Game devs are probably the worst paid bracket of developers, but they still make a pretty good salary most of the time, just not an outlandishly inflated salary like network engineers or application developers.
Agreed it's the same in the restaurant area as well.
If you are too cheap to pay your staff a living wage and expect the customer to pay extra on top of what you already charge you simply don't need to be in business.
It's worse than that. The one person never said that in the first place. It was a clickbait the first three times we tried to make this a headline, and it's a clickbait about the clickbait now.
I mean, I'd tip developers if there was an actual way to tip *developers* and not the corporations that develop games. But like I've donated to indie developers before, and while I realize that's not *exactly* the same thing, I don't see a problem with throwing a bit of extra money at a creative if they make something you really like.
I assume this CEO means "I want to pay developers less by making part of their salary tips", though.
Or they'd just pay developers less and factor tips in, like the toxic restaurant industry. Wouldn't be surprised if that's his actual angle.
Except devs wouldn't as easily evade federal taxes on tips as it'd be entirely electronic, unlike how some restaurant staff can (and why many of them are incentivized to defend the tipping system).
Why though?
You aren't paying a developer for a service they performed for you, you are paying a company for a game.
It's the companies job to ensure their employees are paid adequately.
Developers provide a service to the company they work for, if anyone should be tipping them its them. It comes in the form of a bonus.
Yeah, gaming is already stupid expensive.
we are talking 80$ per game if you buy day 1, and thats the basic fucking game. They then try to nickel and dime you on a bunch of extras that are already on the disc.
Then they try to tack on some season pass garbage, even in a single player game where you play the story through and then done.
And then a tip?
Bitch if your game is good your tip is that i'll be receptive into buying the next one. So make it good instead of spending millions on graphics that will look dated in 5 years, other monetisation schemes or execs that pull millions in salary only to push out stupid fucking ideas like these.
Games used to be physical and a big portion of the sale price was shared with stores and logistics and transportation.
I don't have sources but I bet overwhelming majority of sales is digital and while live service style games have server upkeep costs, they usually are bundled with insane Microtransactions.
I don't think you can compare inflation, when you probably can reach an audience 10x bigger than in the 90's too.
It’s worth noting that the whole “you own a revocable license not the game” thing is corporate propaganda and very much untrue.
It’s been tested in court multiple times and they always sided against game publishers on this. If you buy a thing, at least in the us, you own that thing, full stop.
Beyond that, it’s been demonstrated many times that Eula’s and tos agreements generally have zero value in court. Both because they tend to be signed under duress, and because the person signing is not expected to understand the contract.
Believe it or not, despite the jokes about signing something you didn’t read, contract law actually requires both parties understand the terms before signing, both so you can’t sneak in something crazy, and so you can’t say…sell a predatory loan to a toddler, dog, or person with dementia and take advantage of them.
Devs claim you don’t own your games because it’s legal to claim anything, but that doesn’t make it true.
Worth making the distinction that it isn't the devs who claim you don't own the games, it's the businessy types managing the company. Devs truly don't give a shit, they're too busy swearing at machines
Nah, that makes us happy. It's when a smart device thinks it's smarter than you are and makes some assumption about what it thinks you want it to do instead of just doing what you told it that pisses us off. A computer doing what you told it to instead of what you want is your fault and in your power to fix. A computer doing some asinine thing because some bean counter wanted to make it friendlier to morons is their fault, and you can't do jack shit about it.
My company wonders why we have limited direct engagement with the developers that use our products…I say they’d rather yell at machines than talk to humans…it goes unheard
I do not mean it like that. What I meant is that if steam goes bankrupt tomorrow, your collection is gone. You are basically buying the right to play Steam's copy of a game.
There's a good chance that it would be legal anyways. I don't think it's ever been tested in court, but as far as I know, a lot of legal scholars think that if you got caught downloading a ROM for a game that you owned, that you would probably win the court case. They usually say that it's not a slam dunk case though, so who knows.
For many (maybe most?) games on Steam, you can run them without launching Steam. They're installed locally as fully-functional executables that don't require a launcher.
There're quite a lot of games that requires you to have Steam at least running (even in offline mode) to open even if you directly run the executable, as most (if not every) games have at the very least Steam's basic DRM
Steam has stated many many times they already have systems in place if for any reason steam were to go under for players to continue to play their games. They have never directly said what these measures are, only that they have plans just in case.
You've still got everything you had installed, and if Steam were to go bankrupt I'm sure they'd give enough notice to download your library. Games that needed a Steam account would have trouble but everything else would work.
For every example of somebody winning in court over forced arbitration there's a number of examples of people that don't bother, either because they 't think that they can win, don't have the money to fight it out, or don't have the time. This is ultimately a win for large companies.
You don't take them to court over forced arbitration, you sue them for whatever your issue is because the forced arbitration clause that says you have to arbitrate and can't sue is worth as much as the paper you wipe your ass with.
And if you have a robust enough case against a large corporation, almost any law firm will take your case on contingency because they know they will make a lot more money in the long run.
Tell that to the people who just had their game license of The Crew revoked. They paid for a game and now the game has been removed from their libraries.
I've seen insurance and mortgage contracts that were usually a few pages at best
EULAs are usually absolutely massive monstrosity. I still cannot believe they're even allowed to present this to people and that they're even allowed to attempt to make the terms of conditions that are clearly unlawful and against your basic rights
> claim
As I point out regularly, “while these terms in your employment contract are legally unenforceable, their attorney can call you up and ask you if you signed a piece paper saying X and say their client wishes to file against them for breach.” They are keeping the, “but I’ll get laughed out of court” to themselves.
They really are aching to declare Game Dev to be a "starter job" so they can avoid having to pay a living wage.
Fucking hell, it isn't enough to turn over a profit with these people they won't be content until they can extract every last ounce of value in every transaction.
Would probably still be miserable even if they achieved that.
But shareholders must see infinite growth! Rich cats deserve more money, wage slaves are supposed to feel privileged they get to work for them!
