My fellow gamers of system wars. Please tip your developers with kindness!

Yeah right: Mike Ybarra thinks players should be able to tip developers for their work So let me this straight. Paying just $60/$70 isn't good enough now? And here I thought paying the ultimate edition of over $100+ was always the tipping point? Heck, Microtransaction in general is pretty much the tipping itself. If developers want more money, go ask publishers for a raise instead of asking gamers to fork even more money.

I don't know about E.U but here in the U.S, the tipping culture has gotten out of control, it needs to either go or start raising pay wages...especially for developers. The Publishers should pay their developers a bonus based on sales/reviews and if they finished production efficiently with no delays, that's one way to look at it and not asking gamers for tips.

I don't see the issue since it is not mandatory and it is not in person. There have been games I purchased on sale for cheap, played it, loved it and wish I could pay the difference of the sale price to the regular.

Publishers have gotten it into peoples heads that the consumer services them. Normalizing all sorts of embarrassing shit.

I should be able to reach through the screen and punch them in the face and demand better. And hope they get pay-cuts since they whine a lot.

Kids in Africa and shit walking 15 miles to just get water. Here you are complaining it's abit hard and want moar. Lazy bums.

These developers are also complicit in all the predatory practices going on. So the bleeding hart crap falls flat.

Devolver Digital is alright.

While it is a nice-feeling concept on the surface, we need to look at what isn't being said, what questions aren't being asked, and what is implied:

1. Publisher is essentially saying "We don't pay our developers enough, and we don't want to pay our developers enough, so why don't you the customer do it for us. You know, on top of the paying for the game that should be enough for a developer but isn't because CEO's gotta get them bonuses, son!
2. We need to be getting away from "tip culture", not embracing it further. Many restaurants have increased their food prices <20% (less than an average tip, if you're a decent person :P ) and done away with tipping while paying their servers a decent wage instead.
3. It's unreliable income. Unlike the restaurant industry or other areas where people are tipped, developers probably can't count on a certain amount of income from tips because they don't know how much it will be. As someone that has worked in restaurants and been paid $10/hr, and has relied on tips to pay rent only to see the tips not come in due to slow business or what have you, it sucks not having reliable income.
4. Games are a rare, affordable luxury in that inflation has actually outpaced game prices while game prices have more or less stayed the same if not come down. We need to maintain this so video games remain affordable, and not add tipping to it. Games 20+ years ago cost 49.99 and adjusted for inflation I think they should cost in excess of $90 if they were to match the rate and other industries.
5. It's double-dipping. We have to pay for the product, then we have to pay again for the product simply because, what? We like it? We should always like the product. If we don't, then we return it (or should be able to). There is no service being provided, and asking for more money is double-dipping much like some streaming services do by making you pay a monthly fee AND making you watch ads (double-dipping in that they make money off your sub fee then make money off you seeing ads).
6. How exactly will it be split? Will there be a surcharge? A processing fee? How much is the company cut before it is paid out to developers. What developers get more? Level designers? 3D modelers? Or is this just for hourly employees and not salary?

Also, I just don't like this culture of tipping for everything these days. I hate how it's expected of us for non-service based jobs. I hate how when I go to my fishmonger and buy a piece of salmon, I'm prompted to tip them for a 30-second experience (fish is expensive btw so I'd basically be tipping them 5-10 bucks for 30 seconds of their time on top of paying $20-40/lb for fish). I'm tired of what it implies; that business owners either can't or won't pay their employees a livable wage.

This isn't a pleasant gesture of how we can do some good; this is a depressing "what if?"

Here's a "what if?"...what if we paid people a livable wage, didn't make them crunch during the last months of a game development, added more job security for people in an otherwise insecure field, and stuff like that?

lol, lmao even.

This is about as dumb as it gets, but its America so🤦‍♂️

Yep😒

On paper sounds good, but don't give the executives ideas, they'll copy the restaurants and expect their workers to get their salary throught tips from the customers. Also, there are varios ways to support a product, by buying licensed merch, like soundtracks, books, figurines, etc. And the simplest ways is to buy multiple copies and give them to people that haven't tried it yet.

Nah.

But he should. He's rich.

@davillain: Not trying to 💩 on America but when it comes to paying your employees a fair wage America is living in the stone age.

And with the greed, if you were to tip it wouldn't go to the people actually making the games, so it's totally pointless to tip devs.

This wouldn't be a bad idea except for the the fact that pubs wouldn't be trusted to pay a livable wage and would likely decide to switch to a tip-based system instead.

As an extreme hater of any kind of mtx, a tip that no one forces you do give isn't bad at all. Here's how i would do it. You release a game with ZERO mtx. At the very bottom of the front page of the title screen, there's a small section with something like "tip a dev" or whatever. You can tip whatever the amount you want and for transparency (and this is important), the developer is clearly showing the total amount of dollars tipped by everyone on the bottom right of the title screen. Then, the developer uses a portion of that money to release free dlc's, and in titles that have received millions in tips, they could even release free expansions that way. Not only will you receive free content, but this will incentivize developers to create quality titles since they're the ones that have a higher chance of being tipped by a lot of people.

