Yeah, I haven't been buying a lot from LRG lately and there's not much on the near horizon I plan to buy either, but I'm happy to have the break. I'm glad they at least delayed the surprise game in order to do a proper announcement. I've been thinking for a long time that LRG really needs to grow a backbone and put their foot down when their clients make idiotic requests. Just because that's what they want doesn't mean LRG should always oblige. It'd be one thing if it were preorders open for weeks, but the CEs for this surprise game have a finite quantity. Nobody wants to take time out of their busy schedules to be on LRG's site at a specific time for a game they're not even sure if they'll want.
Granted, this one game is just the zenith of this bad trend of decreasing time between a game's announcement and its sale date. Even though it's no longer zero time between the two, this mystery game is still getting announced only a few days before the sale date, and there have been other games in a similar boat. LRG's customers have been begging them endlessly to announce games/sales dates further in advance, and they keep going in the opposite direction of that, giving milquetoast responses along the lines of "that's what our clients want". I don't see any solution coming unless LRG makes their clients play by their rules and not the other way around. Their clients know how to make games, not necessarily how to sell them, and they need to understand that. There's only so far you can sacrifice consumer-friendliness for developer-friendliness.
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