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Video games that have yet to attract a concrete release date will no longer be available to pre-order at online retailers in Germany, reports Eurogamer.
The Higher Regional Court of Munich ruled that consumers should have the right to know when an item will be delivered after pre-ordering it. If a product listing does not at least indicate the latest date by which it will arrive, then no pre-order option will be given.
This basically means that if you come across games that have 'coming soon' or something similarly vague attached to them (like The Last of Us: Part II for example, which hasn't got a date yet), you can't get your orders in early.
The issue was initially raised with the German courts by a consumer protection group.
Of course, this isn't the case in the UK at all; you can freely pre-order games that have only just been announced with no attached release window, and they'll still ship to you even if it's years later.
'When consumers order goods on the internet, providers must specify by when the goods are delivered,' commented Dusseldorf Consumer CEO, Wolfgang Schuldzinski.