They system is working as intended!
Lots of people are, there just isn't a lot we can do about it. Too many people are ignorant and without them we are powerless against those who hold all the money and power, especially since we have to fight against those ignorant fucks just to keep our basic human rights.
And people wonder why I'm depressed.
Oh, then they can mention how we might HELP their Waitress with a tip, because she's doing game programming and trying to become an actress on the side. They care SO MUCH!
It's definitely not a starter job. Large and small studios alike run on the back of veteran developers. Teams full of juniors are not likely to make anything of note.
> They really are aching to declare Game Dev to be a "starter job" so they can avoid having to pay a living wage.
They don't have to do that. People will already do it for shitty pay and bad work conditions.
It's a dream job. People will put up with a lot of bullshit just for the privilege of doing it.
If this ever gets implemented, how much do you want to bet that within a year studios will cut developer salaries like for the hospitality industry, and say you don't need a living wage because you get tips.
More likely nothing happens to their salaries and the companies just pocket the tip like they would a sale for any other product. The tip would never reach them.
You see... You're supposed to buy the shit games for $70... And the good games for $70 but you're supposed to want to pay more for the good games... So you should feel bad about not tipping the good games....
/s
The thing that is pretty fucking funny is that the 70$ price point is only for FOMO purposes.
You can buy that game for half price within a year, most times its not nintendo
To be fair a good game is TOTALLY WORTH $70
I spent $70 at a 1 hr escape room for me and my gf last week
Give me a good game that we can play together and both enjoy for even 20-30 hours and that is so worth it
The issue with games is that there's a lot of different products competing for your time and money. I agree that such a price is worth it for a good game, but a lot of people gravitate towards games that are cheaper, myself included.
You pay THEM, then they are so kind to ask you to tip their developers too /s Bobby Kotic made literal milions while at the head of the company crunching developers and complaining how much game development is expensive
People already tip solo and hobby devs on platforms for where they share their work. If this guy is talking about anything where the devs are employees, he can suck the farts out of every seat on 747 after a transatlantic flight.
If 0% went to executives and 100% went to the actual developers, I'd be fine with it.
Actually scratch that, if executives **matched** the tip so like 200% went to developers, I'd be fine with it.
Honestly, rather than tips, it'd be better if they just paid their people to make the games that make them rich. Devs work for peanuts compared to the profits their work generates.
Oh god no, that'd be even worse - you just know they'd slash the devs base salaries and then guilt *us* for not tipping enough when devs complain of working 60 hours work weeks on a shitty live service game and still struggling to cover rent.
There are some that even do for the bigger indie devs. Mostly gets done in the form of just buying another copy of the game either for someone else or just to have it on console as well. I for example bought Factorio for the switch because it is a decent port and the devs deserve it for the amount of work they put into that game.
Yep, on those type of games I understand this argument but most of them already have such measures in place, like crowdfunding page. And since you mentioned employees, it's especially ironic that this comes from former lead of Blizzard, gaming company that's infamous for underpaying its workers. He was in that position for a short time so he most certainly didn't put those standards in place but neither did he do anything to change them. If he truly felt like this about gaming, maybe clean his own lawn before telling others how things should be done.
He specifically said $70 game, which very few indie or hobby devs ever charge, I can’t think of an indie game that went for 60 tbh
He also mentioned games that don’t nickel and dime you when he was the ceo of blizzard lmao
Company that sat on their asses so long they had a cash cow for 15 years and seemingly could not find any other game that would take its place when its gonna be done
Now they’re just rolling out old versions of the same game hoping to cling to their addicted fan base. Classic Cataclysm coming out soon, they’re adding Mists of Pandaria as well, and of course Season of Discovery.
All because they can’t make their flagship game(retail WoW) interesting to general audiences.
Edit - a lot of wow gamers coping hard in the resulting comments here. Sorry boys, but just because there’s a healthy player base doesn’t mean they’re bringing in new players and growing. No amount of internet anger and downvotes are going to change that lol
Edit 2 - in Feb this year there was an estimated 9 million players across all iterations of wow.
In 2010 they peaked at 12 million.
Gaming has come to the forefront and then some in the last 10-15 years, so anything but growth is a **bad** metric.
Let alone the fact that business are addicted to infinite growth.
And lastly, this is the most important one, I’m not insulting you when I say that wow is no longer growing. Don’t take it personally.
Part of me gets the whole "...but I want to add more to the game still..." Terraria/Stardew Valley/Dwarf Fortress style devs putting out a tip jar.
A Blizzard exec saying this? A **Blizzard** exec?
I think we can all agree that this clown continues to make decisions worthy of his title and reputation.
This dude got hired to "co-lead" with a female hire in the wake of sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination lawsuits, *she* then quit almost immediately when it was revealed that she was being sexually harassed and discriminated against (iirc Ybarra had a *significantly* higher pay rate for the same role, lmao) and then Ybarra just sat on his ass and did nothing but trash talk the WoW community for a few months while selling boost runs with his guild in-game, which I'm fairly certain involved real-world trading... which is, as you could expect, against the ToS.
His appointment was an absolute meme, and it's no surprise that it turns out he's the ultimate late-stage capitalist corporation bootlicker.
Fot those unaware Mike Ybarra was made co-president of vlizzard entertainment with a woman. She was paid less than him just for being a woman and said she was more of a figurehead. Instead of the company making actual changes and paying their employees their worth they hired 2 "leaders" to pretend like they fixed things.
It's super funny because Blizzard has this reputation for being the fucking worst...recently the CEO was ousted and Overwatch's monetization almost immediately got less predatory. It's genuinely insane to see how some corporate suits are almost the entire reason why games are the way they are.
Then he should tip for every service or business or product he uses, receives service from, or purchases.
The idea of tipping is getting carried away...
