Pre-order and deluxe versions bonuses generally disgust me - What are your thoughts?

Most of those "pre-order" bonuses end up being added later as DLC that you buy on discount (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft).

I hate all pre-order bonuses, exclusive items, time limited events/items, season pass, most DLCs.
Let me buy a full game with a single purcharse, that's all I want.

Agreed, unfortunately a majority of people with loose wallets have already voted that this is the future of gaming. As long as companies continue to get rewarded by certain people willing to pay for these kinds of bonuses, there is no incentive to stop, on the contrary you are punished if you try to create a game without these features because you will simply earn considerably less money.

Most gaming forums all agree that this is generally a problem but nothing can be done as long as people as a whole keep on shelling out insane amounts of money. I have plenty of disposable income but I refuse to contribute to this problem as well, and it's starting to mess up the market quite a bit. The best thing you can do is support the developers that go against the tide and create games with actual heart, thankfully these do exist.

In the end this will probably never stop unless there is actual regulation disallowing companies from this kind of business practice because it is simply too lucrative for them to willingly cease.

Nowadays it's just a way to sell broken games.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if its worth buying in the first week after the release, considering the patches. Preorder bonus are also questionable, as even if you don't pay extra, it's a few little extras while throwing away the chance of waiting out for a game to work properly.

only pre-order bonus i agree with is a discount.

Pre-order is only good for the publishers.

In nearly all cases, you get a overpriced, unfinished product with all the crap like server problems at the begin, bugs etc..
So you pay for being a beta tester.

And in the end, the publishers are motivated to sell all their products in such a state, for such a price.

So you harm, with pre-order purchases, yourself, and all other players, in the end.

Pre-orders were only sometimes needed before digital was a thing and sometimes stores would sell out. This never happens, there is ZERO reason to pre-order anything. It's all become a mockery of itself.

Let me explain it to you in the words of Jen-Hsun(Jensen) Huang: the more you buy the more you save ;)

I think at this point "pre-order" is just a way for people not to be able to refund games that are being beta'ed by paying customers so whatever bonus they promise can't really make up for that

Out there in the REAL WORLD (that's right, SG is not representative of the "average PC gamer", not by a long shot), most people don't own thousands of games. Hell, most don't even own hundreds. Of all my IRL friends on Steam, I clearly own the most, the second place person owns 369 games, and the third place guy owns 61 games. The guy with 369 games makes a shit ton more money than I do, and the third place guy works where I do.

Having gotten that out of the way, ALL of us, meaning all of my IRL friends on Steam, pre-order games whenever we see something we want. I pre-order games all the time. Hell, I pre-ordered my second game ever on this Steam account (Skyrim). Yeah, refunds are a thing now, but I very rarely use them. I decide if a game is worth buying, if those developers and publishers are worth supporting, and I'll order myself a copy. My friends are the same way. Out of all my IRL friends, I am the only one who buys bundles. It's disposable income - and we buy games as we see/want them.

So, to answer your question, I don't think any of us (my IRL friends and I) even consider bonuses when pre-ordering something. It's simply a matter of "do I want this game?" Speaking solely for myself, I avoid multiplayer games in general (though I play a number of co-op games), because well ... honestly, a lot of gamers these days seem like entitled little shits who never leave the house and haven't a clue how to socialize properly with others. But, were I to pre-order a multiplayer game, it'd be one that doesn't offer any "boosts" (to use your term), and offered only cosmetic items. Why? Because I'd want to play the game on even ground with others. Single player games - meh, they can add whatever free shit they want. It's a single player game, and I'll decide how I am going to play it, right?

Now SG, as opposed to the real world, is full of people who will quibble and debate over a $3-$5 bundle, and chase 30 cent bundle leftovers like they're gold. Imagine chasing a dropped quarter for ten minutes across a parking lot - and then realize I've watched people argue and belittle one another multiple times over hours, days, weeks and months for giving less than they expect people to give away, while winning far more than they've given themselves. Some will only share that quarter with their friends, or make a huge announcement if they decide to share it with more than just a handful of buddies. Or they make a huge ordeal of someone who doesn't meet their expectations winning that quarter from them. Christ, only an extremely small percentage of people on this site have bothered to give away more than they've won. They've even come up with a term dedicated to degrading one another for not giving away as much as someone feels they "should", and they use it frequently when they should be pointing their finger at themselves.

So yeah, that's where you're asking this question. A place full of the cheapest possible PC gamers. You think your answers are going to be skewed a little toward the cheapest possible end of things? ;)

I pre-order games a few times in the last 5 years. Best experience was Monster Hunter World; the worst kind was Warhammer 40K Darktide. The most attractive aspect for me are the character cosmetics offered as pre-order bonus. That attribute has decided whether I want to buy a game before its release or not after I know I want to play the game. If the same pre-order cosmetics appear as a DLC after the release date then I do not care about other people who can buy the same thing(s) I had. In-game apparel is something that can appear again in games with related themes. For example, a pirate-theme game with pre-order boots or fancy pirate hat is something I could expect again in the future when I want to play another pirate game. Therefore, feeling terrible that I miss out on time-limited cosmetics is a waste of my personal time and energy.

