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Are Pre-Order Packages a blatant rip-off?
PioneerStew
Member Posts: 874
The question might seem slightly loaded but it only reflects my point of view.
I was rather disturbed to see the following developments: -
- Pre-order packages hit the $100 mark, and then surpassed it many, many times over.
- A sense of P2W was promoted before games had even released.
- Potential purchasers were duped by arbitrary values being applied to items that are worth nothing ($0) in the real world but were given values by developers that frankly only equate to BS.
- Players were being asked to pay to test a developers unfinished, buggy game.
- The games had received no play time and no reviews when the developers asked for these financial outlays to be made.
This all seemed so absurd to me I could not believe for a moment that anyone would fork out their hard earned cash for such a ridiculous offer. It seemed absurd; it occurs in no other sphere of business or sales, because people are seriously not this stupid.
Yet it seems gamers are.
Share your thoughts.
Comments
We're at an age where people will throw money at someone just for a dream, not just pre-orders. Look at Star Citizen's kick starter, for example.
....it's silly.
I was going to write another harsher post on crowd-funding which is clearly extortion under the guise of respectability.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
OP, rules of proper discussion/argument is when raising a new discussion or argument, one should provide examples to describe what they mean. Otherwise people will just give a quick glib remark showing just how little they think of your overall argument, despite the fact that the argument itself does raise a point with a certain few games.
Examples put things into perspective for people which will get you a much better reception. If there's one thing that people struggle with the most on this website, its putting things into perspective. That's why AA forums are such a mess right now. Well, just 1 reason of many anyway.
DMKano, you seem to have a habit of defending the corporation that chooses to miss-sell to the consumer, rather than the consumer that is duped by the corporation. It is an unpopular stance.
Gotta agree with this,many times i have avoided being burned by doing the research and taking the time to look into how a company promotes and what they offer the customer over a period of time.
too many consumers just throw money at what's popular or what the new shiny is only to get burned when its public knowledge what that companies track record is.
i dont care how much i like your new game if the company is known to be anti consumer they are anti consumer. SOE,ubisoft and trion are some of the companies that as of now i will not even consider throwing money at with their consistent anti consumer business practices.
I dont view pre-orders as a rip-off as well. You get what you paid for: A product that in its entirety has not been tested and depending on agreements with reviewers or beta-testers has not shown its downsides to the public.
Given that I don't pre-order at all. I'm more than fine with supporting a finished product after release by simply buying it (if it can hold up to its promises). Getting a fancy mount or early-access doesn't in particular sell something to me outright.
Winning a discussion is not what it's about. If you could pass insight to someone or learn something from it in return - noone can really loose, can they?
Why does the consumer believe a marketing department? Why does he throw money at things he knows nothing about? Why can't he wait a few days for reviews and first impressions? Why's he so stupid?
Is largely irrelevant. If a consumer is told half truths or outright lies about the content he/she will be receiving then the fault is with the vendor. That is miss-selling AKA Fraudulence.
There's only been a couple of cases like that, such as Colonial Marines. You're not getting duped if the game you bought sucks or the sword you bought wasn't worth the price.
Consumers must open their eyes and start to face the consequences when bad choices are made about hes own money.
Everyone want to blame companys for do this or for do that, only a few accept that was their own fault based on personal decisions.
Pay money to access to a game in test fase or crow funding is a personal decision of the consumer, period.
People take decisions based in subjectve promises and its not only in game industry, but in games is even more subjective because its virtual goods.
So, i dont care if companys ask 1.000 euros to enter a test phase, i wont do it and for those who do it, please dont complain after, its 100% personal choise and fault.
This occurs in many industries, check out 'Collateralized Debt Obligations' and, of course, used cars. A shitty deal, is, well, a shitty deal.
The fact that one company, or even many, in an industry has lousy offers, does not invalidate those that present good offers.
Dude Taylor Swift sold silence on the air. I read have not checked it out that there was nothing but a few seconds of silence and people bought it. So everything is in the eye of the beholder what is worth their money. So blatant rip off is very subjective. What I might consider as value for money you might consider as trash.
When you say arbitrary values I am confused isn't all the game stuff of arbitrary value because a market in game has not yet been established but on the other hand to sell something you will have to estimate the projected value and I would think that the person selling might overprice it but then it becomes very valuable and in game people will then pay anything for it. Depends if they make it tradable.
I have seen people pay ridiculous amounts for some baseball card so gamers pay for collecting items that they deem of value. I never question the amount men pay high class hookers. Think of all that money spent on that and then on games.
First of all, it's not a rip-off, why would you consider it to be a rip-off? He's defending it the same way you're attacking it. You say there's no real-world value to an item, but you wouldn't know that unless they released something to a cash shop. If they gave you a mount in the game, I think it's quite easy to find what a mount would cost in other games, so there are a ton of cases that you could find a real value.
Secondly, believe it or not, there are people who actually want an opportunity to test a game. If you are expecting an amazing experience in alpha and beta, then you are clueless, sorry. People often have these delusions about what alpha testing is like, but I can tell you that alpha is like 100 times better than it used to be. It used to be that you were testing alpha when there were models without textures, etc. Now alpha is like what I would have considered to be beta 10 years ago.
Third, pre-ordering or founders programs can promote innovation. If a game isn't supported, then it won't be made and AAA publishers won't get the point. You want the next SWG? Well a AAA publisher isn't going to do one because there's no market for it and the community only proves that when they won't dust the cob webs off their wallets and support something truly innovative.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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No.
I pre-purchased Warlords of Draenor (I think for something like 40$) and Trove (20$) this year and I've been very happy with both of my purchases.