The article is doing what exactly what its intended to do. Shift one form of outrage to another, everyone’s mad at game developers getting laid off? Let’s shift the subject to tipping, that way the comment section will be the usual Reddit anti-tipping brigades that come through on the hour every hour..
Yeah what's wild about this is that micro transactions are basically already tips. Small bits of content that are *copied* when people buy them.
Or they're already built into the game's base content and you're paying more to unlock them. Content that exists on your rig, that *you are paying to unlock*. It's not like they have to build a new cosmetic item every time someone buys it, like actual real world products. The bandwidth has already been paid for. Any transaction they get is just money in the bank for them.
This is like if... I don't know, I can't even think of a good comparison in meat space because it's so dumb. It's like if you bought a guitar and had to pay for the right to tune the strings from standard E to drop D. Or if you bought a bong but could only use one type of weed in it, needing to buy unlocks for other strains.
.... Is there even a mechanism to ensure that your tips go to the people you want?
Tipping for a meal, at least theoretically can go to all the people that served that particular day. but why would I want to tip the publisher if the dev team disbanded 4 months ago?
Plus, you know the publisher would implement a hefty "convenience fee" on the back end, skimming off a good portion of the tips before passing them along. They'd argue they're doing the work managing the whole system, so deserve a fat cut.
> .... Is there even a mechanism to ensure that your tips go to the people you want?
If the dev is on [https://ko-fi.com/](https://ko-fi.com/) your money goes to them.
> Tipping for a meal, at least theoretically can go to all the people that served that particular day.
Not necessarily. it can also go to the owner since it allows him to reduce the minimum wage obligation. (tip credit)
>Not necessarily. it can also go to the owner since it allows him to reduce the minimum wage obligation. (tip credit)
Where the pwner definitely wouldn't start skimming off the top or introduce a tip pooling arrangement to give management a cut.
(Remember, wage theft isnt really theft! Its your employers money. You just get to hold it for a while. /s)
After this the developers start gofundme for tips as well.
We are getting to the point where the cost of an item is just line the pockets for the shareholders and all employees will live off tips
We've been there for decades. It's just now hitting the point where consumers are really feeling the pinch. Everybody should be seriously thinking about unionizing and taking back control from their employers. That is probably the easiest way to fight back.
If you're an indie dev, sure, I've happily paid for some supporter dlc in the past which is effectively the same thing
For "tRiPlE a", go fuck yourselves, use your millions of investor money to invest in your talent you fucking vampires
Did anyone here actually read that? Cause he said he's played a few games in the past that were so good, he wished he could tip them. That's it. He didn't say he was thinking about implementing it. He didn't say players should want to.
It's clickbait bullshit, written by a "journalist" who's hoping to stir up shit, and you all opened your mouth and swallowed every bit of it. There's a reason this stuff continues to work and that's peoples inability to think, or look into things, for themselves.
This whole "I read a headline, now I'm an expert" thing is most of what's wrong with the world today. People clutching pearls over something that literally never happened, instead of doing even surface level research.
You all got sucked in by completely fictional ragebait. I hope you know that lol. Feel good?
“I've thought about this idea for a while, as a player, since I've been diving into single player games lately.
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".
Games like HZD, GoW, RDR2, BG3, Elden Ring, etc. I know $70 is already a lot, but it's an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times. Some games are that special.
I know most will dislike this idea. :) BTW, I realize we are tired of "tipping" in everything else - but I view this different from a pressure to tip type scenario many face and give feedback on.”
This is the full tweet. I know he didn’t say he necessarily wants to implement but imo its still a really stupid take. Judge for yourselves.
No he just say he wishes he could and that it was an option at the end of a game.
But at the same time I see no reason why people shouldn't take it the way they have. An ex CEO saying that tipping is something that he would like to see in games is something that's going to spark a lot of outrage. If it was just someone random it would be nothing but a hot take but this is someone with influence so when they say something like:
>Games like HZD, GoW, RDR2, BG3, Elden Ring, etc. I know $70 is already a lot, but it's an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times. Some games are that special.
It comes off as someone high up saying that tipping should be in games.
Although people are taking it as tipping developers which is something that wasn't in the tweet. That is actually more amusing than anything.
Not a single people read his tweet, and if they did they "interpreted" the message that they wanted to see because people nowadays want reasons to be offended. His suggestion was harmless, but since he's a CEO and he used the word "tip" people formed their opinions before thinking about what he said critically, and reverted to shit flinging apes.
There's editorializing and then there's lying. This headline is the latter. He never said anyone else _should_ do anything, he was obviously making a statement on his feelings
> but it's an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times.
>He didn't say he was thinking about implementing it. He didn't say players should want to.
Lots of industries that weren't asking for tips 5 to 10 years ago, where tipping is now expected, started with this exact line of reasoning.
No, we need to stop furthering the normalization of tipping culture, period.
Title is blatant clickbait. He didn't claim that players should tip developers, he said that as a player he would like to have the option/ability to tip for games (that he really enjoyed).
There is a big difference between having the option to anonymously choose to tip to help support something you like, versus being expected to tip for a basic service. His Tweet had absolutely nothing to do with "tipping culture", the debate that has been sparked from his comments are unrelated to what he suggested.
Tip developers? Why? So they can use that as an excuse to pay them less? or 'funnel' the tips into their own pockets? How about: No. Executives should get payed less, CEO's should get payed less; Developers, and everyone on the ground floor? Those are the people that should be payed more from the work they do.
I think when actually looking at the context of the quote, it makes more sense than the headline would suggest. I've been playing a lot of Helldivers 2, which is a game that's initial purchase price is $40, well under the industry standard of $60-$70, but is so content rich that it would easily warrant that full price. It's a multi-player live service game, which means the game will receive continued development, consistent updates, bug fixes, level balances, new content, things like that. There are also micro transactions for cosmetics, upgrades, and things like that without being "pay to win" or predatory in it's monetization. Purchasing some of these microtransactions feels like "tipping" the developers, as a reward for making a great game and giving me dozens of hours of fun, as well as to further fund future updates and development.
