific circumstances, what are those?
I am extremly open to EA as it helps studios develop a product that otherwise may not be able to be created. Actual preordering is a strict closed door, there is very little reason in the digital world we live in to preorder a game.
How do you decide if a game qualifies?
I more likely will buy an early access game if I can open the page and not see:
Major blockers:
Lack of Linux support or compatibility
Reviews talking about the game being dead
Reviews talking about how the developer ignores the community
Update history either showing no changes or minor changes stretching back for a few months(the longer the gap the less likely I am to support the studio)
Opening the developer page and seeing they are actively working on a different game. (this is an instant deal breaker)
Minor Blockers
Developer responses in community pages saying “for support go to external site” usually discord. If you don’t want to support your game on the storefront, don’t use the storefront.
Update logs saying that they are actively working on DLC for their early access game. (free DLC gets a partial pass… but paid DLC for an Early Access game is a huge red flag for me)
No developer interactions in the community forums or an un-moderated community forum.
Toxic community in discussion forums or support channels (I understand this is out of the devs control at times but it still dissuades me from wanting to spend money on the games)
There’s isn’t anything particularly wrong about preordering something you’re most certainly going to get day-one, although those are few and far between these days. After all, even fan favorites often come with bugs and glitches day one and you can still encourage producers (and raise kpis) by wishlisting a game instead so they know demand exists. Same for downloading a pre-release demo - they track that.
Early access is usually indie with a few exceptions, so supporting them is good too except when you’re a big fan and would rather see the finished work without spoilers. None the less, support can still exist in other forms.
I personally do neither, but this is more because of financial reasons and my already stupidly huge backlog. The only game I might have preordered this year would have been Silksong and only didn’t because they didn’t permit it. I knew it wouldn’t be released with… ahem, bugs… and that I would certainly play and enjoy it.
Every other 2025 gem was a surprise after release, though.
I don’t pre-order but I do buy early access games. Unless it’s something genuinely limited edition and unique there is not reason to risk buying before release.
I always wait for release, even if I’m planning it to be a release day buy. Early Access could be an exception if the product they offer is good even in that stage, like how I got Rhythm Doctor when they finished Act 4. (The game has recently came out of Early Access and it’s really good). A demo could incentivise me to preorder, a game I could give example for that is Diesel Knights. While it’s not available for pre-order yet, I would absolutely do so if it did. But nothing released : no preorder
Strictly against it in AAA titles, anything above 60 is a never buy in the first place for me but a putting a preorder for a game in that price range is something that is straight up NOT happening under any circumstance.
I never pre-order nor pay for early access. Examples are plenty, but a couple that spring to mind are New World and Ashes of Creation. (Even excluding the infinite early access of PUBG, and whatever the hell Star Citizen is).
For the former, their “beta test” was “yeah, it runs: ship it” and ZERO feedback was noted or actioned. The release day was The Single Worst game release I’ve ever seen, and 4 years later when Amazon decided to kill it, ALL of the beta bugs were still there. To be fair, it was a “pay once” game. With MTX, of course.
For the latter, people started by paying $300+ for “alpha access” and more recently $100 for the same thing. And it’s clearly 2-4 years away from being remotely ready for release. Those people are paying to do QA. And it will be pay-per-month on release, as if it was 2010.
If your FOMO overrides your other faculties, and you’re willing to put up with all of that, then fine. You do you. 👍🏻
Every pre-order bonus I’ve seen is a skin, title or other tat that doesn’t have any value beyond signalling that you pre-ordered the game.
Me? I’m done playing these financial games with video games. Until a game is released/GA, it’s vapourware and non-existent. But again: you do you.
Early access is misleading, there are games which are “released” and would barely count as early access and vice-versa, so I just treat them equally.
The criteria for me is that based on reviews or some gameplay footage it seems like I can get £1/hour worth of enjoyment out of it. I tend to look for how many hours do people have when they leave reviews and how many have they played since, rather than just what they say. If I’m unsure if I’ll like it and there is not enough videos or reviews to give me certainty, i may take a risk on £10 and below games depending on how bored I am at the time.
