20 years ago, there was something undeniably exciting about scrounging up a few dollars, heading down to your local game store, and placing a preorder for the next entry in your favorite series. These days, however, we can’t help but feel a bit more hesitant. With each passing year, the hype and marketing around games grows more intense, and while it might be easy to get caught up in it all, it’s not so easy to realize you spent $70 on a game that doesn’t meet your expectations.

Following the rise of digital media and live-service games, with the uncertainty towards when a game will actually release (and what shape it will be in when it does), and more and more preorder bonuses that just aren’t worth your hard-earned cash, we’re beginning to rethink the way we approach buying games–and we think you should, too. On this week’s episode of Spot On, Lucy and Tamoor discuss why preordering games is not as consumer-friendly as you’ve been led to believe, as well as ways to show developers your support that require less cash and uncertainty.

Spot On is a weekly news show airing Fridays in which GameSpot’s managing editor Tamoor Hussain and senior producer Lucy James talk about the latest news in games. Given the highly dynamic and never-ending news cycle of the massive video game industry, there’s always something to talk about but, unlike most other news shows, Spot On will dive deep into a single topic as opposed to recapping all the news. Spot On airs each Friday.