First of all, that seems a little harsh on Gearbox and Pitchford. And... it's not Andy. I assume that's a typo though :p
Second of all, this seems like a bit of paranoia. Green Man Gaming is all about prices no one else offers. One example also doesn't make for a pattern and while we don't have much information on the quality of SoM, I think the positive buzz has mostly come from people just playing the game. And it doesn't seem terribly difficult to pull off, especially with as experienced a developer as is involved with this product.
My method is to wait for the game and then check it out. I'm not so cheap or poor that care about deals like that.I'll spoiler that stuff because it's not really what the OP is looking for.
At most I might go for something that gives pre-order content when I'm confident about a product. But there have only been like three games I can remember pre-ordering on their first release: Halo 3 (duh) Legendary Edition because at the time they said it would be limited (Still available on shelves in a couple of places), Skyrim (duh), and Dark Souls 2 (duh) super special edition (the one with the map and the man and the stuff). I tried to do the Bordlands 2 edition with the box, but for some reason Gamespot fubared my pre-order and I didn't find out until it was WAYYYY too late to fix it. Oh, and I did it for Mass Effect 2, and went to the midnight release for it. BOY WAS I BUMMED WHEN IT WASN'T A BETTER MASS EFFECT 1. Even with my way of doing things, you still get burned.
All games that I had supreme confidence in because of the track record of franchises and developers.
Everything else can wait until reviews come from either the press or friends.
If you really can't afford a full priced game, wait for post release drops. You shouldn't be pre-ordering games if you can't afford to pay full price for them, if you ask me. The chances that your money will be wasted is too high.
Hope that doesn't come off the wrong way, I just strongly discourage pre-ordering unless it's one of those rare cases where you just gotta get the game.
Good deals are probably unwise to speculate on, especially when it comes to a site like GMG. Their mission statement is probably something about smoking weed, and saving you money. I don't frequent the site, but I'm willing to bet it isn't much of a pattern and I am even more willing to bet that they have little more information than we do about this kind of stuff.
I would look more at issues with development. Delays, depending on how they happen and how long they occur for and if it's clearly not for business reasons, can be a pretty big red flag. I usually stop paying much attention to games that get delayed significantly unless it looks like it's just a positioning move.
I wouldn't touch DriveClub with a 10 foot pole with some C4 on the other end in the off chance that it tried to make a move. That delay seems super shady to me. Maybe it'll be great but when I saw it at PAX it looked pretty bad. I'm not going to say "nah still not buying it" when it gets rave reviews or whatever, but I pretty much tuned out when that happened.
PAX brings me to my next point, use more public events like that to either get your hands on the game or see if there's any buzz from people who went. I know games have gained and lost my favor at PAX. Often proved to be smart. Mass Effect still managed to get past me on that one though >:(
And of course the developer's track record is obviously a great bit of data. But I think it needs to A) be looked at intelligently (Gearbox is a great example of people throwing the baby out with the bath water) and B) it should be taken with a grain of salt. Even with a bad track record, or an insignificant track record, great developers can find their stride. There are plenty of examples of this. It's not like Bungie's first game was a smash hit. Now they are arguably the most respected and prestigious developers in the industry.
I use that kind of information to manage expectations and interests but it's basically the same minus the expenses so hopefully that can help some duders out! It's worked well for me.
All that said, if you really can't afford a full priced game, wait for post release drops. You shouldn't be pre-ordering games if you can't afford to pay full price for them, if you ask me. The chances that your money will be wasted is too high.
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