At the restaurant where I worked every summer for five years, everyone who wasn’t management hated pay day. There was no joy in ripping open an intricately sealed check only to discover that, after taxes, your labor was worth zero dollars and zero cents. We made our money through tips, meaning everyone jostled for more tables and larger parties than they could handle in an effort to at least reach minimum wage. Sometimes we walked out with stacks of cash; most times we barely broke even.
Ybarra claims he isn’t stupid: he “knows most will dislike this idea” because “we are tired of ‘tipping’ in everything else.” But some games—specifically, and etc.—deserve a little treat. Nevermind that these are some of the most well regarded and highest grossing games of the last decade: they’re special and worth far more than $60 or $70.
How do you decide what deserves a tip and what doesn’t? Does Aloy pull out an iPad and ask you to choose between 15%, 20%, and 25%? Does Malenia pause before the final strike to ask if you’d like to donate $5 toward Shadow of the Erdtree’s development? I can imagine the practice spreading through the industry like wildfire, an icon of a cartoon burlap sack ripe with coins stamped onto every console menu and digital shop .
The most deliciously ironic aspect of this entire discourse isn’t that Ybarra is just some rich, out-of-touch dude who suggested the implementation of a toxic system. It’s that he helped pioneer an identical toxic system known as “live service” while minimizing developer pay during his time at Activision-Blizzard. Games is already a service industry: precarious, dysfunctional, and serving customers who haveMik Deitz is a freelance writer and former Paste intern.