Greedy Publishers Have Won And Normalized Paying To Play Early
Greedy Publishers Have Won And Normalized Paying To Play Early
Paying to access a game like Assassin's Creed Shadows three days early is now just standard practice
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I bought FH5 platinum or whatever, which included 'early access', though that wasn't a factor in my decision. This was so broken I referred to it as 'alpha, maybe'. It took two months to fix traffic and random error messages with no details ("ALERT" [OK]). It was about 6 months before it was decent, and patches in the last year have caused weird new (seemingly unrelated) regression bugs.
Me and a tight crew who play almost daily, and I myself have 3.3k hours of game time (others have similar times) are worried about 6 being worse in every way. Throw in 'car packs' for $5 each when it was assumed that the platinum version got you fucking everything, or the fact that our favorite game mode is now (for the last ~16 months) riddled with bugs, or that 4 has massive issues when playing online for the past few years that they aren't going to fix (lobby issues), or that 3 on the pc has online that is completely broken, known, never to be fixed.
I am considering picking up a copy of 6 on launch from yarr land and seeing if it is a massive pile of shit before I plonk down any cash. And with the... let's say "disappointment" that these three games have been, if I do purchase another I am planning on getting the base game, not the money-grabbing bullshit edition (includes cars released weekly for 1y, and 2 expansion locations that are mediocre at best). You fucking played yourself, MS. Great job.
Similarly, Need for Speed whatever the latest is called, offered early access and bla bla. I wanted to trial it, as NFS has been a dumpster fire post-2012. Fuckers want me to pay money for a trial - are you fucking shitting me? Grabbed a copy from the seas, couldn't get it going, said fuck it and just told anyone who asked me (as I'm a big NFS fan, so I have a bunch of people who ask my opinion on every release) to keep their $70. The cost has been as low as $5.99, but that's still not low enough. Fuck EA.
Fuck the publishers, fuck the devs for not pushing back when they need more time, fuck abandoning games the second it's successor is revealed, fuck game-breaking bugs getting green-lit into release patches because the devs are overworked. Just fuck the entire industry. For me, there are only an actual handful of good games that have come out in the last decade+ and not been the equivalent of consuming feces for $50+. I want my 90s and 00s gaming environment back, not this ball-squeezing blood-sucking hell we have now.
...anyway...
Have you considered to become a patient gamer? I always wait for a game to drop in price before buying it. That way you know from other people's experience whether it's a good game or not, and you save money. On hardware too! No need for the latest hardware if you don't run the latest games.
My steam wishlist (I actually use ITAD but) is actually kinda that. Stuff I want but I can wait on, for one reason or another. Unless I'm quite excited about a game (Cities Skylines 2) or have multiple people planning on getting it for multi-player (Forza), it goes on the list and it doesn't notify me unless 1) it's 50% or more off, and 2) it's the lowest price ever offered.
Lets me have stuff that might pop up randomly during a sale and 'woo', but also restrains myself from buying everything I'm curious about. Still have the latest hardware itch, though :p
Yes, I do the same with my wishlist. The only expensive games I consider are multiplayer games I can play with my friends. I bought Deep Rock Galactic, Sea of Thieves and Valheim for that reason
I've been buying the base-game ON launch day for a several years now for any games I've wanted to play ASAP.
Obviously if pre-ordering comes with pre-loading the game, that can be advantageous for some players, but with gigabit fibre I downloaded Forbidden West on PC in half an hour. And even with pre-loading, you could be buying a day or two in advance, not a year like I've seen some friends do.
Buying as late as possible, and hovering you finger over the refund option for the first two hours, you don't really miss out on anything. I don't think pre-order bonuses and such have ever been anything worthwhile. And any future content is something you can spend on when it comes out, IF you're still down to play more of the game.
It's kinda sickening how common it's become for special editions to just be pre-orders for content that doesn't exist yet, and 50% of the time it gets produced with 25% of the effort of the base game.