Mike Ybarra, former president snowstormsome people have floated the somewhat confusing idea that players should be able to tip developers after beating a $70 game.
On today’s episode of “How Do We Get These People to Run Big Companies,” now-former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who left the company in January, suggested introducing a tipping system in video games. “As a gamer, I’ve been thinking about this idea for a while since I recently started dabbling in single-player games,” Ibarra wrote on Twitter. “When I play through a game, there’s something that sticks with me. I was in awe of how amazing the experience was and by the end of the game I often thought ‘I wish I could have given these guys another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my original $70 and they didn’t have it every time. I want to give me a small amount of money every second.”
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“A game like this [Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, Baldur’s Gate 3], Elden Ring et al. I know $70 is a lot, but it’s an option I sometimes wish I had at the end of the game. Some games are just that special. I know most people won’t like this idea…I realize we’re tired of ‘tipping’ on other things – but I think this is different from the tipping pressure type scenario that many people face and give feedback . ”
As someone with over a decade of experience in the restaurant industry, I can easily tell you why tips like this don’t work. You see, with many restaurants in the UK starting to charge service charges, many people have stopped tipping. A service charge is kind of like a tip – except a lot of places just use it to supplement your salary so that you (maybe) have a livable wage and they don’t have to pay you as much.
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Businesses can’t keep tips for themselves (in theory), but it does mean they can make more money than they would otherwise. The exact same thing would happen if we introduced tips in video games – developers wouldn’t get paid any more than they do now, but executives would get more because they could replace their salaries with tips.
On top of that, $70 is ridiculously expensive, and a recent Newzoo study even found that most people are playing games that are more than six years old, and mostly free games like Fortnite, Roblox ”, “League of Legends” and “The Sims 4”. Mike, I don’t think we should tip developers. Instead, they should be paid appropriately in the first place.