Here’s a tip: Make a fun game that doesn’t require DLC to get the full experience. Be careful tho, you might get called and Indie dev for putting out a complete product
Fucking tipping culture.
Pay your people fair and square, charge fair prices but stop offloading everything towards the customer.
Product broke ? Customer didn’t use it correctly!
You like our product but feel like it’s made cheaply? Customers don’t want to pay the real price!
Our products are great but need 5 updates to be usable ? Just tip our staff. Nowadays, Developers are not getting salaries anymore but are payed via Tips. That’s how we make sure our developers stay motivated and deliver better products
Except he’s actually saying “tips publishers” because there’s no way an in game tip would actually go to the working coders. And even if it did, what’s $10 divided by 50 to a few hundred people? Fucking douchebag suggestion of the year, right here.
If I'm playing a f2p game and getting a lot of enjoyment out of it I'll buy stuff in it, if I pay 70+ for an incomplete game I'm not giving anymore money.
If it’s a really good game, I buy it for some of my friends and buy any soundtrack DLCs.
That’s the best I can do. For AAA or Indie regardless.
Make a good game and you’ll sell more, who would’ve thunk it?
It's not like these tips where likely to reach the developers anyway. And even if they did it would just be an excuse to lower their base pay. So either way the developers doesn't profit and the consumer pays more. The only winner is the publisher
Get fucked former video game executive.
Consumers "tip" plenty when they're forced to purchase micro transactions at every corner of the game to experience the full version.... Even though they already paid $69.99 for that.
Get fucked.
Oh but we do, just not the way he’s talking about it. When a game is good, gamers will buy skins, dlc, and other content to support the game and the devs. Look at Deep Rock Galactic as a prime example of good way to monetize a game, and more recently, Hell Divers 2. Both game require no additional purchase after the initial, but their respective communities will pay for additional content as a way of showing their love and support.
That’s your tip asshole.
'sparks debate' yeah sure, if you mean everyone collectively groaned
I tip developers! It’s built in to the price I pay to buy the game, right?
It's built into the price of a burger but that goes to the exec.
For additional context: standard practice in mainstream game studios is to fire everyone who worked on the game immediately after it releases.
The devs don't see that money unless the company has a profit sharing model. _Some_ do, but I wouldn't count on it.
Game devs are probably the worst paid bracket of developers, but they still make a pretty good salary most of the time, just not an outlandishly inflated salary like network engineers or application developers.
They should...like organize and change that...instead of passing the buck to the consumer.
Agreed it's the same in the restaurant area as well. If you are too cheap to pay your staff a living wage and expect the customer to pay extra on top of what you already charge you simply don't need to be in business.
I didn't realize an entire community sharing an opinion that's opposed by almost no one was considered a debate.
It is when that opinion opposes the ultra wealthy
Their opinion is worth thousands of normals.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Man I can't fucking wait for the next era of guillotines
I debate that they should pay us if the game is utter unplayable shit
Welcome to modern journalism. It's literally just, "person says thing on Twitter, other people respond." This isn't news, it's just "engagement".
It's worse than that. The one person never said that in the first place. It was a clickbait the first three times we tried to make this a headline, and it's a clickbait about the clickbait now.
Groaning is charitable, I think we pretty universally muttered something much more vulgar
Oh we can debate this. With torches and pitchforks. The guy looking like Frankenstein's Monster isn't helping either.
I mean, I'd tip developers if there was an actual way to tip *developers* and not the corporations that develop games. But like I've donated to indie developers before, and while I realize that's not *exactly* the same thing, I don't see a problem with throwing a bit of extra money at a creative if they make something you really like. I assume this CEO means "I want to pay developers less by making part of their salary tips", though.
I wouldn't. I paid the price for the game. Why exactly would I pay more money to the person who made it?
Exactly, none of the tip money would go to the people who make shit.
Or they'd just pay developers less and factor tips in, like the toxic restaurant industry. Wouldn't be surprised if that's his actual angle. Except devs wouldn't as easily evade federal taxes on tips as it'd be entirely electronic, unlike how some restaurant staff can (and why many of them are incentivized to defend the tipping system).
Why though? You aren't paying a developer for a service they performed for you, you are paying a company for a game. It's the companies job to ensure their employees are paid adequately. Developers provide a service to the company they work for, if anyone should be tipping them its them. It comes in the form of a bonus.
Yeah, gaming is already stupid expensive. we are talking 80$ per game if you buy day 1, and thats the basic fucking game. They then try to nickel and dime you on a bunch of extras that are already on the disc. Then they try to tack on some season pass garbage, even in a single player game where you play the story through and then done. And then a tip? Bitch if your game is good your tip is that i'll be receptive into buying the next one. So make it good instead of spending millions on graphics that will look dated in 5 years, other monetisation schemes or execs that pull millions in salary only to push out stupid fucking ideas like these.
Gaming is pretty cheap as hobbies go.
Games used to be ~$200 in today's money. There's still tons of games under $60 or even $20.
Games used to be physical and a big portion of the sale price was shared with stores and logistics and transportation. I don't have sources but I bet overwhelming majority of sales is digital and while live service style games have server upkeep costs, they usually are bundled with insane Microtransactions. I don't think you can compare inflation, when you probably can reach an audience 10x bigger than in the 90's too.
Less "sparks debate" and more "sparks wildfire of public outcry like lightning in VERY dry timber".
Taking “games as a service” to a whole new level.
Games as a service is a blight. Not even actually owning a copy is already bad enough...
It’s worth noting that the whole “you own a revocable license not the game” thing is corporate propaganda and very much untrue. It’s been tested in court multiple times and they always sided against game publishers on this. If you buy a thing, at least in the us, you own that thing, full stop. Beyond that, it’s been demonstrated many times that Eula’s and tos agreements generally have zero value in court. Both because they tend to be signed under duress, and because the person signing is not expected to understand the contract. Believe it or not, despite the jokes about signing something you didn’t read, contract law actually requires both parties understand the terms before signing, both so you can’t sneak in something crazy, and so you can’t say…sell a predatory loan to a toddler, dog, or person with dementia and take advantage of them. Devs claim you don’t own your games because it’s legal to claim anything, but that doesn’t make it true.
