When Is a Game's Release Date Not a Release Date?
Call me an old crank if you must, but in my day a “release date,” also known as “day one,” was the day a game went on sale to the general public to buy and play for the first time. Want to buy and play it earlier than that, even if money is no object? Sorry, you can’t: it hasn’t been released yet! That’s literally what the word “unreleased” means. In recent years, though, that simple, seemingly uncontroversial concept has somehow been twisted to mean something else – namely, whatever a publisher’s marketing department wants it to mean. For the right price we can now buy and play certain games that publishers tell us – with a straight face, no less – won’t have their “day one” for several more days. This cynical toying with release dates, which have long been practically gamer holidays we get excited about and look forward to as our first chance to play a long-anticipated game, is manipulative and – in some – cases downright deceptive.
To be clear, I don’t have much of a problem with the practice of releasing a bundled edition of a game at a higher price before making a cheaper standalone version available. I’m not wild about cashing in on gamers’ enthusiasm to be the first to play, but there are good reasons for doing it that way: it prevents servers from getting overloaded by having everyone flood them all at once, and developers can spot and fix problems before most people start playing. That can help games have smoother launches for everyone.
My complaint is that publishers aren’t up front about it and instead go full “alternate facts” on us about when a game has and has not been released. It’s nothing new – fake release dates have been a more and more common practice for nearly a decade now, and most major publishers
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