Mike Ybarra spent 20 years working at Microsoft, mostly on the Xbox team, but in 2019 he packed his bags and headed to Blizzard. There he eventually became the veteran developer's top executive, before leaving shortly after Microsoft took over the studio late last year.
Recently he has been very active on social media (mainly X) where he often writes unexpectedly frankly about problems in the industry as well as his own thoughts and opinions. Now he has been at it again and delivers a rather unexpected proposal.
Ybarra thinks it should be possible to tip developers who have offered something really special with a complete gaming experience where it never felt like the studio was trying to hustle you for money all the time. In these cases, a full price tag is simply not enough, he says, and when the end credits roll it should be possible to chip in "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".
Ybarra adds that he knows that many people don't like the concept of tipping, but says that there would be no pressure to tip because it is done anonymously in your home. And perhaps such a system would encourage developers to actually deliver something more finished and complete without microtransactions, season passes and the like as doing so could suddenly lead to higher revenues.
What do you think, would you be willing to tip $10 for a game that you during the end credits think is worth more to you than its actual price tag?
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