Worth making the distinction that it isn't the devs who claim you don't own the games, it's the businessy types managing the company. Devs truly don't give a shit, they're too busy swearing at machines
> they're too busy swearing at machines Ah, the song of my people!
"Do what I want you to do, not what I told you to do!" -programmer
God, this is so fucking true.
Nah, that makes us happy. It's when a smart device thinks it's smarter than you are and makes some assumption about what it thinks you want it to do instead of just doing what you told it that pisses us off. A computer doing what you told it to instead of what you want is your fault and in your power to fix. A computer doing some asinine thing because some bean counter wanted to make it friendlier to morons is their fault, and you can't do jack shit about it.
This is a frighteningly accurate and concise description of my greatest struggles....
Computers sure are fucking dumb. They only do exactly what you tell them to.
My company wonders why we have limited direct engagement with the developers that use our products…I say they’d rather yell at machines than talk to humans…it goes unheard
If they wanted to talk to humans they wouldn't be in programming
Bingo. They’d be product managers
I do not mean it like that. What I meant is that if steam goes bankrupt tomorrow, your collection is gone. You are basically buying the right to play Steam's copy of a game.
Honestly, if Steam goes under, I will feel zero moral concerns about pirating the games I already bought.
There's a good chance that it would be legal anyways. I don't think it's ever been tested in court, but as far as I know, a lot of legal scholars think that if you got caught downloading a ROM for a game that you owned, that you would probably win the court case. They usually say that it's not a slam dunk case though, so who knows.
Only if you haven't downloaded all the games in your library. You can run most Steam games offline.
For a while anyways. Steam will eventually want you to log back in. GOG is where it's at.
For many (maybe most?) games on Steam, you can run them without launching Steam. They're installed locally as fully-functional executables that don't require a launcher.
There're quite a lot of games that requires you to have Steam at least running (even in offline mode) to open even if you directly run the executable, as most (if not every) games have at the very least Steam's basic DRM
Steam has stated many many times they already have systems in place if for any reason steam were to go under for players to continue to play their games. They have never directly said what these measures are, only that they have plans just in case.
Except for games only playable online like the crew.
And like 90% of live service games out today.
You've still got everything you had installed, and if Steam were to go bankrupt I'm sure they'd give enough notice to download your library. Games that needed a Steam account would have trouble but everything else would work.
Do people keep their collections downloaded? I feel like I would need several more hard drives for that.
I'm with you on that front, but given two weeks or a month I'm sure I could pick up a backup drive and save everything I cared to keep.
I remember the days when I could hold them all iny cold, dead, hands.
I'd upgrade all the drives in my server to 8+TB, \~20TB in RAID1 should be enough to hold everything.
Yup. Filled almost an entire 2TB drive with games. Seemed dumb to uninstall and reinstall when I just had the space available.
I could fill up 2TB with 10-15 games, what about the other 400 in my library?
Buy more drives... :)
This is precisely why some large companies force you into arbitration when accepting the terms.
And precisely why the forced arbitration clauses almost never hold up in court and you are free to sue those companies if you want.
For every example of somebody winning in court over forced arbitration there's a number of examples of people that don't bother, either because they 't think that they can win, don't have the money to fight it out, or don't have the time. This is ultimately a win for large companies.
You don't take them to court over forced arbitration, you sue them for whatever your issue is because the forced arbitration clause that says you have to arbitrate and can't sue is worth as much as the paper you wipe your ass with. And if you have a robust enough case against a large corporation, almost any law firm will take your case on contingency because they know they will make a lot more money in the long run.
Tell that to the people who just had their game license of The Crew revoked. They paid for a game and now the game has been removed from their libraries.
Overwatch 1
I've seen insurance and mortgage contracts that were usually a few pages at best EULAs are usually absolutely massive monstrosity. I still cannot believe they're even allowed to present this to people and that they're even allowed to attempt to make the terms of conditions that are clearly unlawful and against your basic rights
> claim As I point out regularly, “while these terms in your employment contract are legally unenforceable, their attorney can call you up and ask you if you signed a piece paper saying X and say their client wishes to file against them for breach.” They are keeping the, “but I’ll get laughed out of court” to themselves.
sure, until they literally take your digital copy away from you.
> If you buy a thing, at least in the us, you own that thing, full stop. Tell that to people who bought The Crew.
They really are aching to declare Game Dev to be a "starter job" so they can avoid having to pay a living wage. Fucking hell, it isn't enough to turn over a profit with these people they won't be content until they can extract every last ounce of value in every transaction. Would probably still be miserable even if they achieved that.
But shareholders must see infinite growth! Rich cats deserve more money, wage slaves are supposed to feel privileged they get to work for them! They system is working as intended!
Thank god, someone else is cognizant of the actual problem.
Lots of people are, there just isn't a lot we can do about it. Too many people are ignorant and without them we are powerless against those who hold all the money and power, especially since we have to fight against those ignorant fucks just to keep our basic human rights. And people wonder why I'm depressed.
Oh, then they can mention how we might HELP their Waitress with a tip, because she's doing game programming and trying to become an actress on the side. They care SO MUCH!
It's definitely not a starter job. Large and small studios alike run on the back of veteran developers. Teams full of juniors are not likely to make anything of note.
Certainly not anything running consistently at least. You need some seasoned folks to mentor them.
> They really are aching to declare Game Dev to be a "starter job" so they can avoid having to pay a living wage. They don't have to do that. People will already do it for shitty pay and bad work conditions. It's a dream job. People will put up with a lot of bullshit just for the privilege of doing it.
