VG247 first reported that Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard, suggested a new form of showing appreciation to developers on Twitter a few days ago. At least, I like the idea.

"There is something about playing a game and being in awe of how great the experience was. At the end of the game, I often find myself thinking, "I wish I could give these people another $10 or $20."

Ibarra cited Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, Elden Ring, and Baldur's Gate 3 as examples of games worth tipping." "I know that $70 is already a lot," Ybarra added, "but it's just an option at the end of the game. Some games are that special."

As you can imagine, the majority of the commenters (as well as VG247 writer Oisin Kuhnke) were not thrilled with Ybarra's idea.

While it sounds great to me to be in a large pool to be distributed as a bonus to the development team, I'd like to see residual money for developers and performers, the avoidance of firing half the staff to please the shareholders, the acquisition of Gearbox for $1.3 billion and then half of that just three years later. I'm the type of person who likes ideas like, "I'm not going to do something like sell it for less than that.

I feel like this sort of thing is just going to be driven by the general revenue of the game - am I leaning EA here, or Ubisoft ......" Reminds me of the old Achewood comic where the accountant asks why Ray Smuckles wrote a check for $10,000 to "Oreo". I just wanted Sony Interactive Entertainment to have the money to walk away!

The idea makes a little more sense for small indie developers, but if you really want, you can already tip the bedroom programmers who make Boomer shooters and Metroidvanias who don't have Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc. I'd like to be introduced to them. You can't.