VB - Investors piled out of Zynga and seemingly right into Activision Blizzard.
Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra recently suggested an interesting concept that has sparked a debate among gamers - the idea of being able to tip developers after completing a game.
If I had a 100% way to be sure that this money would go to a fund or a reserve dedicated only to the guys who develop the games, be them designers, artists, programmers and so on, I could think about it.
But we all know that this 'tip' would only end up in a publisher's CEO pocket to buy a new yacht, so, no, I ain't tipping anyone anytime soon on this industry
Exactly these companies were raising money for good causes and gamers were donation and come to find out they are keeping a good chunk of be pie
Yeah tip your developer, 5% proceeds go to developer, 95% to the publisher or whoever. Isn't tipping for staff not making minimum wage? How about they just pay their developers properly and like you know, give them fair bonuses? Too much to ask from Blizzard these days, Kotick saw to that and is now laughing all the way to the bank.
It's the t**ts at the top looking at ways to cut devs wages and get the players to tip them like waiting staff, and I'll guarantee a percentage is skimmed and kept by Activision Blizzard. This is 100% for shareholder and CEO playouts.
I have to agree with this. On the surface tipping devs sounds like a great idea, but in the end it leads to pay cuts and subsidization of pay. Tips then become an expectation or the devs “can’t make a living.” Lastly, especially in the US, tip culture has gotten out of control, and it serves as an excuse not to properly pay employees. Sounds good but doesn’t end well.
@ Popsicle
I think your right on the nose with how much tipping has become rampant. Instead of it being a relationship directly between the customer and the developer or employee, it now has a middle man ingrained in the system. DoorDash is one example. It ends up becoming a metric where the company can measure 'just how much more money you are willing to part with' before raising the price on the main product.
Uh so they’re trying triple dip or more we buy the game that they’re already withholding/cutting content for dlc we was told that season pass would help the developers thrive we felt for it.
Now on top of all that plus their sales bonus they want tips enough is enough whatever happens to you create/built a good game get a bonus for sales milestones you care about your game and community we reward you with more sales not for doing 3/4 of a game then save the other 1/4 for dlc and passes after
Very well said. If it was possible to send the money to either the developer or some organization for the betterment of gaming, sure. But we all know that will not be the case.
No, it would go to those on the top. They will still fire developers, have a bunch of microtransactions, raise prices of games and so on.
So they eventually don't pay their workers and depend on our tips to pay them like the case with waiters!
That kind of practice is only normal in the states, as far as I know anyway, what a backwards system
Ireland is literally the first stop across the pond and we don't have a tipping culture. The only establishments here that would expect a tip are the tourist haunts that Americans visit. Other than that, you might tip in a restaurant as a sign of gratitude for great service and waiting staff would be paid a full wage anyway.
Is this a joke? How about the big wigs giving up some of their pay for their hard working developers.
Blizzard and NetEase have announced that Blizzard's games will return to mainland China under a new publishing agreement.
Top executives including games boss Sean Shoptaw have also been promoted…
Zynga's dieing that's why.
And Activision milk the customer... That's why Investors love them so much!
Doesn't mean much for games as a whole, really.
Zynga and Blizzard are far from being the "be all end all" of videogames.
Also, I believe there might be a point in a casual gamer's life when he/she really did all there was to do in farmville...
And next week the stocks will change. Are we gonna get an article on that also?
Mobile gaming, while no doubt it's a healthy industry with many developers profiting and making millions from it, it still can be very risky sometimes.
It is VERY saturated with everyone and their grandma can publish a game very easily in the appstore/Google play. It is not the magical solution for gaming companies to abandon consoles/PC for it.
Not much in my opinion. I could see this being a thing if they ran the entirety of the gaming economy, but these companies are no goldman-sacs.