Where to buy games these days + do you preorder?

I rarely buy PC games and frankly I am out of the loop when it comes to where I should buy them (last time I bought Quake Collection on DVD it didn't even have the game on the DVD, just a link to a place to get a download code...). But I'm thinking about preordering Doom Eternal and I saw this -> https://www.kinguin.net/p/66398/doom-eternal-pre-order-eu-bethesda-cd-key where they offer it for 33 euro in some promo. Is this legit? I've literally never preordered a thing, but the price looks good, and I'm gonna buy it anyway at some point.

Would you buy it? Should I pre-order at all? I know there's this anti-preorder movement but it's not like me not pre-ordering will make any difference (i never did and it hasn't).

Man, I miss the times when I would just go to a store and pick a goddamn box.

I don't trust those kinda places. Found these thread (s) on Reddit about Kinguin being shady.

I miss the store game purchases too but I buy all my games off of Steam these days and I'm pretty happy with that.

I do most of my game buying on Steam and Humble Bundle when it comes to digital games. For physical games, eBay is my goto place.

Yeah well I'm asking because you can find bad opinions about literally everything, people mostly post about what they don't like, I know the company I work for has to cope with it and they're really not evil. :) 

I bought Doom 4 for TF2 keys because I forgot the release date and missed it by a day. Now I know wait long enough all the DLC + Doom will be in a bundle for $10 somewhere before... but Doom is the only game I've paid full price for each and every release and I did super enjoy Doom 4 to plow through it in a weekend making it well worth the $60 in TF2 keys.

What's TF2 keys?

Team Fortress 2 keys?

You can pay with keys for games? I don't even know the world anymore.

You can sell them, Steam community market

Ok, thanks for explanation. I'm too old for this.

i mostly buy games from steam, but sometimes i buy games from flea markets, thats how i got chasm the rift

I have bought physical discs in the past, but not all of these games were worthy. Now i just download what i can find for free.

I mainly buy from Amazon these days with the exception of GAME (UK) having their exclusive special editions like with DOOM Eternal.

Pre-ordering and pre-order bonuses are cancer and need to end. It's an abusive "business tactic" that aims to keep customers from changing their minds and instead trick them into putting down cash before even a single review of the product in question has been made available.

9 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Pre-ordering and pre-order bonuses are cancer and need to end. It's an abusive "business tactic" that aims to keep customers from changing their minds and putting down cash before even a single review of the product in question has been made available.

Agreed , especially with putting money down first. The good thing with Amazon and GAME (at least with online orders anyway) is that they don't take payment until it gets shipped.

Nowadays, I'm purchasing games from either Steam or G2A (the latter can sometimes have pretty decent deals, you just have to be mindful of which region you're purchasing a game key for -- i.e. North America, Europe, Global, etc.).

I do appreciate Steam's refund policy, which I have used on many occasions. If you have less than 2-3 hours of game time, and you've had the game less than 14 days, you generally get a full refund no questions asked. I've never had this fail. Few games seem to release demos anymore, and renting games seems to be a thing of the past, so being able to actually play it for an hour or two and decide whether you think it's worth the money -- knowing you can just turn around and get your money back -- is very nice. 

I can think of only a tiny handful of games I've ever pre-ordered in my life, it's not something I generally do. I remember I pre-ordered Halo 3 because I was genuinely worried that EB Games might not have a physical copy available on release day (which might've been a ridiculous concern). Since, these days, all of my game purchases are digital, I don't pre-order, as I'm not worried about "supply". 

Last time I pre-ordered a game it was Doom 3 at a store. The game was released and they were supposed to have it on the day in question, so I walk in to get my copy and they were all... duhhhhh it not come in yet, come back tomorrow, maybe. Fuck was I pissed. never pre-ordered anything again after that.

Never pre-ordered anything in my life. If you want to pre-order, you have to be 100% sure about the quality that is being delivered, and you can't be too sure of that until you see things for yourself.

4 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Pre-ordering and pre-order bonuses are cancer and need to end. It's an abusive "business tactic" that aims to keep customers from changing their minds and putting down cash before even a single review of the product in question has been made available.

