I was selling countless pre-orders at retail going back to 2001. I don’t know when this mythical time would have been either.
Ultimately, the vast majority of people making pre-orders aren’t here, on reddit, or any gaming community. And frankly, with the rate at which physical print runs are shrinking, people are going to find they will need to pre-order if they want a physical copy of anything not AAA.
Deck Nine is also on this, and I thought their Life is Strange games were pretty good (Before the Storm, True Colors).