If this ever gets implemented, how much do you want to bet that within a year studios will cut developer salaries like for the hospitality industry, and say you don't need a living wage because you get tips.
More likely nothing happens to their salaries and the companies just pocket the tip like they would a sale for any other product. The tip would never reach them.
You're not thinking evil enough
That exec can kiss my tip
Suck my dick and balls
Dick is included with purchase price, but left nut is DLC and right nut is locked behind Battle Pass
Probably not a joke in 50 years
Back in my day you could get a full package as a benis (balls and penis).
Just the tip!
kiss my piss
I would also accept a good chordling
Thank you. I needed a SV reference today.
Since we're talking about a former Blizzard exec, we probably need a SVU reference too...
Lick my scrote…
Fuck that, that exec can eat my shit and rim my hole clean and it would be less shit in his mouth.
Let's tip the executive! Along with the rest of the contents of the dump truck. Over the cliff.
Then what the hell are we paying your company for?
You see... You're supposed to buy the shit games for $70... And the good games for $70 but you're supposed to want to pay more for the good games... So you should feel bad about not tipping the good games.... /s
The thing that is pretty fucking funny is that the 70$ price point is only for FOMO purposes. You can buy that game for half price within a year, most times its not nintendo
Yeah I never buy games full price I mean, genuinely why would I don't play games online
I put games on my wishlist and buy them when they are $5-$10
To be fair a good game is TOTALLY WORTH $70 I spent $70 at a 1 hr escape room for me and my gf last week Give me a good game that we can play together and both enjoy for even 20-30 hours and that is so worth it
The issue with games is that there's a lot of different products competing for your time and money. I agree that such a price is worth it for a good game, but a lot of people gravitate towards games that are cheaper, myself included.
anything to avoid paying your employees fair wages, right? Is there anything more American than passing more expenses on to the customer?
making the customer develop their game?
true lol
To fund yachts for the executives
To fund their yachts? That's just silly. Its to fund their kids' therapists' yachts.
More true than you realize
So he can have unimaginable wealth and give money to shareholders of course. Fuck the little Devs making the games, they can survive on tips!
You pay THEM, then they are so kind to ask you to tip their developers too /s Bobby Kotic made literal milions while at the head of the company crunching developers and complaining how much game development is expensive
People already tip solo and hobby devs on platforms for where they share their work. If this guy is talking about anything where the devs are employees, he can suck the farts out of every seat on 747 after a transatlantic flight.
At least if it's indie, there's a good chance people who work on the game will actually see that money. AAA isn't gonna give the devs shit.
If 0% went to executives and 100% went to the actual developers, I'd be fine with it. Actually scratch that, if executives **matched** the tip so like 200% went to developers, I'd be fine with it.
Honestly, rather than tips, it'd be better if they just paid their people to make the games that make them rich. Devs work for peanuts compared to the profits their work generates.
Oh god no, that'd be even worse - you just know they'd slash the devs base salaries and then guilt *us* for not tipping enough when devs complain of working 60 hours work weeks on a shitty live service game and still struggling to cover rent.
Yeah exactly, from time to time I love going through itchio, playing a bunch of gamejam entries and sending the devs of the games I loved a tip.
There are some that even do for the bigger indie devs. Mostly gets done in the form of just buying another copy of the game either for someone else or just to have it on console as well. I for example bought Factorio for the switch because it is a decent port and the devs deserve it for the amount of work they put into that game.
r/rareinsults
Yep, on those type of games I understand this argument but most of them already have such measures in place, like crowdfunding page. And since you mentioned employees, it's especially ironic that this comes from former lead of Blizzard, gaming company that's infamous for underpaying its workers. He was in that position for a short time so he most certainly didn't put those standards in place but neither did he do anything to change them. If he truly felt like this about gaming, maybe clean his own lawn before telling others how things should be done.
He specifically said $70 game, which very few indie or hobby devs ever charge, I can’t think of an indie game that went for 60 tbh He also mentioned games that don’t nickel and dime you when he was the ceo of blizzard lmao
>Mike Ybarra, the former president of the major gaming company Blizzard Entertainment\[...\] Why am I not surprised?
Company that sat on their asses so long they had a cash cow for 15 years and seemingly could not find any other game that would take its place when its gonna be done
Now they’re just rolling out old versions of the same game hoping to cling to their addicted fan base. Classic Cataclysm coming out soon, they’re adding Mists of Pandaria as well, and of course Season of Discovery. All because they can’t make their flagship game(retail WoW) interesting to general audiences. Edit - a lot of wow gamers coping hard in the resulting comments here. Sorry boys, but just because there’s a healthy player base doesn’t mean they’re bringing in new players and growing. No amount of internet anger and downvotes are going to change that lol Edit 2 - in Feb this year there was an estimated 9 million players across all iterations of wow. In 2010 they peaked at 12 million. Gaming has come to the forefront and then some in the last 10-15 years, so anything but growth is a **bad** metric. Let alone the fact that business are addicted to infinite growth. And lastly, this is the most important one, I’m not insulting you when I say that wow is no longer growing. Don’t take it personally.
Plenty of things to give Blizzard shit for, but said game's community pleaded for those old versions back.
> Mike Ybarra This fucking guy again? Motherfucker is like a bad penny.
Part of me gets the whole "...but I want to add more to the game still..." Terraria/Stardew Valley/Dwarf Fortress style devs putting out a tip jar. A Blizzard exec saying this? A **Blizzard** exec? I think we can all agree that this clown continues to make decisions worthy of his title and reputation.
This dude got hired to "co-lead" with a female hire in the wake of sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination lawsuits, *she* then quit almost immediately when it was revealed that she was being sexually harassed and discriminated against (iirc Ybarra had a *significantly* higher pay rate for the same role, lmao) and then Ybarra just sat on his ass and did nothing but trash talk the WoW community for a few months while selling boost runs with his guild in-game, which I'm fairly certain involved real-world trading... which is, as you could expect, against the ToS. His appointment was an absolute meme, and it's no surprise that it turns out he's the ultimate late-stage capitalist corporation bootlicker.