100% this, the "pre-order bonuses" are just such a bad thing to me because I don't really want to get my money stuck there before I can actually touch the game, and I guess they just make good use of people's OCD to collect everything, which is quite a dick move IMO.

Similar things happen to board games and this is why it's so popular to go through Kickstarter and make something kickstarter exclusive. Luckily, board games usually give you the rules before doing KS, so you have a chance to look at the game mechanics, so you're not going in totally blind. However, KS campaign can still be a $h!tshow because of the publisher can be a dick. For example, recently I got a game from KS with lots of damaged components, and then the publisher said it's not their fault and told me to talk to the fulfillment company (who basically handles the transportation and shipment). Basically it's like, if you want to complain your video is crap, complain to the programmer.

I use Steam and the Humble Bundle store as those places seem to work well for me. I'm on a fixed income and i also (for some odd old dumb reason) don't have direct access to my bank account so i cannot buy items with a debit card so i usually have to buy VISA gift cards and use those to buy games from those online storefronts. I would use GOG as well, but the pre-paid gift cards only work in the USA (where i live) and GOG isn't located in the USA.

But yeah, there are only a few trusted key re-seller sites. I remember finding an interesting reddit info page (and i rarely ever visit reddit) that explained about all of the steam/gog key sellers and the trusted ones but i cannot find it at this moment.

I don't like the pre-order bonus thing either. The only game i think i ever pre-ordered was GTA: Episodes from Liberty City for Xbox 360 and i didn't even have to as that wasn't really "in demand", it was just because GameStop asked me if i wanted to pre-order any of "these games" when i went up to the counter to checkout when i bought another game (can't remember what game i bought) and i was like "uh okay" so i put $5 or $10 down on it and they called me up when it was in stock. I guess it was more of a remembrance thing really as it didn't come with any bonus'.

One of my friends pre-ordered the Halo 2 Map Pack for the original Xbox back in the day and GameStop had a bunch of Halo 2 refrigerator magnets that they were handing out and i got two of them even though i didn't even buy the game nor pre-order it so i guess that was cool (i still have them). But yeah, otherwise for gaming content i think it is quite dumb as everyone should have access to that content, especially since almost everything is digital now.

I was going to comment as though I know what I'm talking about, but now realize my knowledge on the topic is 3 years out of date at best, haven't bought a game since 2016 lol (well, a new game). I've bought a few famicom and genesis cartridges in the last couple years on eBay, that counts right?

Steam and GOG have these obnoxious EXEs that insist on running when you play the game and they eat resources unnecessarily which is ultra dumb but at the same time their prices and overall reputation are pretty damn solid. Maybe you can turn off their stupid launcher thingies, I dunno, I haven't used either one in eons. If I were a consumer of modern games, I don't think I would trust anywhere else. Refunds are important.

Preordering often seems to be thought of as a modern phenomenon. It's not at all (the first slice of Doom2 sales were preorders) but generally speaking it's a fuckbrained practice because even excellent games are often buggy as shit for the first few months. Preorderers do that final stage of beta testing at their own expense rofl. Plus the obvious possibility that the game might be anal leakage and you can't possibly know til you try, or at the very least read a review.

EDIT: If you're going to buy physical media, for the love of god don't support that evil piece of shit Amazon. Unless you have literally no other option, there is no excuse for giving a portion of your money to Jeff Bezos because it won't even be taxed. Fuck that.

I've never pre-ordered and never will.

Speaking of pre-ordering bonuses, those aren't even bonuses in some cases, most notably in singleplayer games.

The "bonuses" are usually just turned into DLC a while after the initial release.

I have little to no interest in buying games these days, let alone pre-ordering. I usually buy a game on sale, and refunds are essential to me.

Speaking of which, I still don't get why people are still pre-ordering games from companies wiith too many controversies (EA, Bethesda). 

If you're not in a rush or don't have time to play it wait a little longer and they'll repackage the game with every DLC and re-release it as a special edition at about the same price as the initial game, wait more and you get it all at half the price on sale, next year you get it at quarter that price on sales if it doesn't sell enough or when sales start dropping.

6 hours ago, TheNoob_Gamer said:

I have little to no interest in buying games these days, let alone pre-ordering. I usually buy a game on sale, and refunds are essential to me.