Seriously, don’t reward this kind of anti-consumer bullshit.
The only acceptable justification I can see is if it’s an indie dev who has really, truly earned the trust of their players and proven that they will work tirelessly to deliver the product people want. And even then I’d be very, very unlikely to. I’m crazy excited for both of Owlcats upcoming games and I still haven’t pre-ordered them, for example.
Pre-orders encourage bad, buggy, incomplete or deceptively marketed releases by juicing day one numbers without any need for the dev / publisher to actually release a worthy product.
I can’t specifically remember what games, but this definitely happened to me at toys r us several times. Back in the physical copy days you had to pre-order big releases most of the time and the pre-order was usually held but they often oversold because the distributor didn’t send all the copies they’d ordered.
I got screwed over so many times with both pre-ordering and early access, that I never pre-order again and I very rarely buy early access games. I honestly don’t really buy any game at full price anymore and I only buy early access if a developer hasn’t abandoned a previous game and releases regular updates, unless if they have a really good reason to leave a long time between updates (looking at you Detail Valley).
Me personally, I’ll never pre-order a game. Pre ordering is different from early access because i actually get the game even in a unfinished state.
All that said, it depends on the game. Timberborn has been the only early access game I felt has been worth it. The Devs are still putting out regular updates and have vastly improved the game since i bought it. Its been very fun to play from the beginning and has only gotten better.
Compare that to something like cyberpunk, yea I’m good. Couldn’t imagine how that must of felt to preorder that and get that mess on release. I think the main difference is the studio. AAA games I rarely buy anymore. Indie games though? Thats where I’m at.
In a recent survey, we explored gamers’ attitudes towards the use of Gen AI in video games and whether those attitudes varied by demographics and gaming motivations. The overwhelmingly negative attitude stood out compared to other surveys we’ve run over the past decade....
They removed the AI content less than a week after release. By unspecified I mean it wasn’t a deliberate “this is the AI section”.
The awards were given 4 days ago, 6 months after release (more?). So the judgement is not on the game as it stands or even as it was submitted.
The awards don’t matter, I’m just genuinely baffled by this person depriving themselves of joy because of some virtue signalling that relies entirely on just not being aware of AI being used everywhere else.
Following the publication of this article, Sandfall Interactive wishes to provide the following clarifications.
The studio states that it was in contact with El País on April 25 - three months prior to this publication. During these exchanges, Sandfall Interactive indicated that it had used a limited number of pre-existing assets, notably 3D assets sourced from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. None of these assets were created using artificial intelligence. Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative Al-created assets in the game. When the first Al tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within 5 days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.
Because so many people are blowing up without reading the article I felt it was worth posting this. Based on the wording it sounds like they were not disqualified for having AI in the game, they were disqualified for not disclosing AI had been used in development.
“The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself,” the statement reads. “When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination.”
Additionally, here is another article where they are clarifying HOW it was used.
Following the publication of this article, Sandfall Interactive wishes to provide the following clarifications. The studio states that it was in contact with El País on April 25 - three months prior to this publication. During these exchanges, Sandfall Interactive indicated that it had used a limited number of pre-existing assets, notably 3D assets sourced from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. None of these assets were created using artificial intelligence. Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative Al-created assets in the game. When the first Al tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within 5 days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.
TL;DR: They experimented with Generative AI when it first came out, used some of the results as temporary assets that were always intended to be temporary. They still got in to the final product because QA missed them, which was promptly fixed in a patch. Indie Game Awards disqualified them for failing to disclose this in the first place.
Key takeaways:
AI didn’t steal anyone’s job in this instance. It was simply used as a tool to help make an artists job easier.
It was never meant to be a part of the final product, and currently isn’t.
They used generative AI around when it when it first came out, probably before most people started realizing it was being trained off stolen artwork as well as a lot of the other problems with AI. u/Crazazy brings up a good point and this part is somewhat questionable
Make of that what you will. I personally think this is being blown out of proportion. They made a mistake and have openly corrected themselves. Good for them.
This is just the whole robot sandwich thing to me.
