There was a time when pre-ordering a game made sense. Shops ran out. You queued. You put down a deposit and the man behind the counter wrote your name on a list.
Now the game is a file. Files do not run out. Yet millions of people still pay £70 months in advance for something that cannot sell out, on the strength of a trailer that was mostly a cinematic and a logo. It does not matter whether it is the new Call of Duty, the next EA Sports FC or the open-world game everyone has been waiting a decade for. The ritual is the same.
Here are the day-one patch notes for Ironveil: Dominion, an invented game from the invented Lower Thrumbley Studios, released at midnight to everyone who had already paid. My notes are in bold.
Download information
- Base game: 96GB.
- Day-one patch: 44GB.
- High-resolution texture pack (optional, recommended): 38GB.
You pre-loaded the game three days early so you could play at midnight. The patch then downloaded 44GB of the same game again, slightly corrected. You started playing at 3:20am. You had work.
Fixes
- Fixed an issue where the game could crash when opening the map.
- Fixed an issue where the game could crash when closing the map.
- Fixed an issue where a character’s face would appear inside their own hat.
- Fixed an issue where the final mission could not be completed.
- Improved performance on all platforms.
The final mission could not be completed. The game was finished and sent to the factory, or the server, whichever it is now, with an ending that did not work. The plan was always to fix it on the night. You were the plan.
“Improved performance on all platforms” is the gaming industry’s way of saying “we know”.
Pre-order bonus
“As a thank-you to our most loyal fans, all pre-order customers receive the exclusive Vanguard Cape, a stylish reward for players who believed in us from the start,” said an invented studio spokesperson.
You paid £70 before seeing a review. In return you received a cape. The cape will be sold to everyone else for £3.99 in the spring. Belief is now a cosmetic item.
Known issues
- Some players may experience stuttering in busy areas.
- Some save files may not load. We are investigating.
- The Deluxe Edition’s “72-hour early access” may have started 72 hours late in some regions.
“We are investigating” means somebody is reading your forum post at their desk, eating a sandwich, and adding it to a spreadsheet with 9,000 rows.
The real fix
Three weeks after launch, the game will be patched, discounted and given a nice update trailer. The reviews will change from “Mixed” to “Mostly Positive”. People who waited will get a better game for £49.99.
Everyone knows this. It happens every time. The industry knows that you know. And still, every year, the pre-order numbers go up, because the trailer was good and the cape looked nice and you are, deep down, a person who wants to believe in something.
The studio is counting on that. Specifically, it is counting it in a quarterly report, under “early revenue”.
Waiting is the only patch that always works. It is also free, which is why nobody is advertising it.