Sure, some of the pre-order packages are rip-offs. That doesn't make all of them rip-offs.
Yes. And yet gamers gobble them up each and every time.
I have found that there is a "mentality" among way too many gamers about "being first." Beta testers wear their experience like a badge of honor. "Well, I was in Beta and..." It matters not that beta is yet another money grab these days.
Then you have Collector's Editions that many gamers buy, just because it has the word "Collector" in the product. Then their Pokemon days kick and the "Gotta get 'em all!" thing kicks in. Collector's Editions used to at least have physical items that could be shown/used/resold. Today, they have digital items that are many times not even transferable.
Remember the days gamers would wait in lines for new games outside of their favorite gaming stores? Sometimes days before release dates?
Because of this general attitude, publishers are making a killing and will continue so as long as players keep thinking "I was FIRST!!!1111!!"
Not everything is a competition.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
In technicality, it's only a rip-off in one of three circumstances:
1) The promised goods were not delivered.
2) Goods were delivered, but were unusable - and not sufficiently reimbursed.
3) There was misinformation regarding the comparative value of said goods.
Interestingly enough, going on hearsay, we've seen the first two in Archeage's (overpriced) founders packs. The 10% promised discount wasn't delivered (and was later delivered in another, inferior, form). The promised headstart access, on the otherhand, was delivered but almost entirely unusable to many players because of disastrous game complications during that period - and there was (unless Trion went back on there previous statement) no attempt to compensate anyone. Hell, it may have even been all three, but I haven't actually spent significant time in Archeage, nor, thankfully, was I a founder.
Now, are all of your mentioned business practices dirty, seeing as how they are not actually ripoffs? I would say yes. They certainly reflect negative turns in the gaming market.
I'm someone who has been a fan of collector's editions from the early days when they offered them, and they usually come with some physical goods (though more digital goods are offered these days). I can't pinpoint where the difference is, but enough games have started selling people on hype and supplying a lackluster product.
Too many games are offering up hefty price tag packages at stages in a game's development when nothing should be on sale. Kickstarter is one thing - you're specifically funding their ability to even begin working in most cases. But look at WH40K eternal crusdade, I love WH40K, I'm pretty pumped this game is being made, but they opened up their pre-order store really early selling stuff for a game that was barely coming together. Sure they talk a good game, but it does feel odd to see such expensive items for a game that may very well flop despite it's IP. I don't have enough faith to pre-order from them at this time.
The other thing we're seeing is complete and utter inconsistency in products from known studios. I used to see a company name (like Bioware) and know that I was going to get a great experience. But they've been really hokey these last few years and even though Dragon Age Inquisition seems up my alley, I don't trust them anymore for a pre-order. And knowing that they're also offering up microtransactions just makes me feel a bit uneasy.
I understand businesses need to make money, and I'm not a freeloader (even in F2P games), but when a game is more focused on bringing in the cash than it is being a quality entertainment product I just lose interest.
I completely agree with him.
though, this being the third thread I've seen you post I can say that my stance on things is very much the opposite of your stance on things as I disagreed with your Crowd Funding thread as well.
I would say it's NOT defending the corporation but defending what one thinks is right. In this case it happens to be the corporation.
You assume that their putting some arbitrary value on those items is what made people want to buy it. I would bet it was just those items regardless of whatever value they placed on it.
If a company offers x, y and z for a pre-order package and the customer finds that package/cost acceptable then their is no rip-off. If the customer does not get what he/she paid for then one can assume it's a rip-off. Additionally if one expected a certain level of quality and got something that looked like a bad/beginner programmer game then that would be false advertising (provided the customer didn't know it was of such quality) and that would also be a rip-off.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I do agree with you on your beta comment. Being that I'm in the software industry, it saddens me that definition of what a beta is has sort of shifted. It's no longer about testing. The biggest drawback to this that people simply don't understand is that the cost to overhaul a poorly designed system or to make seemingly simple changes, late in the development cycle scales exponentially the closer you get to release. However, now studios are creating these betas which are very polished, which means their Alphas are more like betas now (especially when sold to public), meaning that there is little to no feedback from the community that can be acted upon, because it's simply too late.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Can you really blame companies for doing these things when their customers are demanding it? If you can offset the development cost entirely or even largely even before launch why not? I don't think the developers go into this as a blatant rip off either. They want to deliver a compelling enjoyable product people will play for years there is just so much of that is subjective that one persons fun is another persons cheap design. This market is finicky especially when you start to market to niche or cross market audiences and making a game that is widely accepted is a lot harder than one might think.
Well,
If we just take the statistics and not look at any individual titles but rather the entirety of paying upfront for a game that has yet to be released. I think that number speaks volumes.
I just mentioned in a different thread how the new early access payment model is just the F2P evolution of the Lifetime Subscription Model.
And as I said in that post, everyone I've ever seen speak of LTS follows up with "never again"
Sure there are plenty of games out there that have successfully launched a decent product based on collecting money by potential consumers prior to releasing officially. But for every one successful game, how many games have people given money to that were failures, disappointments, scams, or just mismanaged?
Probably have better odds in Vegas.
Like when you are sold a 10% discount on items in the cash shop and then it's arbitrarily changed.
Sorry I just had to throw that in there
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Pre-orders? No. You are paying for extra perks on top of the game/expansion itself. I don't see it was a ripoff, although one could certainly complain that certain pre-orders don't give you enough goodies for pre-ordering.
Crowdfunding/kickstarter? Yup. Ripoff. Anybody that pays for a concept as opposed to an actual game doesn't deserve to have money to spend.