Soapbox #10: The Racket of Pre-Order Exclusives

Thursday, February 16, 2012

On Monday morning I was greeted by some amazing news that had  slipped under the radar for not only me, but almost every person I’ve spoken to since then. According to staff within both of the UK’s largest Game retail chains, the British  aren’t just buying games anymore. They’re spending their hard earned money on pre-ordering games in mass.

But of course they are! With all that pre-order exclusive content and Day 1 DLC, why wouldn’t they be? If there’s one thing that we’re all pretty sure of it’s that DLC released hours after the launch of the full game really isn’t doing the industry any favours, nor are exclusive DLC packs for pre-ordering with specific retailers (I’m looking at you, Dragon Age II). On top of this, being forced to pre-order copies of games not due to their popularity, but due to a retailer/publisher only giving a store ten to twenty copies of the game to be sold on the shop floor is sort of pushing all of my buttons in the wrong direction, at the wrong time, in the most wrong way possible.

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I’m not trying to wail on pre-order exclusives themselves;  more so, the fact that the system itself seems to be in place specifically to take advantage of customers – you know, those people that keep the industry alive by feeding it money day in and day out. It was only a week or so ago that major publisher THQ seriously entertained the hugely ridiculous idea that the ‘Xbox 720′ (Or the “Durango,” if you will) could feature a mechanism that simply blocks all pre-owned and rented games from being played on the system at all. Even with the noble intention of helping the developer at large, it’s still a move that targets the customer almost exclusively.

And the idea that we must also pre-order our games to stand a chance of buying them on release is equally ridiculous. It makes walk-in shops entirely redundant, since aside from their pre-owned games what’s the point of going if all games have to be pre-ordered anyway? You might as well just order online and have it delivered to you or opt in for digital distribution.

Pre-order exclusive have another, eviler effect, too: they diminish the value of the used game. Once the pre-order DLC code has been used, it cannot be used again. So two people, buying the same disk and box – one buying a new game and the second buying a used game – are not getting the same amount of bang for their buck.

I can’t help but feel that, as gamers, we’re being manipulated massively to simply fit this nefarious new model of games retail, by being forced into pre-order shenanigans or into one of the digital distributions services, where the idea of ‘used games’ doesn’t exist.

GameStop’s move towards digital distribution is already evident after they purchased Kongregrate two years ago and have recently made even more a push towards online sales via their co-development with Spawn Labs. EA have thrown Origin into the ring, pushing another huge and forced service. On top of that you’ve also got Good Old Games, Desura, Microsoft’s XBLA, Sony’s PSN store, Apple’s AppStore and Valve’s rampantly successful Steam. The list goes on. And whilst some of these stores provide great deals and opportunities, it forces the rest of the industry into a tight head lock. Retail stores just can’t compete – so we get stuck with pre-order exclusives to suck us back into the brick-and-mortar realm.

As it currently stands I feel I’ve learned an awful lot from two simple shop floor clerks within both stores – “Fuck you” was the outlying message. No disrespect to either of those fellows, they were just toeing a company line, but when a game retailer makes the call to only stock the minimal amount of games specifically to entice pre-orders, I can’t help but feel that they’re skipping out on their job. To add to this sad state of affairs I was also strong-armed into pre-ordering Mass Effect 3 right then and there, as I was warned that they may well be out of stock on release day! Of course! Mass Effect is a huge franchise that will sell awfully well, it could definitely clear out the store’s paltry 20 copies.

It truly doesn’t surprise me that GAME are slipping here in the UK,: whilst their sister branch Game Station claims to be just in the positive, GAME have recently announced some huge financial issues. And is it shocking? God no. You know your games industry is backwards when it’s easier, cheaper and more sensible to buy your games at a super market rather than from a specialist.

What happened to the days when things were simple? I understand that updated technology will obviously force things to change, but surely it’s supposed to be for the better? Surely the addition of the internet should not be an excuse to pack in paid launch-day DLC and this silly pre-order extravaganza.

