Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra made waves recently when he suggested that gamers might want to start tipping their favorite games extra. “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,’” he tweeted last week. It was a well-intentioned thought experiment that seemed to miss the forest for the trees.
Ybarra has seemingly had a lot of free time recently after suddenly “leaving” Activision Blizzard amid mass layoffs following its acquisition by Microsoft, where he also worked as a corporate VP for many years. The long-time gaming business guy has been binging massive single-player games on PC like Horizon Forbidden West, The Last of Us, and Final Fantasy VII Remake and tweeting out thought leader-y trial balloons like “I’ve always fundamentally believed if you make great games the rest of the business/other problems minimize.”
His latest idea is adding a tip button to games so players can shell out a few bucks extra after watching the credits roll on games that left them in “awe” and didn’t try to nickel-and-dime them with microtransactions. “Games like HZD, GoW, RDR2, BG3, Elden Ring, etc.” Ybarra wrote. “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.”
Players immediately started roasting the former executive for what sounded to some like a request for a charity button for big gaming corporations. Some freaked out at the idea of being asked to spend even more money to play a game. Others balked at the idea of donating money that might never find its way into the pockets of the people who actually made the game.
IGN video director Destin Legarie probably put this line of criticism the most succinctly. “I think the billion and trillion dollar companies can handle compensating their employees fairly instead of relying on a tip from me,” he wrote in response. “Because it’s not like my money goes to the combat designer or level artist. It goes into the corporate piggy bank.”
It didn’t help that the source of this thought experiment was the former head of Blizzard, whose employees were recently decimated by layoffs and reportedly denied their most recent bonuses. Despite only serving at the company for a few years, Ybarra reportedly helmed an especially “demoralizing” Q&A with staff in early 2023 in which he announced slashed bonuses and return-to-office requirements.
Ybarra’s recent tipping suggestion grasps a central tension in the current state of gaming but fumbles the bag on how to actually address it. Players hate buying a game only to load it up and find there’s another store inside it asking them for even more money to unlock additional features. Many big-budget single-player games cost too much to make and probably need to be priced higher. But until there are better rules in place for profit sharing and making sure “voting with your wallet”-type logic actually goes to the creators it’s meant to support, it’s hard not to see paying extra as just another handout to the shareholders.
