Gamers who often buy the latest titles through Amazon will want to note the company is officially putting a stop to its 20-percent game pre-order discount for Prime members. The change is due to take effect from September 28, 2018. Following which, Prime members who place a pre-order through Amazon will be expected to pay the full asking price. However, in place of the pre-order discount, Amazon will be offering a $10 credit under limited terms, and only for select games going forward. The program previously covered all new games for sale on the website, and saving amounts often exceeded the new $10 limit. For example, a $59.99 game would typically result in a saving of $11.99, with pre-orders for special editions and bundle packs resulted in even higher savings.
The $10 credit on offer has a number of limitations. For starters, in order to get it, customers have to not only pre-order an eligible game, but they also need to make sure the particular copy they are ordering is sold by Amazon. Even if it’s fulfilled by Amazon, or Prime-eligible, but not sold directly by Amazon, the credit won’t be honored. Furthermore, unlike the discount which was applied at the time of purchase, the new credit will come in the form of a code via email, and may take up to 35 days to be delivered. Once the code is credited to an account, the buyer will have 60 days to spend the credit. Once again, the credit can only be used on products and digital goods sold directly by Amazon. Returning the game or cancelling a pre-order before the credit is sent out will result in the cancellation of the credit. Items bought with the credit are eligible for refunds, but on more limited terms than normal items.
Amazon’s pre-order discount program first debuted in 2016, and at that time allowed a discount to be applied to both pre-orders and new game purchases within a certain time-frame. It was amended back in 2017, however, with a few new rules, including limiting the discount to just pre-orders within a certain window. For the most part, this window forced customers who wanted the discount to take the plunge before massive amounts of gameplay footage flooded the likes of YouTube and the internet in general.