If home kitchens were being replaced by pre-filled Automats, I’d be equally repulsed.
A tool is a tool. Fools may not use them well, but someone who understands how to properly use a tool can get great things out of it.
The most expert craftsman won’t get a round peg to fit into a square hole without doing some damage. At some point, you need to understand what the tool is useful for. And the danger of LLMs boils down to the seeming industrial scale willingness to sacrifice quality for expediency and defend the choice in the name of business profit.
Doesn’t anybody remember how internet search was in the early days? How you had to craft very specific searches to get something you actually wanted?
Internet search was as much constrained by what was online as what you entered in the prompt. You might ask for a horse and get a hundred different Palominos when you wanted a Clydesdale, not realizing the need to be specific. But you’re never going to find a picture of a Vermont Morgan horse if nobody bothered to snap a photo and host it where a crawler could find it.
Taken to the next level with LLMs, you’re never going to infer a Vermont Morgan if it isn’t in the training data. You’re never going to even think to look for one, if the LLM hasn’t bothered to index it properly. And because these AI engines are constantly eating their own tails, what you get is a basket of horses that are inferred between a Palomino and a Clydesdale, sucked back into training data, and inferred in between a Palomino and a Palomino-Clydesdale, and sucked back into the training data, and, and, and…
I think artists could use gen AI to make more good art than ever
I don’t think using an increasingly elaborate and sophisticated crutch will teach you to sprint faster than Hussein Bolt. Removing steps in the artistic process and relying on glorified Clipart Catalogs will not improve your output. It will speed up your output and meet some minimum viable standard for release. But the goal of that process is to remove human involvement, not improve human involvement.
I will say, gen AI seems to be the only way to combat the insane BEC attacks we have today.
Which is great. Love to use algorithmic defenses to combat algorithmic attacks.
But that’s a completely different problem than using inference to generate art assets.
Let’s be straight: as amazing as Baldur’s Gate 3 is today, Act 3 launched half baked and half broken. My first playthrough experience was horrible, largely thanks to broken flags and missing content from the Upper City, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have comparable experiences with early versions of Original Sin 2. Hell, they rewrote basically the entire final act of that game with the definitive edition, and I’m under the impression Original Sin 1 had a similiar situation, though I didn’t play it enough between the original and the definitive edition to experience it.
Now, part of all this is because Larian opts to make decisions to cut content and reduce scope rather than abuse their staff or delay a project. In Baldur’s Gate specificslly, I won’t say I am perfectly happy with the outcome, but they are a good studio that practices reasonable employee ethics, and ultimately puts in the work to get there with the product as well. I’d have no issue buying Divinity day one or even pre-ordering, but I do not expect a perfectly complete and polished experience on release.
Worth noting that, like large swaths of other parts of the industry, the Saudis now own Evo. It hasn’t changed yet, but Ronaldo ended up in Fatal Fury, so…...
Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game....
All controls should be remappable. All means all. Not most, not some, and certainly none of this bullshit where all you can do is toggle between “XBox 360 controller layout A/XBox 360 controller layout B.” This is especially true for titles on consoles, many of which still to this very day don’t allow you to remap their controls at all.
For 3D games, field of view. Far too many developers of FPS titles in particular have Console Disease, and feel it’s somehow acceptable to lock the FOV to 70° or some absurd number. If they allow you to adjust it at all they may be feeling “generous” enough to let you go as high as 90°. That’s completely unacceptable. On my 4K monitor that’s 25" from my face, I need at least 120°. Honestly, I want to see that slider go up to 180°. That’s right, I want to be able to look at your game world like a goddamned pigeon. On that note I really have to wonder what those people with those 3840x1080 überwide monitors do most of the time, other than spending their days in never ending torment.
Allow me to turn off the stupid pre-launch splash titles. Certainly at least after the first startup. I certainly don’t need to be told that nVidia is the way it’s meant to be played, or that your company licensed Havok, or who your publisher is, or who your publisher’s owner is, or who your publisher’s owner’s owner is, etc. Nobody cares. Usually instead you have to resort to replacing the .mkv or .bik files in the game folder with zero-byte text files or something. It’s dumb.
