Image: Square Enix
Last Month, Square Enix announced a new low for video game pre-order schemes with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's Augment Your Pre-Order program, inviting players to pay for various, confusing versions of the game before it's release to get bonus in-game trinkets and plastic tchotchkes.The most insulting part of the plan was that Square Enix promised to release the game early if enough players paid for it in advance, essentially holding an early release date hostage. Today, after a flurry of negative feedback, Square Enix announced that it's shutting down the Augment Your Pre-Order scheme."We've spent a lot of time reading through all your comment, working to understand how we can try to make things right for you," Square enix said in a post to the game's official website. "After much thought and reflection, we decided to shut down the program and make all of the incentive content to anyone who pre-orders Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or purchases a Day 1 Edition of the game. Additionally, the release date will no longer be changed in accordance with pre-order numbers, and everyone will gain access to the game on February 23rd, 2016."Good! Great. It's less shady and confusing to give all players who buy the game early little rewards than separating them into different tiers and basically punishing all fans of the game with a later release date for not paying in advance.But even still, please don't pre-order video games. Giving game publishers your money before you even get a chance to boot the game is what allows the industry to perpetuate the standard of shipping buggy, broken games. If you pay before you play, publishers can ship whatever and fix the problems weeks and months down the line. What's stopping them from doing that if they already have your money?