Pre-order bonuses that affects the player progression experience, like extra story missions/quests not available after release, is something I do want to see or contribute. Weapons and auxiliary gadgets. will be called equipment for the rest of this paragraph, are in the debatable zone from my point of view. If a pre-order equipment is simply a reskin of one that will appear in a game for everyone else then that is fine. What is not okay is in-game equipment that have different abilities and stats only meant for players who paid earlier than others or who have more money. That segregation of the haves and have-nots is not something I want to support. Games lose popularity over time, but the first time experience playing them are memorable. Time-limited equipment affects the future nostalgic perception of a game. Someone can have better feelings of an old game than others because they obtained an overpowered equipment a majority of players were not able to use if it was behind a paywall. The same feeling applies for extra story missions mentioned at the start.

For boosters that give more XP or in-game currency is something I do not care for as they are temporary benefits.

Or you can be like Capcom and offer pre-order bonuses and add microtransactions a week after the game's release.

As others have indicated - pre-orders are of the devil.
There was this game called Little Nightmares I bought as a preorder... turned out I wasn't even buying a complete game.
It was a physical boxed version (came with a figure), so it wasn't a complete waste, but I was still ripped off.
(I still have not gone back to play the rest of the game - I guess I should now that I do own the extra parts, hehe.)

In the time since then, I've seen so many games use DLC as a means to bloat/add missing story/make you pay more to enhance the base game experience, that I just wait for a sale of the complete game (sometimes years after release).

Also, the poll is a little convoluted. But simply put - I don't mind free or optional boosts for games if it doesn't completely ruin the experience. I'd be adverse to paid boosts that fix or make a game more bearable than the vanilla experience.
Pre-order bonuses that enhance the overall experience of a game which are not able to be purchased afterwards are a crap move.

I don't care. If I like game, I would preorder. For preordering Gotham knights I got some differrent batcycle skin... and haven't even found out how to use it.

They could put in anything really, people jump in for fear of missing out. And when they already let those people dry, then they add the bonus as a DLC for people that want the 'complete' game. As a side note, you could always just disable the DLC or not redeem the content in game, but, the best approach is to just wait for the game's release and then see if you still want to buy it, then do so, if you plan on playing it asap, if not, just wait, there's no reason to pay more if you aren't playing it immediately.

The only pre-order I allow around here.. is my own thought of, and decision to buying a complete product.

Early access, items, buffs, titles, pets, in-game currency... and other fancy fomo crap can bite my...

View attached image.

I don't understand these voting options....
Games that I preorder usually come with a poster or something, or a discount.
I got the new Zelda game for 15% off for preordering.
Other than that the only reason I would preorder a game is to guarantee that I get a copy of it on launch day.

My thoughts are that all of these tactics leverage gamers' prioritization of short term benefits over long term ones, which on average happen most of the time, or enough as to let it root and flourish. That's how gamers "lose" all of the battles like day1 DLCs, MTXs, lootboxes, pre-orders, fund-my-game-as-I-conceptualize-it-early-access etc. etc. What I think about pre-order and deluxe versions is irrelevant as enough wallets determine that it's fine, and even if I, as an average gamer let's say, was scolding the practice vehemently in public- most chances are in private I'll still be promoting it with my purchases.

Honestly I think I've never preordered a thing in my life, why would I pay for something before anyone else had a chance to play it before me and report on it? Quite the contrary in fact, I usually play games years after they came out when the dust has settled and the devs had time to patch all the early kinks, let the impatient ones serve as beta testers. Probably the closest thing I did to preordering, in "recent" times, was buying The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe mere days after its release. Basically I already knew that I liked the original so as soon as I saw a couple of reviews pop up telling people to jump in blind if they had played the first one I took advantage of the launch week discount and bought it, so I played it for myself and just then went back and watched the rest of the reviews. It felt like I was betraying my own principles a bit but I allowed myself to do so because I trusted the developers and I honestly had grown a bit impatient after years of delays, thankfully I didn't regret my decision but I probably won't take that same risk any time soon.
I do get why people jump in with preorders tho, the fear of missing out can be a very serious source of anxiety for some and publishers are aware of that and willing to exploit it.

The only things I've ever really preordered are Nintendo games where I get a physical reward with my preorder (pins, a stuffy, etc.). Otherwise, there's not really an incentive for me. Most Nintendo preorder bonuses in the game are available for the first week or more when the game is released. And the games can be really broken so it's not great to preorder (Pokemon Scarlet and Violet as well as others). I did recently get the game vouchers though and preordered Pikmin 4 and TOTK (which I'm LOVING) but that was because it was $30 off for doing that. If a preorder offers me savings or physical things for no extra price, it's worth it to me.

I also preordered Hogwarts Legacy to get to play it early but I had already seen reviews and some gameplay by that point.

I've never pre-ordered and I never will, especially growing up in the Age of Shareware.
We've gone from getting 1/4 of the game free to preordering just to be part of the open beta...and still getting an unfinished buggy mess.

I don't mind pre-order bonuses, with a couple of caveats.

• For multiplayer games, the bonuses should only be cosmetic.
• Bonuses should be actual bonus content and not just "content that clearly was part of the base game but we cut it so we could market it as a pre-order bonus."

I used to pre-order quite a bit, but I stopped a few years ago and I don't see myself going back, regardless of bonuses or discounts. I have so many games now -- and fewer hours for gaming -- that I just don't need to buy a game immediately because I almost certainly won't play it right away. More often than not, the advantages of waiting vastly outweigh the advantages of pre-ordering. By waiting, I can:

• watch gameplay and read reviews
• save money
• let any bugs get fixed
• get the full game at once (GOTY editions, complete editions, etc) instead of having to buy DLC separately