Paying to get games earlier

After listening to this week's bombcast and hearing about how people who pre-order get the new CoD a day early I realised this has been getting more and more common in recent times.

Specifically pre-ordering for early access and the EA Access service come to mind. Maybe PS+ and Games with Gold will start doing this as well (or are already doing it?).

Is this becoming more and more common? I know it has been a thing for a while with "beta"/demo access but it seems to be bleeding over into full game releases as well.

Am I getting this wrong? Has this been going on for far longer than I think?

I think it's a natural extension of the increased flexibility around releasing a game and the fact that games tend to cost less the longer you wait. When I save $10 on a game after waiting a few weeks, you might say the people who bought it initially paid a premium to get it then. And a year from now when it's $30 off, people will be able to say I paid a premium for getting it when I did. We paid more because we wanted the game right then instead of waiting even longer.

That slope seems to have naturally carried over into even unfinished or unpolished versions of a game. The desire to play a game sooner rather than later is a big factor for many people, and paying more for early access or less for a more incomplete title is a natural extension of that.

While I may personally discourage paying more for early access, along with pre-ordering most games, I can understand the desire to do so. People are clearly willing to pay to get to play earlier than others, especially with multiplayer content, and that's likely going to continue to be a growing part of the gaming norm.

I'd agree. All while I'm trying to start waiting on more games. They make it pretty hard to save a buck and pretty tempting to jump in before consensus on a title has been made.

Maybe it's also part of the "games as a service" idea. A scenario I dread quite a lot.

I understand the technology has come so far that this is a thing but I'd only go for this if the developer is a trusted developer to my tastes.

In saying that though I have patience so I've never paid for early access and buying games on day 1 is a rare occasion for me.

It's not supposed to happen, but I generally get physical games delivered a day or two early when I pre-order, so this kind of needed to happen to combat the retailers who do this.

Why order Hyrule Warriors digitally when I can pay less and get it a day earlier via Shopto? This could be a less malicious factor into its growing popularity..

Didn't Journey come out a week early for Ps+ members?

It's been pretty common with MMOs for a few years now at the least. It's usually about a week headstart, but I could have sworn one MMO did two weeks. Either way, it's been around for a while in that corner of the gaming landscape.

They're just capitalizing on the release hype.

Always new ways to print money.