As I previously mentioned, I feel that as consumers we’re being forced into a marketing  and value-constricting scheme. Is there a way around this? Chances are no, it’s more than likely that within the next few years we’ll be forced into several different online  gaming distributors, with pre-owned games being a thing of the past and more DLC days after release. But perhaps this is what we need? Maybe we need a push towards digital distribution, with more and more reasons to not buy a game in a physical shop, maybe this is the future?

That’s a thought I’d like to leave you with.

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Posted in community news, features, soapbox

About the Author

Chris is a British born games enthusiast and Journalist. Even with his qualifications in this field - he's still a fair bit pants, so expect flawed criticism and a massacre of the English language. You can find Chris over on Twitter at CapnRaccoon - Or drop him an email at Chris@PixelsOrDeath.com

  • http://www.gamesomnia.org Gamesomnia

    I want to urge you to not believe the hype, but I’m not really familiar with the retail environment in England. BBC America and your tale above paint a picture that has people riding a bus or a bike a half a day just to get to the only game shop in their sleepy hamlet.

    I stand by the policy that there are only three things that can get me to pre-order a title. And it doesn’t matter what those assclowns at GameStop say to convince me otherwise. They are:
    1) The game has a cool physical pack-in item. A thing that seems to rarely happen outside of Japan. Digital pack-ins? No thanks. Most of the time it is a useless weapon that you’ll outgrown in a level or two anyway. Or it’ll be something you can pay for later, if you really have to have it. And usually, you don’t.
    2) It is something that I legitimately know will sell out and I really want. The collector’s edition of Mass Effect 3, for example. It went offline for pre-order a month before its release. I got my copy on Origin (I’m not happy about that, either) the last day it was up. The super-limited 200 copies of the BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend Premium Edition is another example. I would be surprised if Jon didn’t already order 2 of those 200.
    3) I’m trading a bunch of old games in, and I already know I’ll be getting a game when it comes out. Note that this will still only happen when I know no place else has posted a better price on the game.

    So in essence, I say vote with your wallet. You always have a choice. Amazon is killing brick and mortar stores in the States because they offer the selection, they price match, and they often have pre-release deals where a purchase earns you some Amazon credit.

    You can also wait on buying the game, until it is more readily available, or more financially viable. I kinda wanted Dragon Age when it came out, but I didn’t $60 want Dragon Age. So I waited, and it went on sale that Christmas for $29 at Best Buy. Half the money, and all the pack-in DLC was still valid. Even if it wasn’t, the price came down enough that I could justify spending a little extra on some DLC if I wanted it. But if you’re looking to buy a used game that GameStop only knocks down $5 off the full game price, then it absolutely isn’t worth it. So you just don’t buy it.

    And that GameStop used game stance applies to new games, too. (At least in my hamlet.) Whenever GameStop tells me I need to pre-order because the window is closing on an item, it really just means it’s closing on a sale for them. I know that I can walk into any Target, WalMart, or Best Buy and pick up the exact same game on launch day. And there will be enough for everybody. Some places, you can even swim around in a big pile of them.

    Yeah. Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I don’t think pre-orders are really anything to worry about.

    And just because we’re curious, we want to know how you got strong-armed into Mass Effect 3. Is it really that the shop was the only place you could get the game, or was there some amazing pre-order bonus. I know you’re love of all things Mass Effect, so I know you were getting it anyway. Just wanted to know how this guy roped you in. And not so that we can later use it to convince you to buy things from us. Honest.

    • Christopher Leddy

      Haha; I’m not sure how he managed – I think it was because he offended me and I needed to prove I wasn’t the sort of gamer he presumed I was. He said “Oh, you look like the kinda guy who’d pre-order Halo 4 and GTAV.” – I took offense, is that wrong? Who knows. So I had to prove to not only him, but myself, that I play games that aren’t necessarily the biggest “CASUAL” games.

  • Anony

    Pre-order incentives are done by the publishers to attract players towards buying products new. Retailers like Gamestop and such, make no money off of used games, or if they do a negligible amount. It wouldn’t be their specific plan to create a means of instigating more orders of a game to their store that gives them no particular business (though one can make the argument that more people buying means more sales back which means more used sales, but that’s a tough one to make).

    Trust me, this pre-ordering jibber jabber rests almost entirely on the publishers themselves, not the stores who see 2 dollars per every new game they sell.