Speaking of which, I still don't get why people are still pre-ordering games from companies wiith too many controversies (EA, Bethesda). 

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Also, there is really no need to pre-order these days. Games are mostly sold in digital form now, and the bonuses are usually DLCs that should have been in the base game itself; or low-quality collectibles. The discounts are usually not worth, and with games turning into bugfests on their initial release becoming a normal thing , yeah.

 

Interestingly we share the similar thoughts. I think for the previous 4 years, I only bought a few games because I actually want to play and finish it. Before that, I bought a lot during the sales, but now I really don't like leaving games unfinished, so I avoid buying games because it looks interesting at the first glance. Right now, I got a job and I have even less time, so well.

Talking about pre-ordering experience, the last one I pre-ordered was Thief (2014). I'm a big fan of the first 3 Thief games, but this reboot was a disaster. This made me extra careful about pre-ordering from that moment. To be honest though, I think this model is really successful to tickle those people who want all the collectibles or whatever contents the game can provide. One game did put their KS exclusives into DLCs is Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I think from a general player standpoint, this is great because I can choose whatever I want. However, from a KS backers standpoint, they may be pissed off because they don't get what they are exclusive for. As someone who objects to exclusive contents, I personally think this is a good move.

With all those, I feel like Classic Doom is the game that I can play for my life because of this active community, and you'll probably never run out of things to play.

I pre-order if a new game is something I really, really want (Forza and Doom have basically been it), but I tend to want an incentive. The meme skin for the Revenant for Doom Eternal is not such an incentive, so I'm holding off until I either have a wedge of spare money, or the release date.

As for where to buy games, I actually recommend just signing up to as many stores as you can. I'm on Steam, Origin, GoG, uPlay, Blizzard's launcher, Epic Games Store, Microsoft/Windows Store (whatever it's called) and the new Rockstar app. You get given loads of games and get tons of discounts on titles all the time, so if you're interested in something, it'll be available at a decent price eventually... Or you pay more to get it ASAP. Like right now, you get three Batman Arkham games for free just for being on the Epic Games Store. I already own them, and have played the first, but I feel like I missed out on an awesome freebie. Also the Lego Batman games, if that's of interest.

tempdecal.wad has basically got the right of it, though. The longer you wait, the more you get and for less. Literally within a year of a game's release you'll be saving half of the initial price a lot of the time, and probably having previous games in the series bundled in for a little extra.

Never Pre-Order. I usually wait for a few patches for the game to come first. Too many games need them nowadays. I don't care what store sells the game. But if it is on GOG I'll gladly take that over any DRM locked one. Also if a game is exclusive to Origin, Uplay or Activision I'll probably ignore it altogether. 

Unless I'm getting something physical for pre-ordering, no I won't. Unless it's something like early access, where the devs are legit, but they do need funds to continue development. Like Dusk, Amid Evil, and Ion Maiden... err... Fury. The last game I pre-ordered was Fallout 3 for the 360, because I got a Nuka-Cola magnetic bottle opener. Got quite a bit of use out of that thing. But really there's no advantage to pre-ordering. Back when people bought most of their games in the store, I can see why you might want to. Stores got limited quantities of games, and there's always a posibility they would sell out on release day. If you're buying digital, there's no danger. And I see no point in pre-ordering for digital bonuses.

But yeah, I usually buy from Steam or GOG, usually six months or more after launch, because at this point games start seeing 30-50 % off sales at extremely quickly. I used to have to wait at least a year to see a decent sale; now it seems like they're discounted out of the gate. 

Oh, and as Pegg said, I learned to start waiting for reviews to come in. There have been some releases I've been looking forward to, that get glowing pre-release reviews, and turn out to be crap. Or buggy messes. Or crappy, buggy messes. So I don't buy on release either.

4 hours ago, Jello said:

There have been some releases I've been looking forward to, that get glowing pre-release reviews, and turn out to be crap. Or buggy messes. Or crappy, buggy messes. So I don't buy on release either.

I could never understand what happens in the case of the games that get a glowing reception before release and almost zero mentions of bugs, and after release, they turn out to be a complete disaster in this department. What the hell did those people play?