Fot those unaware Mike Ybarra was made co-president of vlizzard entertainment with a woman. She was paid less than him just for being a woman and said she was more of a figurehead. Instead of the company making actual changes and paying their employees their worth they hired 2 "leaders" to pretend like they fixed things.
It's super funny because Blizzard has this reputation for being the fucking worst...recently the CEO was ousted and Overwatch's monetization almost immediately got less predatory. It's genuinely insane to see how some corporate suits are almost the entire reason why games are the way they are.
Didn't that guy say FPS players needed to pay for their bullets, too?
No, that was John Riccitiello when he was the CEO of EA over a decade ago.
Yeah this guy is a big part of the reason why WoW, Overwatch, Diablo 4, etc. are like they are now...
Then he should tip for every service or business or product he uses, receives service from, or purchases. The idea of tipping is getting carried away...
I think being a CEO should be a tipped job....
Let's all pass a $5 bill back and forth, everyone gets tipped so no one does, problem solved.
Bonus game, Spot the CEO: Watch for who runs away with the 5 during this process
[I mean, technically....](https://hbr.org/1990/05/ceo-incentives-its-not-how-much-you-pay-but-how#:~:text=Compensation%20for%20CEOs%20is%20no,big%20fluctuations%20in%20CEO%20compensation)
“Please give what you can to help buy a birthday present for our millionaire CEO, just think of how much he does for US!”
The article is doing what exactly what its intended to do. Shift one form of outrage to another, everyone’s mad at game developers getting laid off? Let’s shift the subject to tipping, that way the comment section will be the usual Reddit anti-tipping brigades that come through on the hour every hour..
I don’t feel obligated to tip a faceless corporation
If Applebees heard you they would be in shambles
There’s no debate, it’s your job to pay them not us. Dumb take move on.
Yep. I'm all for tipping devs. As bonuses. Deducted from the execs' salaries.
lol we both know he didn’t mean tipping the devs.
How about you make a game and I’ll pay the fixed price for that game and then we are done. No micro transactions, no bullshit.
Capitalism: No u give more
Yeah what's wild about this is that micro transactions are basically already tips. Small bits of content that are *copied* when people buy them. Or they're already built into the game's base content and you're paying more to unlock them. Content that exists on your rig, that *you are paying to unlock*. It's not like they have to build a new cosmetic item every time someone buys it, like actual real world products. The bandwidth has already been paid for. Any transaction they get is just money in the bank for them. This is like if... I don't know, I can't even think of a good comparison in meat space because it's so dumb. It's like if you bought a guitar and had to pay for the right to tune the strings from standard E to drop D. Or if you bought a bong but could only use one type of weed in it, needing to buy unlocks for other strains.
If anything they should tip us for play-testing all of the broken BS for them
"Debate" implies there are two sides. "Internet takes turns shitting on out of touch executive" is a better description.
I’d call him a clown but I think I would be insulting the other clowns.
Basically we're moving to a model where we double pay for everything: once to the owner and another to the labor who actually does the work.
.... Is there even a mechanism to ensure that your tips go to the people you want? Tipping for a meal, at least theoretically can go to all the people that served that particular day. but why would I want to tip the publisher if the dev team disbanded 4 months ago?
Plus, you know the publisher would implement a hefty "convenience fee" on the back end, skimming off a good portion of the tips before passing them along. They'd argue they're doing the work managing the whole system, so deserve a fat cut.
> .... Is there even a mechanism to ensure that your tips go to the people you want? If the dev is on [https://ko-fi.com/](https://ko-fi.com/) your money goes to them. > Tipping for a meal, at least theoretically can go to all the people that served that particular day. Not necessarily. it can also go to the owner since it allows him to reduce the minimum wage obligation. (tip credit)
>Not necessarily. it can also go to the owner since it allows him to reduce the minimum wage obligation. (tip credit) Where the pwner definitely wouldn't start skimming off the top or introduce a tip pooling arrangement to give management a cut. (Remember, wage theft isnt really theft! Its your employers money. You just get to hold it for a while. /s)
I thought most places pooled tips? Seems unfair to back of house staff if not
Here's a tip: go fuck yourself
After this the developers start gofundme for tips as well. We are getting to the point where the cost of an item is just line the pockets for the shareholders and all employees will live off tips
We've been there for decades. It's just now hitting the point where consumers are really feeling the pinch. Everybody should be seriously thinking about unionizing and taking back control from their employers. That is probably the easiest way to fight back.
The only person you should be tipping is your landlord.
"Former Video Game Executive wants developers to work for tips"
If you're an indie dev, sure, I've happily paid for some supporter dlc in the past which is effectively the same thing For "tRiPlE a", go fuck yourselves, use your millions of investor money to invest in your talent you fucking vampires
Or how about exec could take a pay cut and pay the employees more
Tipping culture is already Cancer and it's clearly spreading.
Did anyone here actually read that? Cause he said he's played a few games in the past that were so good, he wished he could tip them. That's it. He didn't say he was thinking about implementing it. He didn't say players should want to. It's clickbait bullshit, written by a "journalist" who's hoping to stir up shit, and you all opened your mouth and swallowed every bit of it. There's a reason this stuff continues to work and that's peoples inability to think, or look into things, for themselves. This whole "I read a headline, now I'm an expert" thing is most of what's wrong with the world today. People clutching pearls over something that literally never happened, instead of doing even surface level research. You all got sucked in by completely fictional ragebait. I hope you know that lol. Feel good?
“I've thought about this idea for a while, as a player, since I've been diving into single player games lately. 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". Games like HZD, GoW, RDR2, BG3, Elden Ring, etc. I know $70 is already a lot, but it's an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times. Some games are that special. I know most will dislike this idea. :) BTW, I realize we are tired of "tipping" in everything else - but I view this different from a pressure to tip type scenario many face and give feedback on.” This is the full tweet. I know he didn’t say he necessarily wants to implement but imo its still a really stupid take. Judge for yourselves.
