I'm a little surprised because, while this is exactly the behavior I would expect, I watched the Dave's Garage video about DeepSeek and, per his report, when asked about the picture of the Tiananmen Square protest the model didn't seem to shy away from it. It could have changed since then, of course, and it could also be the way in which the questions were asked. He framed the question as something along the line of "What was depicted in the famous picture of the man standing in front of a tank?" or something similar rather than directly asking about the events of that year.
For me it really depends on the game, the studio, and the publisher. I preordered Firmament because Cyan has a good history. I might also pre-order a digital game if I think a game is particularly novel, or if I think I'm going to like it pretty much regardless of the reviews (e.g. I like the franchise it's from/ties into), the last reason is if there's some kind of in-game incentive to do so (e.g. pre-order and you get some in game minor boost/cosmetic/whatever) but that's really only a minor consideration.