"I... was actually... cough cough gonna ask ChatGPT how to get out of this situation..."

gets shot once more in the head

It helped my wallet so much that I stopped working at GameStop. As a customer, you're encouraged so much to place a pre-order since "you can just cancel it later" and get your deposit back. But how often has that happened for most customers, realistically?

I would routinely pre-order and buy new releases, leave them in their boxes sealed, and not end up playing them, so I'd just have to trade them in for less than half their value for other releases. And so the cycle continued.

It woulds be interesting to see what a Venn diagram of "flat-earthers" and "people who pre-order games" would look like.

I think the only time I have ever preordered, I was not disappointed because I got a strategy guide for the game. Still got the BioShock Infinite guide, even though I have never used it.

Otherwise, nowadays, in a basically exclusively digital only world, I could never in good faith preorder a game unless I know I'm getting merch to go with it. I'm talking things like a plushie of the characters or something cool like that. Like how I backed a comic book that is also DLC for a game and am getting a printed copy sent to me for backing enough into it.

I think it's valid to pre-order or buy Early Access, if you want to support the developer and like what they do in general. Not every developer would survive if their game will only be bought once on 90% sale caused by their bankruptcy 🌚

Last game I pre-ordered was Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Because it had some pre-order bonus content and was 10 % off. I didn't regret it, even though the DLC weren't as great as the base game. If I know for sure I'm gonna purchase the game regardless of reviews (which have let me down before anyway), I pre-order sometimes.