Just a fan-person.

Beatrice: And remember sisters, murder is not the answer.

Lilith: Murder is the question.

preordering a game does *not* say “i trust this dev and they deserve my money to use to make the game that much better”

what it says is “hey boardroom, i will throw money at anything with this logo, even before i know what the game is like”

that boardroom sees that trend. they see theyve made their money back within 2 months of the game being announced… so the next time a lead comes to them and says “we would like to make this game, heres a budget and a timeline” the execs say “well last time we gave you 100 bucks and a full month, but your fans dont really /care/ what game you make, as long as it has our brand. so heres 75 bucks and 3 weeks. make it marketable”

this means more “pre-order exclusives” like cosmetics or different art, filler stuff that a side team can pump out in hours. every store, every platform will have their own version.

pre-orders do nothing but incentivise the shitty money-sponge practices we all hate in games. the point of a pre-order used to be to ensure you got your physical copy, but with most games being digital license anyway, that worry is unrealistic.

However when you wait for reviews, what you show that boardroom is “what we put out actually matters. if we make a shit game, we get shit sales. when we only give a team 2 weeks and a fiver we get shit reviews.”