In a shocking new development, Germany’s Higher Regional Court of Munich has ruled that publishers who give vague release dates for pre-order games with terminology like ‘coming soon’ are providing ‘insufficient information’ to consumers. This entire debacle rose because a consumer protection group in Germany complained about pre-ordering the Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone.  Courts banned pre-order on electronic devices.

It was decided that a similar ban should be extended to other products like video games as well. In order for companies to offer their pre-order options, developers must provide the latest date by which consumers can expect to finally play the game.

The trend of going without release for several years on pre-order has gained momentum in recent years, with highly anticipated, unreleased titles like The Last of Us Part II and Death Stranding making consumers a bit more wary about the dates they’re looking at. However there is a large segment of consumers that are willing to pre-order a game without having any idea about when they will receive the item, their only motivation is to be the among the first group of people with access to the game once  it does launch.

Is there a workaround to this?

The rules are not exactly clear and could be manipulated by developers that want the ability to offer pre-orders without giving an actual date. They can simply give their consumers a very delayed release date such as 01/01/2100. This will let the developer change the date as needed.

But this format may not always sit well with the consumer, the idea of knowing that their game will be released at a far off date will throw them off the idea of purchasing the pre-order at all. There is also the added risk of pre-orders with vague delivery going out of business.

The ruling currently only applies to Germany, while the US and UK do not have such regulations. This seems to put developers in a predicament because unless they withhold the dates entirely from German websites, US and UK customers will figure out the local release dates and extrapolate an estimated time of arrival.

The ruling does complicate things a lot more for projects that have been raised by crowdfunding, because it is very common for publishers to delay their project for one reason or another.

Pre-orders allow publishers to look at the state of early preorders and to get an indication of how popular their game will be. This provides them incentive to pour more hardwork into their game and release it in a more complete form.

It will be interesting to find out how the video game market will be affected by this ban since Germany is one of the biggest players when it comes to video games sales. Will there be a fall in preorders because of the new ban? Or will they increase in price due to the scarcity of pre-orders? If the Germans don’t take a liking to the new ban, they might just lobby the courts into retracting the ruling.