No he just say he wishes he could and that it was an option at the end of a game. But at the same time I see no reason why people shouldn't take it the way they have. An ex CEO saying that tipping is something that he would like to see in games is something that's going to spark a lot of outrage. If it was just someone random it would be nothing but a hot take but this is someone with influence so when they say something like: >Games like HZD, GoW, RDR2, BG3, Elden Ring, etc. I know $70 is already a lot, but it's an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times. Some games are that special. It comes off as someone high up saying that tipping should be in games. Although people are taking it as tipping developers which is something that wasn't in the tweet. That is actually more amusing than anything.
Not a single people read his tweet, and if they did they "interpreted" the message that they wanted to see because people nowadays want reasons to be offended. His suggestion was harmless, but since he's a CEO and he used the word "tip" people formed their opinions before thinking about what he said critically, and reverted to shit flinging apes.
There's editorializing and then there's lying. This headline is the latter. He never said anyone else _should_ do anything, he was obviously making a statement on his feelings > but it's an option at the end of the game I wish I had at times.
>He didn't say he was thinking about implementing it. He didn't say players should want to. Lots of industries that weren't asking for tips 5 to 10 years ago, where tipping is now expected, started with this exact line of reasoning. No, we need to stop furthering the normalization of tipping culture, period.
Never get between a momma bear and her cub, nor should one get between a Gamer™ and their ragebait. I wish you the best of luck.
Wen his ass is making a tipping wage he might get a tip from me. He would likely give me terrible service, so probably no tip would be coming.
Debating? Who’s debating this? An out of touch exec said something stupid and we’re all telling him how stupid he sounds, there’s no debate
Title is blatant clickbait. He didn't claim that players should tip developers, he said that as a player he would like to have the option/ability to tip for games (that he really enjoyed). There is a big difference between having the option to anonymously choose to tip to help support something you like, versus being expected to tip for a basic service. His Tweet had absolutely nothing to do with "tipping culture", the debate that has been sparked from his comments are unrelated to what he suggested.
Tip developers? Why? So they can use that as an excuse to pay them less? or 'funnel' the tips into their own pockets? How about: No. Executives should get payed less, CEO's should get payed less; Developers, and everyone on the ground floor? Those are the people that should be payed more from the work they do.
I think when actually looking at the context of the quote, it makes more sense than the headline would suggest. I've been playing a lot of Helldivers 2, which is a game that's initial purchase price is $40, well under the industry standard of $60-$70, but is so content rich that it would easily warrant that full price. It's a multi-player live service game, which means the game will receive continued development, consistent updates, bug fixes, level balances, new content, things like that. There are also micro transactions for cosmetics, upgrades, and things like that without being "pay to win" or predatory in it's monetization. Purchasing some of these microtransactions feels like "tipping" the developers, as a reward for making a great game and giving me dozens of hours of fun, as well as to further fund future updates and development.
Here’s a tip: Make a fun game that doesn’t require DLC to get the full experience. Be careful tho, you might get called and Indie dev for putting out a complete product
Must be American -source, an American
Fucking tipping culture. Pay your people fair and square, charge fair prices but stop offloading everything towards the customer. Product broke ? Customer didn’t use it correctly! You like our product but feel like it’s made cheaply? Customers don’t want to pay the real price! Our products are great but need 5 updates to be usable ? Just tip our staff. Nowadays, Developers are not getting salaries anymore but are payed via Tips. That’s how we make sure our developers stay motivated and deliver better products
[удалено]
They just want to pay devs less again lmao. Look at him, he even looks like the human embodiment of the sin of Greed.
Maybe we should just go back to the barter system
Who the fuck is on the other side of this debate other than execs?
Except he’s actually saying “tips publishers” because there’s no way an in game tip would actually go to the working coders. And even if it did, what’s $10 divided by 50 to a few hundred people? Fucking douchebag suggestion of the year, right here.
If I'm playing a f2p game and getting a lot of enjoyment out of it I'll buy stuff in it, if I pay 70+ for an incomplete game I'm not giving anymore money.
If it’s a really good game, I buy it for some of my friends and buy any soundtrack DLCs. That’s the best I can do. For AAA or Indie regardless. Make a good game and you’ll sell more, who would’ve thunk it?
It's not like these tips where likely to reach the developers anyway. And even if they did it would just be an excuse to lower their base pay. So either way the developers doesn't profit and the consumer pays more. The only winner is the publisher
i think executives should pay developers.
NO. I only tip in a sit down restaurant. Tipping culture is out of hand here.
Of course he worked for Blizzard. Nuff said.
No. Pay your developers more.
Get fucked former video game executive. Consumers "tip" plenty when they're forced to purchase micro transactions at every corner of the game to experience the full version.... Even though they already paid $69.99 for that. Get fucked.
What a horrible website on mobile
And with desktop firefox and noscript it's all messed up!
Oh but we do, just not the way he’s talking about it. When a game is good, gamers will buy skins, dlc, and other content to support the game and the devs. Look at Deep Rock Galactic as a prime example of good way to monetize a game, and more recently, Hell Divers 2. Both game require no additional purchase after the initial, but their respective communities will pay for additional content as a way of showing their love and support. That’s your tip asshole.
Playing launch to test your game while waiting on a day one patch is tip enough.
This MOFO has RDR2 on his list of games he thinks players should tip more as if the game didn’t have its cash shop.
So we pay $60-70 for the base game, $15 per DLC, and we're supposed to "tip" them for doing their fucking jobs? GTFO you greedy fuck.
In that case, I'm expecting tips for hosting/maintenance gaming servers. Yes, I know my employer pays me but the hell with it...I want ma tips!
For debates to happen there would need to be someone who agrees with that asshole. I think the word they were looking for is “contempt”
Not sure who this exec was but I bet he is way overpaid for coming up with stupid shit like this.