Why Proposing Tip Jars For Mainstream Videogames Is Either Stupid Or Malicious (The Jimquisition)
Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra thinks big budget games should offer players the ability to add a tip on top of already spending $70. For a number of reasons it's dumb to add tipping to big corporate games, but when it's been suggested by a literal corporate leader, the whole proposal seems more sinister than stupid.
Comments (13)
I'm trying to think if it would legal and ethical for a publisher to create a non-profit subsidiary, for each game it publishes, exclusively for the purpose of tipping the dev team. On the face of it, everyone's a winner: the non-profit aspect would mean that the parent company couldn't take a cut so the devs would get potentially a tidy boost to their income and, from the cynical c-[SKELETON WARRIORS] perspective, it would be easy and cheap to do, fantastic PR (which they could do with a lot of these days) and, here's why I'm iffy on the ethics... it could disincentivise unionisation since it'd be the easiest thing in the world to make go away in retaliation. The other snag would be the potential to see them do exactly what Steph describes the hospitality industry in the US doing so the games media would need to really hold their feet to the fire on promises that base salaries would be unaffected to ensure this was a genuine, crowdfunded bonus.
I seriously hope that tiktok where the landlord thought they should be tipped was a joke. Landlords are such parasites. Tipping is BS to begin with, companies should simply pay their workers a living wage! Even thinking that we should be handing more money to these publishers is delusional. Mike Ybarra is a rich scumbag. Why doesn't he just take a pay reduction so his workers can get paid more? Oh wait he never will. Burn in hell Mike.
Meanwhile most patreon game devs have done better with how they're funded, both before and after the game's release. I rather pay $100 to those devs than to AAA companies.
At this point, I'm not even sure what publisher's *do* except suck value out of the developers until the developer goes under. Like private equity firms, but specific to the games industry.
They're ultimately just middlemen when it comes to direct investment so I was going to say, "marketing, I guess?" ...but these days, a savvy company with an established presence in the industry can do that virally for about fifty quid and a packet of Skips. I suppose the lawyers that write the NDAs for critics they give review code to don't come cheap but I somehow don't think the publishers would like me pointing out that that's one of their biggest actual contributions. ...which is why I did it.
Game companies telling us "just the tip" yet again...
I think like Mike. I do play games and wish I could give the people who designed and developed them more money. But I can't. Because Blizzard doesn't pay its designers, devs, testers, etc..., what they deserve. And I don't believe for a second that my tip money would go to the people who deserve it, and not used as an excuse to pay those people less. I can't pay the people I feel deserve an extra bill or two. I can only pay Mike. And f*** Mike.
Let's see. First, we were paying for useless cosmetic garbage, then for a CHANCE to get the thing that we want, and now it's being proposed we pay for absolutely nothing at all?
I've sometimes though I would like to tip the specific developer who thought of a feature, a joke or something, but holy shit never the publisher!
Honestly they should just reserve a portion of each paycheque (like they do with taxes) and send it to large video game publishers.
Dunno why they don’t just drop the pretence and rob us at gunpoint…
A CEO robbed at gun point will not only hand over his wallet and valuables, but also his pants and his shirt, because it never occurs to him that a thief might draw the line somewhere.
As if tipping wasn't already getting out of hand