LRG has no reason to improve its support or shipping since they keep selling out in minutes each time. Not sure how they got to be so untouchable; two bad releases was all it took for Special Reserve to not be able to sell through 1500 copies of their newest game. Truth is LRG has been making questionable decisions for awhile now and have always been pretty direct in defending themselves the way a normal business does. Yet they get held on a pedestal unlike other regular businesses. Imagine the salt if there was a regular how to take advantage of LRG thread like there is with Gamestop or Target. But that's exactly how I think CAG should be treating them at the end of the day.
LRG inserted themselves into a position where they cannot fail thanks to everybody trying to collect all PS4/Vita games primarily in the NA region from the start and having done so BEFORE LRG came to be.
Remember PS4, Vita, and Wii U and now Switch are all the first brand new systems to hit the market since the collector bubble exploded (PS3 and 360 arrived slightly before things got stupid and they and everything before are already a lost cause for most). These are the first systems that came out after the collector craze started and that which people are able to collect for from day 0. So everybody and their sister are collecting for the new post 2005+ consoles before anything has a chance to become "rare". Vita and Wii U doubly so due to the low hanging fruit for complete set collectors due to the <= 150 physical releases.
LRG has no competition as all the other limited run copy cats so far are less desirable UK or Asia releases and aren't "mandatory" for more common NA collectors. Notice how quickly LRG moved in to "partner" with SRG since they were the only NA competitor to appear.
People who have many years invested into their PS4 and/or Vita library long before LRG existed have no recourse except to give up collecting or hand over half their monthly collecting budget to LRG or face having their collection broken forever.
Step 1) find something people have been collecting for many many years that they aren't likely to give up on now
Step 2) make a company and spam a flurry of limited items that are officially part of that set
Step 3) collectors either have to stop collecting, accept broken sets, or buy everything you make
Step 4) profit!
Whether or not that was their intention, their very existence has stirred up some shit and thrown a huge and undesired wrench of chaos and paranoia into every collector's lives and budgets.
While many of the games are a nice addition to have and would not otherwise be available, collecting was far less stressful before all these limited run and kickstarter physical release outfits started popping up left and right. I miss the days when the worst thing you could miss was a oddball Walmart or Gamestop exclusive once or twice a year that nobody cared about like some farming simulator.
It's sad how private party non retail release "limited" games are quickly overtaking a large fraction of an entire library. LRG is like 1/4 to 1/3 of all NA Vita releases for example. A system most people thought they were done with years ago.