While we’re griping, and speaking of Console-Itis, does every PC game now need to have an unskippable message telling me that this game has auto save and urging me not to turn off my PC when the icon is being displayed? Really? Nobody’s going to do that. Tell me your game is a shitty console port without telling me your game is a shitty console port. To keep this on topic, let’s have a setting to turn that off, too, because it’s stupid. Off by default would be nice. Should there be an Idiot Mode toggle?
Granularity in subtitles. It seems too many games only have two settings: All subtitles off, or they assume you’re completely deaf. Typically I want to be able to read what characters are saying in their voice lines, but instead the developers also think I need to see the bottom third of my screen filled with [BOOM] [GUNFIRE] [JUKEBOX MUSIC] [FOOTSTEPS] [BOOM] [GUNFIRE] [BOOM] [BOOM] and so on and so forth, all the time. They should either categorize sounds and make their subtitling things individually selectable, or at least if they insist on making it a slider give it three or four levels: Off, cutscene/conversation dialog only, all spoken lines (“Cover me!” “Reloading!” “Never should have come here!” etc.), and then only the top level resulting in every single cricket and rustle of grass being captioned. Some games do manage to accomplish this. Many do not.
Oh, I thought of a good one to add to my wish list. I want every game to bring back the sound test menu. But they won’t, because every studio on Earth now wants you to spend an extra $15 for their game’s soundtrack. (As if it’s not all going to be on Youtube about twelve seconds after release anyway…)
The difference is back then, I didn’t have to wait 2 years (give or take) for games to go on a proper sale to enjoy it. I’d just wait until a month or two has passed and ask around, go into Gamestop/EB Games, rent it at Blockbuster, find used games at yard sales, etc. and buy them for cheap (or potentially barter for them or be lent the copy).
We pay $70 to not play at release due to server issues and critical bugs. We do QA for most major gaming companies - while paying for the privilege to do so. We pay full-price for incomplete experiences that we are misled into believing are complete experiences, as well.
Most games I purchase at release (or pre-order) are just in limbo on my account while I wait for a playable product. By the time it’s playable, there is usually $70 worth of DLCs for me to buy.
That’s generally how I follow it also. Though I add the stipulation that they’re enjoyable hours, and it’s not hardline. I know not every game can be measured that way. If it’s a particular genre or series, l might take the dive anyway. For indies, it goes even further than that. Some I track for years before release, so I pre-order as soon as it becomes available, just to support as much as I can. So $/hr is a good baseline, but it’s deeper than that.
Do you preorder games? angielski
What about Early Access Games?...
Gamers Are Overwhelmingly Negative About Gen AI in Video Games, but Attitudes Vary by Gender, Age, and Gaming Motivations. (quanticfoundry.com) angielski
In a recent survey, we explored gamers’ attitudes towards the use of Gen AI in video games and whether those attitudes varied by demographics and gaming motivations. The overwhelmingly negative attitude stood out compared to other surveys we’ve run over the past decade....
Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Larian CEO Responds to Divinity Gen AI Backlash: 'We Are Neither Releasing a Game With Any AI Components, Nor Are We Looking at Trimming Down Teams to Replace Them With AI' (www.ign.com) angielski
‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Maker Promises ‘Divinity’ Will Be ‘Next Level’ (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Hytale can now be pre-ordered (store.hytale.com) angielski
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/40151552...
Evo Japan and Las Vegas 2026 lineups announced (evo.gg) angielski
Worth noting that, like large swaths of other parts of the industry, the Saudis now own Evo. It hasn’t changed yet, but Ronaldo ended up in Fatal Fury, so…...
Timesplitters Remake (www.polygon.com) angielski
How many of y’all loved the timesplitters games back in the PS2 era?
Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games) angielski
Hear me out. A few games have shader installations that will usually apply any new settings you put down AFTER you restart the game, and a lot of other games have graphics settings that will only apply after you’ve rebooted the game....
The median price of best-selling new games on Steam has dropped in the past 2 years, research finds: "Charging >$25 is getting trickier, as players compare value to the $10-$15 indie titles" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski