Bookahnerk and I were talking about games in general and I mentioned how I regret buying Black Desert Online. He thought we’d spent less than 20 Euros on it, but I checked my emails and it was 30 Euros each. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the game itself is bad! Far from it. It just should have been obvious to me that I wouldn’t like and thus, play the game. I do not want to engage in open world PvP at all (unless it’s the Crossroads in World of Warcraft and voluntary flagging for PvP). So – why I ended up buying and playing the game, I don’t know. I just don’t remember what made me do it. But it was a silly idea and definitely a waste of money.
But all things considered, whenever we talk about bad games or wasted money on games, our comparison is always with another game and my BDO purchase isn’t that bad when compared to this other game: Godus. Or, as bookahnerk put it: “You could offer me 500 Euros for playing the game for 25 hours and I’d still prefer putting my fingers in a vise for these 25 hours instead!” – Him saying something like this means the game is more than just bad. I remember watching the video about what the game would be like and we both really liked what we had heard. But since it was Early Access, we decided it would be wiser to just have one of us buy the game for the time being. And we’re very glad we did that!
From the viewpoint of the disappointment after buying a game, bookahnerk got it a lot worse with his purchase. From the viewpoint of “I told you so!”, mine was worse. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. Either way, the both of us count these two games as our worst game purchase regrets. I am pretty sure I’ve got other games that I bought and ended up regretting doing so, but none actually come to my mind.
Having said that, the game purchase I made that I thought I would regret turned out to be a really great investment (for me, at least – not so much for the game company): My purchase of a lifetime account with Lord of the Rings Online back when Codemasters (EU publishers at the time) offered it to me for 110 €. Basically, I paid the equivalent of 10 months of game time and got a lifetime account. I made this decision after only having played the game for the initial 30 days that you got when you bought the box and then returning for a free weekend three months later. And this was at a time where that amount of money was a lot for me (it’s still not something I’d just throw out of the window!).
Nerdy Bookahs 
Oh, that’s an interesting topic. I’m not sure I ever bought a game that I regretted so deeply as you describe :P
I guess most of those where I do have some regret at all is because I bought them and then didn’t really play them, but not because I hated them – more like there was some other shiny thing that provided more fun at the time.
Let’s see – I bought Quake Champions in 2018 and I loved it! But I didn’t play enough to warrant the 24 EUR purchase I guess.. For those few hours the free version would’ve absolutely been enough. I plan to revisit it though..
Also there’s a plethora of games under 10 EUR that I bought and then never played, also some cheap Xbox360 games I didn’t sink in more than a few hours – let’s just say I’ll ignore all this marked down stuff because I don’t remember regretting a full price purchase because I do that so rarely.
That second copy of Kingdom Hearts for the GameBoy though that I bought because I had a brainfart at this retro faire and thought I didn’t own it… Or that 20 EUR worth of ingame currency in Marvel Heroes that I didn’t spend all before they shut down. That was one of those “Oh, it’s like -80% – and I can live off this for a year!” purchases when I wasn’t actively playing. I guess I’ll vote this one for biggest regret… :)
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I had that happen with a game bundle that I bought twice and I had completely forgotten about the first purchase, but it was a very cheap bundle. So it was more a “doh!” than a bad regret. It did teach me to check my games first before buying anything.
I also have a lot of games that I bought and never or hardly played because other games were more interesting. But yeah, that’s not so much a regret about buying them. More regretting that the day doesn’t have more hours. ;)
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Yeah, sure, in general it’s fine to buy for “I know I want to play this.. soon!” but sometimes it’s really just “this looks so awesome but I *know* I will not continue playing after 2h – so maybe it would’ve been smarter to watch a Let’s Play instead of spending 20 bucks for 2h of fun.
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Unless you want to support the developers for making a game that in theory is awesome for you, right. :p But the more expensive a game, the more I think about whether to buy it or not. On the other hand, if I do buy 4 games for 5 € that I’m not going to play, I end up having wasted 20 €, too.
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I paid $80 in my regional currency for a collector’s edition of Hellgate London. Only to find out it was region locked. And our region’s version of the game was several updates behind.
To this day, I am not sure if the completely nonsensical and incoherent quest text was the result of getting some sort of pre-release version, or due to being put through some kind of English to Asian Language and back to English again machine auto-translation, or if the NA version of the game’s story was equally bad.
Since I bought it as a box from a local mom-and-pop PC store, and consumer rights protection completely unknown in those days, the chances of me getting a refund were nil. Since then, I have done my research prior to game purchases, especially regarding region locks, and buy at discounted rates from digital stores which can actually offer refunds. Most painful lesson learned ever, computer game purchase-wise.
I’ve racked up a smaller list of games that I paid higher than normal price for, but don’t regret or only mildy regret at most. Natural Selection 2 at founder’s price, but my computer couldn’t quite play it at the time of its middling popularity, so I never got to play it seriously. No regrets, I played Nat Sel 1 to death and it was free. Evolve at full launch price. It wasn’t a popular game, and ran into some DLC backlash, but I found it fun in its own way, no regrets. All episodes of Life is Strange at around $10-12. I did not like it. At all. Tried to get it refunded, but left it too long before trying it out. Mild regret, but well, it was popularly lauded in its own way, it just wasn’t right for me. I would have been happier biting at a lower discount, or if I had tested episode 1 first, but well, at least the lesson learned was cheaper than 80 bucks.
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Ouch! I’d have been very angry about that purchase – and that’s definitely a top contender for “worst regret”. It’s weird, though, that it’s available in a physical store if you can’t play it in your region.
I regretted Life is Strange 2 for a moment, until I gave the game another chance and got into the story and the characters. Still, episode 2 has been out for a while and even though I’d been looking forward to it, I haven’t touched it yet. Life is Strange 1 was a lot more compelling for me (after the first episode which was more an introduction into the setting before the story started and became more engaging!).
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Oh man, Godus. Yup — I have that on my list of ‘Games I bought but probably really shouldn’t have’.
No Man’s Sky at launch for launch price probably tops it though.
I must admit that I probably buy altogether too many games, so finding bad apples in the bunch rolls off perhaps a bit too easily. My dissapointment really only kicks in if for some reason I became invested in the game before it came out which is a reasonably rare occurrence for me these days.
One that sticks with me though is Stardock’s Elemental (quickly buried and followed-up with the free for Elemental owners: Fallen Enchantress). They talked a big game in the lead up to this, with some fairly amazing multiplayer modding abilities, a genre-merge of RPG and TBS.
While Elemental was without a doubt bad, I think Fallen Enchantress was OK — provided you had no idea what the originally promised scope was. I can’t tell for sure though as I find it hard to maintain any kind of objectivity around what the game *is* vs. everything it was ‘meant to be’.
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Right, sometimes it’s better not to know what it should have been. I own Fallen Enchantress and played it a bit, but never knew anything about the story of its development. Which, apparently, is for the better. ;)
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