Christmas is a tough time of year for the dedicated PC gamer. All the best titles madly appear in one giant rush over the last three months, ensuring that no one has enough money to buy all the games they would like to. Someone tell the publishers – somehow this escapes them. But anyhow, the point is, why not, er, spend some of that money a bit earlier. Valve have just announced Left 4 Dead as available for pre-order via Steam.
It’s 10% off if bought ahead of release, which makes it $44.99, plus whatever taxes your evil dictatorship leaders impose upon you. Entertainingly quoting himself in a press release he wrote, Valve’s Doug Lombardi says,
“With just over four weeks until launch, Left 4 Dead is showing every sign of topping The Orange Box on both the PC and Xbox 360, at retail as well as on Steam. Our pre-sell numbers at retail have jumped to over 65% greater than Orange Box at the same proximity to launch, and we’re seeing tremendous enthusiasm for the product in what promises to be another great year for gaming on both platforms.”
The show-off. Anyone who had a go at the game at the PC Gamer Showdown will tell you quite how good it is. We’ll back that up. There’s no word yet whether there will be a beta period for pre-orderers.
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Thanks for the link Optimaximal, that’s a great find.
Amazon had the pre-order for $36.99 since September. They’ve since upped it to match Steam. Kind of regret thinking Steam would have the same price and beta bonus and not pre-ordering it at Amazon, even with its 2-day average delay between release and at my door.
Why would I pre-order directly from the publisher when I could wait and also line the pocket of a completely redundant intermediary retailer, which somehow magically saves me money despite the added cost of producing and shipping a physical product? Silly Valve. See also: why am I paying VAT on a product paid for in USD, bought from an American company under American contract law through an American website, with the value falling under the VAT free threshold for imports?