By now, everyone in the world knows that American tipping culture is getting out of hand. That doesn’t mean you can’t introduce another way of “supporting” creators. Mike Ybarra, the former president of Blizzard, shared his desire to tip developers of especially enjoyable games.
“When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, I’ve often thought ‘I wish I could give these folks another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn’t try to nickel and dime me every second.’”
“Because they sold me the full package and didn’t try to rip me off, I should give them more money, thus ripping myself off voluntarily”
Full price is often already a rip-off.
To be fair I’ve had a similar thought after finishing a couple of games. Both were indie games though and I thought they were underpriced relative to the value that I got out of them. I mostly felt that way because I really really want to encourage good behavior from studios rather than see it all go to microtransactions and subscriptions.
Yeah I agree with the idea of once I beat a really good game I want to support the creator more. Baldurs Gate 3 was so good, and there was nothing to buy, so I bought another copy for a friend. Who later bought his wife a copy.
The gift of another sale and sharing the game by word of mouth is the highest praise.
It was worth more than my initial 70$
What an absolute donkey. Maybe he doesn’t realize, but 70$ can be the difference between a healthy meal every day or not.
There’s games I would pay 60€ for (I can count them on one hand), and I can assure you that the rest is usually worth way less. Ain’t no way I’m leaving an additional tip. What the fuck.
If he likes tipping so much, maybe he can tip the game devs this money directly, considering he likes their game so much. He should start with his own.
Most of the games id be willing to pay $60 for are indie games that are <$20.
Hollow knight comes to mind. Diablo does not.
Tipping the individual creatives who made something? Sure. Contributing to the CEO’S bonus cheque? Go fuck yourself.
It’s probably worse, it’s likely largely going to the publishers, not even the CEO of the developer studio.
Cool, give me some options like:
- art team
- programming team
- testing team
- game design team
Don’t let the publishers or upper management touch it, only the people who actually worked on the game itself. Pay it out in addition to any bonus/paycheck they’d normally get, as in the amount paid to these people wouldn’t be seen at all by the people in charge of payroll.
But no, that’s not what Mike Ybarra is talking about.
And the potential added problem is that once tipping becomes a large part of their salary they will just decrease their salary and say just to get tipped more. I don’t believe any outcome in this is a win for gamers or devs.
That’s why it’s so critical that the bosses never know how much they get tipped.
That’s a very good point, I never thought about that.
Let’s make it mandatory that 15-20% of gross sales be given directly to developers, once sales start. That would fix this. Customers can choose within that range. But let’s make it default to 20%.
Stop giving Ybarra attention, news outlets. He’s fucking terrible.
Not gonna do that. Twat is gonna take his employees hostage like restaurants doing it in the states.
Get fucked ❤️
“When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, I’ve often thought ‘I wish I could give these folks another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn’t try to nickel and dime me every second.’”
Telling that he doesn’t think that paying higher wages is an option.
In my opinion, everybody who is over 13 and hasn’t grasped that AAA-gaming is not about good games anymore, is a fool.
Just play indie games.
Dinosaurs must die.
Has he even suggested that the tips were to go directly to the game devs? I had assumed he meant tipping the company. Call me cynical or something idk.
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Asking for tips IS nickel and diming.
You know this guy tips his wife after sex.
I tip his wife as well afterwards, want her to have gas money to leave.
You may remember Mike Ybarra from such hits as
Why not giving player 10 to 20 bucks for playing through a half-baked, unfinished, repetitive hell of a mess? If’ve no problems of devs beeing proud of their work butt at least be honest with yourself. Your game is shit when everybody says so. Work on it and make it better instead of defending it how it is. FML sorry for the rant…
Tipping is like paying for DLC / microtransactionw but not getting anything out of it.
Yeah… NAH!
Last time I actually wanted to give money to creators was The Witcher series after finishing 3. It was so mind blowing. And I still had two DLC to play (still not played B&W). And I did not pay full price, because by the time I had finished 2, the third was regularly on sale.
But then I remembered they already are choke full of money and my extra money isn’t gonna go to the devs doing crunch time, it’ll just be more money in their money pool. So I thought, this time, I’ll pre-purchased CP2077 because I absolutely loved the rpg as a teen and they can’t fick that up. But then of course I remembered not to be an idiot. So I waited for a day one full price purchase but well, they fucked that up, didn’t they. And they still made money hand over fist!What I’m saying is, he can go eat a full bag of dicks. I’ll keep voting with my wallet. And that means good games get my money, good devs also get my money, and that means he’s never gonna get a dime from me, ever again.
What a muppet.
You know who I would actually like to tip? JAV actresses I have wanked to for donkey years without ever purchasing one of their DVDs. I reckon most of those ladies work harder that this twat and deserve more love. And money. But like Gaben said, verily, it’s all a question of access.
None of the game he mentions deserve that. I like HZD, but this is the product of a studio owned by a massive company. People who made the game what it is got their work’s worth, and if not, Sony would be to blame.
“Tipping” video game creators already exists. Ask the Dwarf Fortress creators, who have been offering their game for free for decades, and are funded by donations and only since a year ago, the completely optional paid version.
On the one hand, the industry is well known for its poor wages and horrible working conditions. On the other hand, as you said, that’s on the companies and we shouldn’t be expected to pay their workers for them.
These guys rake in more money than Hollywood, and yet they think we should pay more because they don’t want to pay their workers a fair wage? How about we help them unionize instead. That sounds more worthwhile to me.
Well said. There is no way a “tipping” system set up by big publishers would end up in the creators’ pocket anyway.
Especially not if you include every small hand from programmer to artist to QA tester etc (and they should be included).
I thought I would do a quick search to see if I could find a “these studio do/don’t have a unionized workforce” tracker.
I couldn’t find anything so single issue but I did find this:
https://guide.ethical.org.au/company/?company=5451
Its a pretty dire list.
And that’s pretty standard for the video game industry. I can think of maybe 2 unionized studios in the US, and those have both happened within the past 5 years or so. One of those is actually a studio that was bought up by Blizzard and was so concerned that their work culture was going to be destroyed and replaced with Blizzard’s toxic culture that the entire studio formed a union in response.
Quality of life is so bad in the industry that not only is crunch a normal part of working, but you can expect to work 7 days a week for 3 or 4 months at a time, even eating and sleeping in the office. And pay is so bad that there are people working at Blizzard who can’t afford to buy lunch at the company cafeteria and are living out of their cars because they can’t afford rent within commuting distance of the office. I recently heard a dev talking about how he left Blizzard to go work for Amazon for better pay and benefits. When Amazon’s working conditions are better than yours, you know you’re in deep shit.