So that these companies can not only pay these developers less but so that they can also get a cut from these tips as well no doubt. 😅

Best solution I have heard coming from you👍

Lets just say I don't often agree with my Countryman for all the dumb crap they do. My County is in shamble.

Tipping developers? They can eat shit. They have mtx and DLC. I live in EU and I would rather tip in restaurants than tipping developers who earn a comfortable salary. I don't get any tips or bonuses in my job, so why would developers get tips?! Mike Ybarra is deluded. We have bigger issues than tipping game developers that do jack shit to society than those who are saving peoples lives in hospitals. Savings lives is more important than tipping well-salaried developers.

@hardwenzen: The problem is that the money is a tip and is based off of a service provided to you. Devs don't provide you with a service as such, they provide you with what you paid for a game. When you tip a waitress a portion of that doesn't go into getting you some extra food.

So saying a portion of the tip should go to giving you an expansion or dlc for free makes no sense because you've given the dev money for it in form of a "tip" which means you're still paying for the content.

Tipping should not in any way shape or form be involved in gaming,it's a slippery slope that only ends in more greed.

What comes next will be if we reach a million in tips we will add some "free" dlc, and if the tips only total 100k then where does that money go? Why right into the pockets of upper management.

The whole thing stinks of greed.

Disagree. When you bought a game like Elden Ring, spent hundreds of hours in it, and consider it as one of the best, if not the best game you've ever played (going by youtube comments, there's a ton of people that feel this way), tipping $1-10 doesn't feel unfair because the developer offered something that is far beyond what other developers are making. Personally, i ignore mtx like they don't exist. I would also never tip over $1, but i would tip said $1 for a game like Helldivers 2, BG3 or ER. Why? Well, because they're content complete titles with no bullshit. Of course, as i said in the post above, a title cannot have tips AND mtx at the same time, so it wouldn't work for Helldivers 2, but if they didn't have mtx, i would certainly tip em a $1. And while $1 is nothing, i am sure there would be a lot of people tipping for a quality experience, so that $1 wouldn't stay "nothing" for long. This tipping feature would also be really nice for live service titles such as, well, Helldivers 2. It'd be like Patreon for long content support of a live service title.

People who work in the service industry should receive tips, not people who do not like those in the gaming industry. Not only that, but tipping salaried workers (who mostly earns more than most hourly wage workers)?

@hardwenzen: Regardless of what anyone thinks of ER be it good or bad, if the game sells well then they announce an expansion and if you like it then you purchase it, that's how this thing works.

Tipping is a dog's breakfast and will only lead to more greed.

As you know I love me Forza Horizon's but I would never give Playground games a tip for a job well done, that's what they get when I purchase the game at full price.

As for live service, well they already have a model in place where they have seasons etc to make money from their fanbase, we don't needs tips in the gaming industry to further muddy the waters.

"Billionaire company, with consistent profit increases, too cheap and incompetent to pay staff a functional salary" should be the headline.

@onesiphorus: "People who work in the service industry should receive tips,"

No, they should be paid a working wage, not relying on the public to A) purchase a meal and then B) tip the staff so they can live, that's the job of the owner of the establishment.

F off with that.

Ya...nope.

Tip culture is awful. It will incentivize studios to underpay the developers and expect customers to pick up the slack.

It sounds great on paper but also it would most likely be split between the developers as well. This would cause vastly different jobs to view themselves as more hard working and deserving of a larger sum of the tip money as well.

This idea would cause an exodus of talent to other tech based programming jobs.

Yeah that will be a no on that one. The tipping system is awful for all parties. Tips mean publishers themselves could just start paying their devs less (Sure won't they make it back in tips?). Also a nice way to cream more money off the game after the sale and MTX. 0 chance that 100% of the tip would go to the actual developer (or it would...since the developer and publisher are the same thing sooo technically).

For indies there is Patreon if they think they have done enough to warrant it. For big studios...they can get F&*^%d with that idea.

The business arrangement between developers/publishers and customers should be very simple. The publisher provides content. I am compelled to buy said content because it looks interesting. I play, and hopefully greatly enjoy, the content. Developer comes back in a few years with more great content and I buy that too. The end. That's it.

Tips, MTX, GAAS.....rancid piss the lot of it.

Yes I must tip Bobby Kodick $500 per CoD!

Even Subway asking for tips, Murica is cursed.

One of the few that I respect greatly

**** that. Let's be real, would the tips go to the developers? Or would corporate try to take it for themselves?

I am gonna tip them right after I tip my landlord first 🤣

I only tip independent developers.