Former Blizzard President Thinks Tipping Game Creators Is Great Idea
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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 $70 and they didn't try to nickel and dime me every second.'"
What an absolute donkey. Maybe he doesn't realize, but 70$ 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:
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.
Not gonna do that. Twat is gonna take his employees hostage like restaurants doing it in the states.
Get fucked ❤️
Stop giving Ybarra attention, news outlets. He's fucking terrible.
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.
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
https://massivelyop.com/2023/02/17/blizzards-mike-ybarra-stuns-devs-with-demoralizing-bonus-slashing-and-return-to-work-meeting/
Tipping is like paying for DLC / microtransactionw but not getting anything out of it.
Yeah... NAH!
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...
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.
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.
I don't know why he's making this statement. Blizzard doesn't make games that don't nickel and dime you, much less ones people feel are worth paying extra for or even worth their cost.
If it actually went to the people working on the game, sure. I've done that with multiple small developers. Triple A though, that's going to go right into management's pockets.
$70 for a game? Now that's excessive; the most I've ever paid for a game is £25 and that was more than I would usually pay, which is around £15.
Same. It’s just never worth more to me than 30$. I can after all buy a book for 10$ and have simillar fun. Or watch tv show. Games are too expensive for what they are really.
One exception is when I am mentally unwell and purposefully get addicted to competitive online games as an elaborate self sabotage.
I've felt that way that too, but I'll cut my fingers off before I say I "tipped" Digital Extremes or Tactical Adventures or Eric Barone when I intentionally paid more than I needed to for their games to show support
I've paid DE a fair amount of money over the years, but I only ever buy plat when I get the 75% off coupons (which has happened bizarrely often to me) and when I was working. I have over 2k hours in Warframe, and I feel like I was also covering my friend that I play with for when they were unemployed and couldn't buy anything. Most of my plat goes to gifts for my friends and the occasional shiny thing for myself.
I also really appreciate the fact that it is perfectly possible to get the premium currency without spending a penny yourself through the trading system. Not to mention the fact that there isn't any content behind a paywall. You can skip some RNG grind or get cosmetics, but the premium currency won't buy you anything you can't get otherwise.
(I am probably going to pay for the Tennocon access pass though because the exhibitions and Baro at the relay are actually super awesome)
Yeah the 75% off coupon is a scam. You can be away for 2 weeks on holiday, and the game recognizes you are "back after a long time" and serves you one immediately. Each time I go back to Warframe, I have a 75% coupon waiting for me (I take breaks for like a year or two for them to drop more content).
Which part of that is a scam?
It's the regular price basically. You get it so often it might just as well be on 75% discount all the time. If you play warframe, you know it's funny.
I tended to get them when I was logging in regularly. I figure 2k hours for me and around another 2k hours for my friend is worth the amount I've paid in. It's pennies per hour of entertainment and it's a better game with a nicer community than a lot of the AAA titles out there. Also, to my knowledge, DE seems to treat their employees fairly well and I would rather give my money to that kind of studio as opposed to the more abusive ones out there.
Blizzard is a shit company that just creates incel weirdos.
Yea and pirating is a great option too.
Cool, idea. Let the Boss tipping his games creators.
He'll give each of them a one-time tip of $10
whata twat
No tip, huh? Guess I know whose favourite character is getting nerfed in the next patch.
Rich coming from someone who made a name for himself as the president of the nickel and dime company...
The problem really is, like in most industries to be fair, that the actual creators get far too little of the figurative monetary cake.
And if we ever see tipping in games, god forbid, then that money will at best get shared by everyone so there would need to be millions in tipping before it is even noticeable for an individual developer in a normal AAA team.
I sent a tip to SureAI after I finished Enderal, cuz it was fucking amazing, free, and didn't have any bs like microtransactions.
But for a game I purchase normally? Naw bro, I tipped enough with that initial purchase.
I feel like as I get older, books just seem more interesting and better value than games.
An average length novel costs about a fifth of what a game does at retail, takes roughly the same amount of time to finish and is probably gonna take way more creative chances.
Play indie games. They are way more fun, cheaper and most of the time don't require powerful hardware.
But also read books, books are amazing. I recommend True Grit.
It would make sense for games abandoned by publishers to be given away including a donation button for the original developer and hosting service.
That's essentially what buying the game's soundtrack is lol
At least make it the gdd or concept art